NYC-Dublin Portal Reopens with Limited Hours after Lewd Incidents Forced Shutdown

A sense of global connectedness between New York City and Dublin from the NYC portal installed about two weeks ago was disrupted by heightened raunchy behavior which led to a six-day shutdown before reopening earlier this week with new more limited hours and increased security.

The portal connecting NYC to Dublin initially went live on May 8, but was forced to shut down about a week later, on May 14, due to raunchy behavior on both the Dublin side and NYC side. The portal then reopened on May 19 with heighted security and restricted hours. The portal is in NYC’s Flatiron District at the junction of Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street. It connects via livestream to Dublin at the corner of North Earl Street and O’Connell Street, the city’s main street.

Dublin and New York City was coordinated by the Flatiron Nomad Partnership and the city.

The portal now has specific hours of operation for the coming weeks with the livestream running daily from 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.in New York and 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. in Dublin. Previously, it was a 24-hour livestream portal.

Previously, images circulated on social media of people on the Dublin side who flashed their bare bums, showed images of a plane crashing into one of the twin towers on 9/11 and displayed images of a swastika. In New York, an Only Fans model who posted a video on her Instagram page showed her flashing her breasts to the Dublin the New York Post reported.

“We were expecting some people to f*** it up,” Maggie McNabb, a New Yorker said on May 20. “People will be people — it’s New York City.”

The raunchy behavior display had affected people who genuinely wanted to make a connection with those on the other side of the portal. Lark Phillips had set up a “pups on a portal” page for kids with cancer to see dogs on the other side of the portal.

“I was like — can y’all put your swimsuits away,” Phillips said in response to the raunchy material displayed, who told Straus News, on May 20. “I got kids that are trying to see the dogs.”

Phillips was also bummed that the raunchy behavior had to interfere with cutting the livestream hours, as it was more convenient for her to walk the dogs late at night.

“I’m kind of bummed it’s not open late at night, because I like walking the dogs late at night, and it would have been fun,” Phillips told Straus News on May 20.

Other visitors of the portal in NYC found the restrictions put in place rewarding.

“It’s good that there are security guards now monitoring everything, and there are time restrictions for the livestream — it makes it safer,” Kacim Hamidi, a tourist from Algeria visiting New York City, who has seen the chaos on social media, told Straus News on May 20. “People have been very disrespectful.”

People behaved themselves on May 13 when Straus News first visited the portal in New York City, nonetheless Flatiron Nomad Partnership was forced to shut down the portal a day later after the social media photos of the Only Fans model circulated.

The Dublin City Council decided to shut down the portal due to “inappropriate behavior by a small minority of people,” on May 14.

The Flatiron Nomad Partnership has taken steps to limit instances implemented a “proximity-based solution,” to prevent people from stepping on the portals and holding up phones to the camera lens.

The Portal has attracted tens of thousands of visitors and garnered nearly two billion online impressions, in less than a week of the operation. The overwhelming majority of people who have visited the Portal sculptures have experienced the sense of joy and connectedness that these works of public art invite people to have, according to a statement released from the Flatiron Nomad Partnership.