If you’re seeking to enhance your perspective of a city, you can’t go wrong with a good tour. But it really has to be a good tour. I’m not talking about the colourless, automated experiences that you get from most of the big monopolies of the industry these days, whose services you find on pamphlets at museum gift shops and pop up as the first advertisement on your web browser when you look up things to do on your holiday in Rome. Well-intentioned as they may be, these tours are often so tethered to the facts and logic of their region’s history that interest begins to wane among the less inquisitive majority of the audience. This is especially the case with a scripted storyline, where even the guide loses interest and starts to develop the mindless cadence of a dial-tone. Surviving purely on the grace of the product they are marketing, one can only equate the experience to that of watching a modern-day Rolling Stones concert. When a washed-up Jagger is mumbling into the microphone on a sold out death-bed tour, you’re not paying for the quality of the thing as much as the legend that it represents. Although there’s a time and place for this nostalgia – the same gravitational pull that brings tourists around the world to well-trodden tours of the Grand Canyon or the Cliffs of Moher – part of the beauty can be taken away by its commercialisation, and the sheer magnitude of its demand. Thus, a far more gratifying and authentic tour can be found on a path less taken. Anyone who knows anything about the guiding industry knows that it’s not about what you’re selling, but how you sell it. This all boils down to the guide themself. A quality guide – who is deeply familiar and enthusiastic about the grounds in question – can turn an ordinary commuter’s route into something as archaeologically rich as an ancient Roman ruin. It’s all in their ability to personalise the experience, and sell a good story.
This is exactly what happened during my experience with Secret Street Tours, a non-profit touring organisation that hires local Dubliners affected by the homelessness to provide tours around impoverished parts of the city. Noel Murray, the kind-hearted and personable guide in charge of my tour, imbued our amble of the Northside streets of Phibsborough with an infectious sense of pride and pathos for its history. As we quickly learned, these charming but beaten streets suffer a tragic history of systemic drug abuse, highlighted by the number of failed recovery centers that Murray identified. On numerous corners of the neighborhood, around the beautiful Garden of Remembrance and the famously spooky Black Church, Murray told personal stories of his own experiences cycling in and out of these well-intended havens for hope, only for them to become run-down due to interior drug abuse. The crux of the journey was marked by our entrance through the gates of Mountjoy Prison, where Murray spent 30 years in and out of its cells. Incarcerated for the first time when he was nineteen, he remarked disturbing anecdotes on the prison grounds and over occupied cells. At the same time, Murray regarded the facility in high esteem. As tough as it was behind the bars, there was a sense of comfort and community that was not offered to him on the streets, which had become a one way ticket to drug-abuse and profound hopelessness. Along with the aid of a priest who offered support during his recovery, Secret Street Tours has given meaning to Murray’s life as he navigates sobriety. His hard-learned experiences as a former convict turned local hero have equipped him with a natural penchant for delivering high quality and entertaining tours.
The tour ended at Blessington Street Park, where we were led down a lovely promenade, canopied by the leaves of great sycamore trees. Displayed on one of the knobby trunks, a photograph honored the life of a young man who had taken his life from its branches. Murray was acquainted with him, and offered a touching moment of silence to respect his old peer. Perhaps all too familiar with similarly fatalistic outlooks, he thanked God for his fortune of having made it out okay. The tour ended on a high note in which Murray recounted the epic story of his journey to New York when he was thirteen years old. You don’t have to hear it from me, but it started as an innocent day of playing hooky with his best mate in Dun Laoghaire, and, several unscathed security crossings later, a parent-less trip of a lifetime to the Big Apple. Murray hopes to parley this claim to fame into a more recent dream of being a taxi driver in Dublin. Whatever lucky passengers are gifted with the pleasure of his services are in for the ride of their lives!
