'Inappropriate behaviour': Dublin disables new 'Portal' link with NYC
Ireland has turned off its newest landmark, a screen allowing people in New York and Dublin to see each other, after individuals were seen flashing body parts, apparently taking drugs and showing an image of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center.
Less than a week after being turned on, Dublin City Council said it would temporarily disable the so-called "Portal" as it sought implement "technical solutions" to solve what it described as "inappropriate behaviour."
Each fitted with a small camera, the pair of round screens have been streaming live street footage from one city to the other since May 8.
Footage shared on social media shows passers-by in the US being subjected to a photo of the World Trade Center aflame during the September 11, 2001 attacks, as well as of Dubliners mooning at and "grinding" against the portal, while others in view appeared to be drunk or taking drugs.
The landmark's website described Dublin - where street violence last year prompted the US embassy to warn tourists to be careful while visiting - as "a beacon of innovation and charm."
Dublin and New York have a history of people-to-people ties, in large part because of high levels of emigration from Ireland throughout the 19th century, when it was ruled by Britain, as well as in the 1950s and 1980s.
Dublin’s half of the video link was placed in the city centre, giving a view of O’Connell Street, Europe’s widest thoroughfare, while New York’s is at Broadway, Fifth Avenue, and 23rd Street, next to the landmark Flatiron Building.
Both Portal videos are to remain connected until autumn this year, while Dublin was to be linked in the meantime to portals in Brazil, Lithuania and Poland, the homelands of tens of thousands of recent immigrants to Ireland.
