Riots in connection with the Love Ulster Parade, feb 25th 2006I've been in Ireland for 5 months, and I see myself as somebody who watches the news, and tries to keep in touch with the internal affairs of the country I am in. This march however, completely slipped my notice, I hadn't heard anything about it. So yesterday around 2 o'clock I went on my way downtown, taking the usual route along Grand Canal Street, and reached the bend at Fenian Street and Merrion Square. 
Garda everywhere, people standing around looking, but not a sign of any protesters or anything. They were just expecting. I snapped a photo of them standing there waiting, and wondered what it was all about (hooligans related to the rugby match on Sunday came to mind, although I had never heard of rugby hooligans).
As I continued down Lincoln Place towards Leinster St South and Nassau Street, I could hear crowd roars, and people coming against me in the opposite direction was covering their faces with scarfs and hoodies. I got down Lincoln Place a little longer, and saw the fire from the burning car.
People cheering on the fire, saying 'yeaah', when a tire popped, and at the same time throwing bottles and chairs at pretty much anything around. I took a couple of photos while talking to a bloke standing next to me.
I asked him what was going on, and the second I heard him say loyalists, parade, and O'Connell Street in the same sentence, I understood what it was about, and I also understood the significance of the situation, and that I needed to get out of there, as things could get hairy. So I turned around and started walking, just as the crowd from the burning car started moving towards Merrion Square. One kid threw a bottle at some gardaí behind the iron gate in the bend on Lincoln Place, and several of them were wielding aluminium chairs, picked up from one of the caffés along the route I assume. I wanted too shot some more photos of the whole thing, but looking at these guys, I could tell they wouldn't be too pleased with ending up on my memory card, so I kept my camphone in my pocket. I needed to get out of there, quick-fast if I were not to end up between rioters and garda, and walked back the way I had arrived from, down Fenian Street, and I think the crowd turned down Westland Row, as Gardaí had all other options sealed off pretty well. 
A couple of hours later, I walked back to Nassau Street, shot some photos, and did the errands I originally went in to town to do. The remaining pictures on this page is taken on that second trip to the city centre, when everything had died down.
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