Local not-so-proud

Every city, town and metropolis has their own distinctive landmarks of a sort, where to plan meetings. In Dublin centre, they have this thing called The Spire and for 4 million euroes Dublin got their share of local people sharing their opinions. International public may be aware of the statue as the tallest sculpture in the world, but locals sometimes define it as "The Needle Statue Of The Drug Capital Of The World", "Far From Grand", "Just The Needle" and they also use some other names that you shouldn't use for someone or something you like.

If you want to make international comparisons, you should take The Eiffel Tower as a competition. Eiffel Tower was meant to be the highest building in the world and stay that way forever. The Spire had similar meanings when they started building the tallest sculpture in the world in a city of documented history close to 2000 years.

Also Eiffel Tower is a world famous building with top engineering involved. The Spire may have some of that. Considering that 21st century's engineering is prone to be hidden away from plain sight, The Spire may have had just wrong timing. It has a mass dampener to counteract the sway and the stainless steel is modified to reflect light smoothly, but you cannot actually see the technology. Oh, and The Spire had something to do polishing the central too.

O'Connell street, where the Spire is located, had trees old as century harvested, local shops were prohibited to use plastic signs (more like anything regarded as a cheap looking) to attract customers and the traffic lanes we're simplified.

The Spire was sold to the great public as a self-cleaning sculpture, but for some reason it has 200 000 euro maintenance budget. But it is not unusual that politicians may redefine the meaning of words. The Spire was self-cleaning before it was built and afterwards it was just illogical to believe the stainless steel tourist attraction would clean itself (quote is from nowpublic.com's article "Cleaning The World's Tallest Sculpture Is An Expensive Process").