A Pictoral Tour of Bloomsday 2000



Bloomsday - a kind of traveling theater where both audience and performers move from predetermined site to predetermined site around the city, reading (and listening to) chapters of James Joyce's Ulysses. This year we went to most of them, and what follows are some snap shots and impressions.

8:15 am -- El Dolce Cafe -- Bloomfield





We started out in Bloomfield (how appropriate!) at El Dolce Cafe. So, there are no Irish bars in Bloomfield. We ordered breakfast of coffee and muffin, and listened to the start of Bloom's day as he fixed tea for his wife Mollie, fetched the mail, went downstreet to buy a kidney which he cooked and ate; fed the cat, visited the outhouse for a read and a --. Yes, a very accessible section, we can relate to all of it except, perhap, the kidney.
10:00 am Central Catholic High School - Oakland





We went on to Central Catholic and sat on the steps, listening, while Stephen Dedalus (the secondary character of the book) lectures his students and then suffers a lecture at the hands (or mouth) of the headmaster while waiting for his pay.
11:30 am - Homewood Cemetery - Point Breeze





Our friends joined us at the cemetery for the story of the carriage ride to Glasnevin Cemetery accompanying Paddy Digman's corpse to the grave. This is my favorite site for all of Bloomsday, so green and peaceful. It is the perfect site - and reading - for a newcomer to Bloomsday to try.
1:00 pm - Murphy's Tap Room - Edgewood





We all went together to Murphy's Tap Room in Edgewood where we had sandwiches and beer, and listened to the reader describe Bloom's lunch of sandwiches - sliced thin - while the waitress passed around thin strips of ham and gorgonzola sandwiches.
3:30 pm - Carnegie Library - Gillespie Room - Oakland





Only Bob remained with us as we continued on to the Carnegie Library to listen to the section where Stephen Dedalus and Buck Mulligan discuss Shakespeare with the Quaker Librarian. This section is more difficult to follow - you have to know your Shakespeare (along with the time and tenor of Joyce's Dublin). I checked out of the reading and checked out a copy of "Joyce of Cooking".
5:30 pm - Mulhaney's Harp and Fiddle - Strip District





Bob left, but we continued to Mullaney's Harp and Fiddle in the Strip district where we ordered our dinner of fish and chips and ale while trying to follow a reading from "Cyclops" of the "citizen's" flights of verbiage deriding politics, religion and Leopold Bloom.
Bloomsday ended at the City Book Store, in South Side, with readings from "Nausicaa" and "Penelope". We had to save something for next year -- and you'll have to wait 'til then for pictures from that site and reading.

A link to Homer James's website which links to all other sites concerning James Joyce.

A short film taken at Bloomsday, 2006