Nearly anything new that opens in town is targeted at tourists.  What that means is that the city is catering less and less to the people who live here.  The services that people need to access to keep their lives functioning are being atomised out of the city.  The action is either taking place closer to their home or online.  With all the discourse, articles and conversations about loneliness epidemics; radicalisation; polarisation; the lack of social cohesion and rise in social fragmentation plus the amount of people turning to evangelical religion to feel like they belong to something, I think it’s fair that we can deduce that this atomisation isn’t a good thing.

So if we’re essentially stripping the services out of the city, making less and less reasons for Dubliners to come into the city, that’s going to put pressure on the local, independent service businesses in the city.  Correct?  Correct.

I’ve recently noticed some conversations online willing people to ‘rebel’ against getting their nails done.  Obviously as a nail bar owner I have a vested interest in the points being made!  However, I did want to listen with an open mind, without my business owner hat on and interrogate the why and where this push against having your nails done was coming from.  To do that, I had to track the journey of where painting your nails came from and why we do it to this day.