Oh Ewe Pretty Things 🐏☘️

So, What’s the Craic?

We’re back with more news on this fine Friday. The Craic keeps you up to date with what’s shaking in Eire and anything else that catches our roving eye. Like The Craic? Help us out by sending this on to friends, family, and anyone else curious about the wee island nestled snugly in Europe’s armpit.

News from Home

Your Dream Date? It’s coming a bit closer to year’s end, and that could only mean one thing: The Irish Farmers’ Calendar 2025. It’s the 15th edition of the raunchy-but-still-kind-of-family-friendly calendar, and it’s all for a good cause, raising money for those hurt or impacted by loss in rural accidents. Big men with tops off, a few sheep, and the odd tractor – what more could you want? It ships internationally, too. Get it here.

Lads, it’s not even November yet. Dublin’s Temple Bar – Ireland’s finest tourist trap™ – is famous for expensive pints, but it’s been in the news this week for sticking the Xmas décor up early. It’s divided opinion, but it’s worked as a marketing exercise by grabbing the attention of Irish newspapers, generating buzz on social media, and getting mugs like us to write about it. Fair play.

GAAGO NO NO. Gaelic football and hurling are amateur sports, meaning the players (famously) don’t get paid, and as such, most of us believe it shouldn’t be a money making racket for everyone else involved. So when previously-free television coverage was suddenly pushed behind a paywall (on the GAAGO app), it unsurprisingly caused an uproar. Then salt was rubbed in the wound when the app announced revenues had doubled… Oh dear.

A Dublin Institution Closes. Shanahan’s on the Green was the kind of expensive joint where you’d break into a cold sweat when reading the wine list. Alas, it’s been forced to close. Yet, it’s about more than one restaurant: there have been hospitality protests across Ireland, with the industry saying it’s being strangled by price pressure and government regulations.

Political Building Has Been Bugged. In a gift for political satirists, Northern Ireland’s Stormont Assembly – arguably the world’s most dysfunctional parliament building – has been infested by swarms of flies. Plans are in place to fumigate the building this week.

Swim When You’re Winning. Most teenagers we know are stuck on their phones 24/7, but 16-year-old Brian Foster showed there’s hope for the youth yet by swimming from Ireland to Scotland and back without a wetsuit🥶. The feat took just over 24 hours. The Craic is partial to doing a bit of digging, and we found that the Cork youngster has been doing these iron-man feats for years.

The Irish Influence

This week, we’re giving a huge shout out to our friends at Digital Irish! Headquartered in New York, Digital Irish is a global network founded in 2013 by Feargal Kenny, with the mission of connecting and supporting Irish professionals, entrepreneurs, and startups in the tech and digital sectors. Yes, we Irish are more than just pretty faces, we’re apparently smart too. Along with co-founder Gavin McMahon, Feargal has grown the group to well over 5,000 members worldwide. In addition to a thriving Irish-tech community in NYC, Digital Irish now has chapters in London, and Sydney. This past month was one of the highlights of the Digital Irish calendar, Irish Startup Week NYC, where 30 Irish tech founders were flown to New York to (go easy on the pints!), to learn, connect and pitch to prospective investors. It was a huge success, and a testament to the great work being done by Digital Irish. Find out more about Digital Irish, and if you’re in the tech space, we highly recommend joining up.

Cúpla Focal

An té a bhíonn siúlach, bíonn scéalach – [un tay uh vee-un shoo-lukh, bee-un shkay-lukh] –“the one who travels has stories to tell.”. We’re feeling a bit reflective in what is now the 6th edition of The Craic. As, y’all know, Irish identity is inextricably linked to travel and storytelling. There are 80 million of you on foreign shores and less than one-tenth of that at home. And that’s part of The Craic’s not-so-secret mission, connecting you with each other. We’ll not get all 80 million of you on Shift app, but we will get more than a few. And we’re sure you’ll all have stories to tell each other. ❤️🇮🇪

Blast from the Past

44 years ago this week a little-known Irish rock band called U2 released its debut album, Boy. Despite being somewhat unpolished, the album hinted at the band’s future superstardom. It’s difficult to describe how the Irish feel about U2 these days. Indeed, you might say that such is their stardom, they don’t feel Irish anymore; more internationally-owned, like the Pope, the Olympics, or the chicken pox. We’ve probably grown as weary of Bono’s holier-than-thou preaching as anyone else, but there’s also that all-too-Irish sentiment of being protective when anyone else dares to criticize. Anyway, their legendary status remains, and this week, they get our shout out. And if you want some rare old Irish history, and perhaps a bit of the bad craic Patrick and Paul were alluding to on the podcast, check out this little story. It covers the infamous busht-up in Ballina, Co. Mayo a few months before Boy was released (and a week and a half before Paul was born up the road in Castlebar hospital).

And One Last Thing….

Monday was Indigenous People’s Day, and it put us in mind of what The Smithsonian calls “The Unlikely, Enduring Friendship.”. The history between Ireland and the Choctaw Nation started when the latter sent aid to Ireland during the Great Famine in the 1840s. The gesture was never forgotten, and links have been maintained between the two nations ever since. The then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar visited the Choctaw people in Oklahoma in 2018, a vibrant schools program allows Choctaw kids to study in Ireland’s colleges, and in 2020 Ireland was finally able to pay back the Choctaw for their generosity by sending $2 million to the severely-impacted nation’s Covid-19 relief fund. Ní bhíonn an rath ach mar a mbíonn an cairdeas. There is no prosperity without friendship.

The Craic is brought to you by the lads from the Shift app. Shift is a social network for the Irish everywhere, launching in 2025. Check out Shift.irish… Yep, that’s the new domain name. You saw it here first!