So, we’re back open and the kettle is on!  After a frantic few days of fixing, painting, moving and meddling (along with the requisite moments of “what have we done?!” when we wondered if it would all come together), Dock Cafe is back and better than ever!

Thanks to the amazing volunteers who swapped coffee pots for paint pots for a few days and made it all happen:

And here it is – the new, improved, slightly yellower Dock Cafe, ready to open again:

And here it is within an hour of opening – as busy as ever!  (There’s about 25 extra seats in the new layout so plenty of space for everyone!)

As always the cafe is a work in progress – there’s a bit of work still to be done on our new ‘shipyard cranes’ – and a shelf for your cuppa to be added to our new “corner of magnificence” (the high stools overlooking our stunning views of the marina, SS Nomadic and the hills beyond – already my new favourite seat!)

So call in soon and soak up the atmosphere yourself!

And now that’s done (deep breath), the next challenge – within a few weeks – is to find creative and funky ways to transplant this:

– into Dock Market’s new home at the Odyssey pavilion.   Sure wouldn’t it be worse if life was boring and predictable?!

Dramatic announcements are like buses – you wait for ages and then two come along at once.

So, dramatic announcement no.1:
DOCK CAFE IS CLOSING

Don’t worry!  Stop weeping!  Pick yourself back up off the floor and rediscover your reason for existence.  The cafe is only closing for 3 days – Mon/Tues/Wed from 3rd-5th October – so we can do our annual refurbish/ refresh/ repaint/ remodel to keep the cafe as gorgeous as it can possibly be.

We have some new ideas we want to try with decoration and layout (here’s a clue: Goliath is involved) and we reckon we can create space for a few more seats without sacrificing the flow and space and cosy corners we all love.  I’m not sure words can actually express the buzz and business of a typical lunchtime in Dock Cafe these days – and every extra seating space we can create will allow a few more people to experience it!

Dramatic announcement no.2:
DOCK MARKET IS MOVING

Now this is a biggie.  Ever since it started as a glorified garden shed in Dock Cafe and then moved to its own unique, quirky space in Dock Market two years ago, our beloved handcrafted homemade market has been based here in the ARC apartments.  But we’ve recently been invited (scary/ exciting/ humbling/ amazing) to try holding the market in the pavilion area of the Odyssey – the bit you walk through from the Streat to W5.

What an opportunity!  So in true Dock Market style, our amazing team of brave marketeers are going to seize the opportunity with both hands.  The plan is to hold one more market – on Saturday 8th October – in our current space, as a way of saying farewell and thank you to a place where countless businesses were launched, talents were nurtured, friendships were born and a family emerged.  Don’t miss it!

And then from Saturday 22nd October, Dock Market will try its new home for size.  Don’t worry – the market will still be hand-made, unique, quirky, inherently ‘Docky’.  The rule will still be, “If you make it, you can sell it”.  And it will still be dog-friendly!  But now a whole new world will be able to experience the unbridled creativity of our fabulous market traders.

So we have a lot to celebrate!

Not quite so dramatic but still jolly nice announcement no.3:
IT’S ‘SUNDAY NIGHTS AT THE DOCK’ TIME!

First Sunday of the month, 6pm, Dock Cafe.  This Sunday night we’ll be worshipping with the Chaplains Collective Experiment (ooh, need a new name), spending some time in prayer, and saying farewell and thank you to the cafe in its current form before we start attacking it with paintbrushes on Monday morning.

Seeya there!

Seems a strange thing to say with the sun splitting the sky – but Summer is drawing to a close… Today most of our visitors in Dock Cafe were locals and regulars – so I thought it would be good to update you on our “customer geomapping project” (i.e. playing with push-pins) during the Summer

The big map beside the counter went up just over a month ago – along with more push-pins than we ever thought we could use.  Wrong!  There’s now a grand total of 5 push-pins left (so be quick if your home isn’t marked yet and you want to claim one of the last few!)

So, over the last couple of weeks, we have welcomed visitors from:

(in other words, pretty much everywhere)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, prize for the greatest concentration of pins goes to UK and Western Europe – followed by the United States:

Prize for the furthest-flung visitor I think goes to our guest from Stewart Island in New Zealand:

I’m pretty sure we’ve had visitors from every continent on the planet:

And the “Are you sure, or are you just mucking around” prize is jointly shared between the push-pin in Outer Siberia, and the one in Ostrov Ushakova (what do you mean you’ve never heard of it?  Top of the map, find Franz Josef Land and turn right)

If it does actually turn out that we’ve had visitors from such exotic climes, how awesome would that be!

The time: 6pm on Sunday 4th Sept
The place: A sofa in Dock Cafe
The command: BE THERE!

