stiletto in the ghetto

Popular expression in Dublin, Ireland for the piece of commemorative art set up to mark the passing of the second millennium CE: a steel spike approximately 400 feet high, rising out of a traffic island in the centre of the dual thoroughfare of O'Connell Street on the north bank of the Liffey. It is circular in cross section, ten feet across at the base and decorated near street level with wavy frosted/reflective shapes, tapering to about ten inches at the tip, lit with a ring of red lights halfway up and a stream of white ones at the top. It takes the place of a removed statue of the figure of Anna Livia (female symbol of the River Liffey) in a fountain, previously known as the "floozie in the jacuzzi." The Spike is also known as the Spike on the Dike and/or the Stiffey on the Liffey. It is popularly supposed to be a monument to the street's night-time heroin addicts, although an alternative explanation would be that it is a symbolic memo spike for Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Bertie Aherne's hotel bills. In case anyone tries flying a jetliner into it a la 9/11, it is purely a metal spike, not an inhabited building; there isn't even a public elevator and observation deck like there is on the Eiffel Tower, or anything. Still, in a certain summer evening light it can have a certain surreal charm.