This snap shot just about sums up my impressions of Belfast, (Fear, Pride, Wet, Hazy, Divided, Undercover, No Surrender.) Sandy Row is situated in south Belfast, beginning at the edge of the city centre, close to the Europa Hotel. The road runs south from the Boyne Bridge (formerly the Saltwater Bridge) over the old Dublin railway line beside Great Victoria Street station, then crosses the Donegall Road and ends at the bottom of the Lisburn Road. During The Troubles, the area had a strong Ulster Defence Association (UDA, paramilitary) presence. Sandy Row is part of the UDA South Belfast Brigade, commanded for many years by the late John McMichael and currently by Jackie McDonald. In December 1972, senior UDA member Ernie Elliott was shot dead outside a Sandy Row club by a fellow UDA man after a drunken brawl. On 7 February 1973, Brian Douglas, a Protestant fireman from Sailortown was shot to death by the UDA whilst fighting a fire caused by street disturbances in Bradbury Place. Two Protestant civilian men were killed on 30 March 1974 in a no-warning bomb attack carried out by an unknown republican paramilitary group against the Crescent Bar. On 24 July 1974, Anne Ogilby, a 31-year-old Protestant single mother of four, was savagely beaten to death with bricks and sticks inside the disused Warwick's bakery in Hunter Street by two teenagers from the Sandy Row women's UDA unit, commanded by Elizabeth "Lily" Douglas. Ogilby's six-year-old daughter listened to her mother's screams outside the door whilst loud disco music was playing inside. Ogilby had been "sentenced to death" at a kangaroo court presided over by eight UDA women after it was discovered she was having an affair with a UDA man, who was married to one of the unit's members. She had also made defamatory remarks about her lover's wife. On 30 January 1976, the Provisional IRA exploded a car bomb outside the Klondyke Bar on the corner of McAdam Street. John Smiley, a middle-aged Protestant civilian was killed outright in the blast. Many people inside the pub suffered serious injuries including a barmaid who lost an eye. Less than two years before the attack, the Klondyke Bar was the subject of a photographic essay by Bill Kirk in a series of photographs taken in Sandy Row. The Klondyke had been built in 1872. In the same year of the Klondyke bombing, an 18-year-old Catholic girl had her throat slit behind a Sandy Row pub by loyalist paramilitaries after she had been discovered drinking inside with Protestant friends. Sandy Row UDA members also launched a series of attacks on nearby Durham Street, a mainly Catholic area between Sandy Row and the Falls Road, in the early 1970s with four Catholics killed in the area, including 16 year old Bernard McErlain, in late March-April 1973. Thomas Vance, one of the 18 British soldiers killed in the Warrenpoint ambush, was a native of Sandy Row. In October 2011, a bomb was discovered on a patch of ground at Bradbury Place, which caused a security alert resulting in the evacuation of homes, bars, and businesses in the area. Army bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion on the device. The large UDA/Ulster Freedom Fighters mural was one of many loyalist murals found in Sandy Row; it could be seen from the northern end of the street. The mural was supposed to mirror the Free Derry Corner republican mural. It was announced in June 2012 that the mural would be painted over with another showing William of Orange. The announcement was made by Jackie McDonald following a year of talks with residents and business leaders, some of whom claimed that the presence of the mural was dissuading other businesses from settling in office blocks nearby. It was removed on 25 June and replaced with the mural depicting William of Orange. Have a nice day