Singer-songwriter Paddy Hanna recently released his latest single New York Sidewalk, his first new music since his widely acclaimed third album The Hill in 2020.
Here, he talks us through his relationship with Howth and his favourite spots in what he calls the "evergreen" city of Dublin.
Home is...
I live in Howth with my wife Jilly, our newborn daughter Rosie and our dog Cuppy, near Balscadden Bay. We're two very solitary people – we love each other's company and we tend to just have a quaint time in Howth, enjoying the sea air.
I need a bit of fog in my life, I need mist. The seaside is a good place for mist, it brings a kind of eerie comfort.
How I get around the city:
I do have to get the DART into town, but if I'm in town I will always go by foot. Rarely, I might get a little city bike or something, but for the most part I love to walk.
If I have to get the DART to Pearse or to Connolly, I'll go to Clontarf. I like to walk that little bit extra, just to soak in the city. I think that Dublin is an evergreen city. Its beauty shifts with the seasons.
The best place in the city for a date:
It was very important that we [Paddy and his wife Jilly] discussed this one. She was very quick to say the IFI – particularly around October when the Horrorthon is on.
If we are having a cinema date, which was fairly often pre-pandemic and pre-child, it's usually pizza before a movie. So that's either Sano, Forno 500 or Pi, and then we take in a film.
And you can share a bottle of wine while watching the movie. I mean, how European is that?
My favourite pub in the city:
Neary's, if you're starting off and you want to just have a couple of pints and a lovely conversation to catch up. I love that bar's commitment to being Neary's. It's like the pub on a Victorian steamboat. The staff wear dickie bows, for the love of God!
I find it to be distinctly Irish, but it has a sort of continental feel to it as well. If I were bringing a friend and the plan was to go on a crawl, that's where I'd start the crawl. And the Guinness there is pretty spot-on.
My favourite restaurant in Dublin:
The Good World on George's Street, and in particular the dim sum. That's somewhere that I've gone with my family since I was in short pants, as they say. Much like Neary's, it is untouched by time.
The day that some fecker decides, 'We need to give this place a modern revamp' is the day Dublin loses its soul. The Good World cannot change, it has to remain the same!
My go-to café or coffee shop:
Tuck, you'll find it in Howth near the East Pier. It's a small, independently run coffee shop that sits right next to a big chain coffee shop that we need not mention the name of.
The coffee is delicious, they use 3FE, you can get yourself some nice ice cream, and you can get some pleasant little snacks for yourself and good sandwiches too.
I will pick the coffee shop where the people are incredibly nice over the place where they are not. I find them to be a very welcoming bunch, and I like to give them my custom.
Where I get my exercise:
I like to go for runs on the Burrow Beach when the tide is on its way out. Usually, the sand is pretty stiff, but the further you get into it, the sand can get quite soft and that's when you're giving your ankles and calves a fair workout.
When the tide is fully out, it's an amazing thing. You can run towards the sea and then look back and see everything else in the distance. It's nothing but you and an expanse of sand. It's a great way to do some thinking and also to do some listening. I've had many eureka moments while just running on the sands of the Burrow Beach.
My favourite shops:
I have a blood-curdling fear of changing room mirrors, but there's one place where the mirror was flattering: Massimo Dutti.
I was spoiling myself for my wedding, and I got a lovely pair of slacks and a really nice grey polo neck and the mirror was actually forgiving. I actually thought 'Hey, this is fine!'. So I will give Massimo Dutti on Grafton Street credit for its lovely polo necks, and for its flattering mirrors.
My favourite place for a haircut:
When the pandemic ended, the first haircut I got was in The Barber's Room, just across from Trinity. Obviously I'm not speaking as an expert here, but they did a really lovely job and I was very, very happy with the results.
They made me feel beautiful again. Isn't it nice to feel beautiful again?
My favourite place in Dublin to get away from it all:
The Bog of Frogs. In Howth, there's a secret area just behind the Beann Eadair GAA Club. It's very out of the way, so you need to put on your hiking boots to get up there.
It's a secluded bog, sort of forest, that's amazing for foraging. It has ample wild garlic during wild garlic season. And very regularly, my wife and I will go up there and just get lost in the mystery of the forest.
I wouldn't consider myself to be necessarily a green-thumbed individual, or indeed someone who was quite hippyish, but I do like a bit of mysterious forest from time to time.
So we'll go there, we'll hang on some branches, we'll go looking for some edible little things to pick and just enjoy the solitude of it.
My favourite place to let my hair down:
Look, even when I was of the age where the nightclub was the place to be, I did not like nightclubs. I don't tend to like places where you speak with your body; I like conversation. So maybe I've always been a curmudgeonly type, but in terms of letting my hair down, I tend to just go with the crowd.
Normally, if I do stay late somewhere, it's a venue where I've played, and very often that's the Workman's or Whelan's. If it's a weekday, the Hacienda is pretty good as well. But I don't tend to be Mr Late Nights.
The last live event I went to:
I'm pretty sure it was the Workman's to see Badhands. He played lovely piano on the new single that we have. The show was great, very good fun. It was all maskless and full – it was the end of October, start of November.
It was a great night, but I was kind of emotionally unprepared for all the people that were there. It was like, 'Oh, here's 50 people, all of whom you haven't seen in two years - go!'. It's what I imagine a school reunion would be like, but in fast forward like it was a Benny Hill school reunion.
Dublin's best kept secret:
There is a place in Howth that we call The Secret Path. Generally, when people come to Howth to walk, they'll do the peninsula walk. And when you walk up Balscadden Road towards that walk, there is a secret path that only a select few people know about.
This path brings you in a different direction to the Howth walk – it brings you the past stables with horses and alpacas and things. There is also a spooky abandoned house.
So that is a literal best kept secret, because in order for you to know about it, I would have to kill you. We cannot reveal the whereabouts of The Secret Path!