It’s the first Sunday of the month and time for our regular Sunday Nights at The Dock, and this week we’ve got a very special guest: David Gavaghan, the visionary leader who was at the helm of Titanic Quarter throughout the birth and growth of Dock Cafe and Dock Market.  He’ll be sharing his vision for the future of Belfast and dreaming some big dreams for the city… don’t miss it!

A funny thing about vision… sometimes it’s seen more clearly through fresh eyes, by people visiting, than by the sometime-weary gaze of the people who are living in the middle of it.  That was my experience recently reading an amazing blog called Nooks and Crannies of the Irish Coast – written by locals who decide to literally experience EVERY nook and cranny, every activity, attraction, and eatery that the Titanic Quarter can offer!

The whole series of blogs is brilliant and well worth a read – including the writers’ first ride on the Wee Tram – but the latest in the series – Coffee, Craic and a Close-knit Community – brings their TQ experiences to a close by reflecting on the whole area, and is just incredibly moving and describes (better than I ever could) the way vision is becoming reality on a daily basis in the TQ:

I was struck a number of times by the sense of community in the area. It seems as though every business is working together with the shared vision of placing Queen’s Island once again into the daily life of Belfast. One example of this was when we contacted T13 to see if their cafe was still running. They told us that it had unfortunately closed, but they made sure to point us in the direction of other cafes in the area. We have felt incredibly at home in TQ and it’s fantastic to see that Chris Bennett’s dream of a close-knit TQ community has been realised, not just in the Dock Cafe, but in the whole area in just a few short years.

Isn’t that awesome!  When you’re part of a process, sometimes it’s so refreshing to see your work from a new angle – and realise that, whatever the imperfections and challenges that stretch me and stress me day by day, the vision is starting to take hold… the rubber is hitting the road.

And just as I was about to post this blog, I checked the Dock Trip Advisor reviews again (and that’s the last time I’ll mention them for a while, promise!) and found this absolute beauty – which again sums up the entire raison d’etre of the Dock in new words and from a new perspective:

 

 

It is a period of civil partying.

Rebel Marketeers, striking from their hidden base in the ARC apartments, have won their second anniversary.  During the birthday, the Marketeers threw the ultimate shindig, the BIRTHDAY PARTY, with enough cake, celebrating, stormtroopers and sumptuous home-made treats to destroy an entire diet.

OK that’s probably enough trying to echo the Star Wars opening crawl… but it was amazing to see the Stormtroopers take over the TQ on Saturday as part of the fabulous birthday bash for our beloved Dock Market, which has now been showcasing fabulous home-made hand-crafted food, craft and art – as well as restoring peace and freedom to the galaxy (sorry) – for two glorious years.

One of their most brilliant, original and effective ideas was to make Dock Market dog-friendly (complete with its own ‘petiquette’) – so it was perfectly appropriate that the human-friendly birthday cake was accompanied by a dog-friendly version.  Cutting the doggie cake in the very appreciative company of two beautifully-behaved dogs was one of the highlights of my Dock life!

And of course – as always – the quality, imagination and craftsmanship of all the market stalls was a sight to behold:

It was great to meet a whole new bunch of people who made it for the first time in response to the Marketeers’ brilliant social media campaign – and to see lots of their “wow!” responses on the Dock Market Trip Advisor page.  Quotes to cherish: “full of charm”… “the cupcakes are amazing”… “full of colourful character and charm”… “unique and fun – hated saying goodbye!”

On the subject of Trip Advisor – I noticed today that a certain Honesty Box Cafe is at the top of the heap again on its own Dock Cafe Trip Advisor page – though since we’re not really a proper restaurant I expect that someone else will reclaim top spot soon!  But it is genuinely heartwarming to read that so many people found a warm welcome and a safe space in Dock Cafe and wrote a review to say Thanks.  More quotes to cherish:  “very intriguing”… “friendly and welcoming”… “a great atmosphere – so interesting and fun”… “fantastic concept”…

And I love this one – entitled “A loving ambience”, the review continues
If, as my wife and I were, you’re feeling foot-sore and weary after having walked rather too far, you need someone to gently ‘ take you by the hand ‘ advise you what food / drink is available, take your tray and bring you to a table. That’s what happened to us. Even before we’d entered, we sensed that this was a different kind of coffee shop…. And – as we were delighted to find – the volunteer staff are so welcoming. We left feeling that we’d been really cared for – and ready for still more walking / site-seeing.

Well done, that volunteer (it wasn’t me!!)

So make sure you call in to see what they’re all raving about – put the upcoming Dock Markets in your diary (2nd & 4th Saturday of every month) and get yourself down to the Dock for a cuppa ASAP!