Dublin Might Start Charging You to Charge

Local News

The Festival's just five days out, so I figured I’d ask a few people who go every year what actually keeps them coming back. Funny enough, barely anyone brought up the headliners.

What came up instead were the small, repeatable things — blankets spread out in front of whichever stage catches their eye, a Guinness by early afternoon, kids running around in green they picked out themselves. The Celtic Marketplace came up a lot too, people setting aside real time to wander through vendors selling handcrafted jewelry, artwork, and Irish goods you won't find anywhere else in town.

A few people specifically flagged the sheep herding demonstrations as something not to skip. Someone even said it sounds like an odd thing to get excited about until you've actually seen one — it's turned into one of those quiet, beloved parts of the Festival that doesn't get much attention but somehow is many kids' favorite.

If you're planning your weekend, worth building it around a few of these instead of just chasing the big acts.

That being said, Visit Dublin published a great list of 39 things to do at the Festival here.

Local News

There's a coffee setup that shows up around Dublin all summer — the pool during swim meets, the Fourth of July parade, the Dublin Market at Bridge Park — and there's a real reason behind the name people see there.

Clover Coffee is named after the four-leaf clover, and the founders — Krista Winner, Dana Bruggeman, Megan Temple, and Emily Moser — picked it on purpose. A four-leaf clover grows in the same field as every three-leaf one around it, same sun, same soil. It's not better or worse. Just different. That's the whole idea behind the business.

The four of them came to this from different directions, but they'd all either raised kids with different abilities or worked with that population professionally, and they kept running into the same problem: real employment opportunities for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are hard to come by. About 80% of people in that group are unemployed. So Clover Coffee exists to be one of the places that hires them, for real jobs with real purpose behind them.

If you're planning a business event or a private gathering, they'll also come brew for you directly — just go to their website to book them.

Local News

Did you know Dublin's public EV chargers have been free since the very first one went in at the Rec Center back in 2012? No fee, ever, at any of them — the library, City Hall, the Darby lot downtown, all of it. That might not last much longer.

If you've spent any time in a Dublin Facebook group, you've probably seen part of the reason why. People keep complaining about cars sitting fully charged in a spot for an hour or more while someone else circles the lot waiting to plug in. Turns out that's backed up by the city's own numbers, not just annoyed drivers.

Towards the end of last year, the city wrapped up a full study of its EV charging network, and one of the recommendations for this year and next is to actually start charging for it — 26 cents per kilowatt-hour at the regular chargers, 40 cents at the fast ones. Nothing's been voted on yet, so there's no date to circle on the calendar. But the city's own report treats this as a near-term move, not a someday one.

Part of it is demand — usage has roughly doubled over the past year, and Dublin's chargers stay busier than the national average across the board. But part of it is specifically the sitting-there problem. A real chunk of charging sessions in the city's data stay plugged in well past the point the car's actually full. A small fee for lingering once you're done tends to get people moving.

If you've been thinking about going electric, this is worth factoring in — free public charging in Dublin has been a real perk, and it might not stay that way.