History does repeat itself. Sort of. One hundred years ago, as Brooklyn hitched itself to Manhattan - helped along by the world's largest wedding ring, the Brooklyn Bridge - the Irish who literally filled some streets of the new city could quite correctly be described as "new".
A decade earlier, as land agitation and home rule fever gripped Ireland, there had been a sudden wave of emigrants to America over and above the steady annual stream. It had been prompted in part by a series of poor harvests in the 1870s.
The oil crisis of the 1970s helped spur much the same thing in the 1980s. A sudden flight from the old sod, which began around 1983, has resulted, 15 years later, in a firmly established New York Irish community clearly evident to even the most neutral observer as the self-styled "capital of the world" prepares to enter its second century of wedded restlessness.
The new Irish of 1898 were a busy lot. There were jobs galore in New York, many of them in the grip of the great Irish political patronage machine. Alongside this economic largesse there was also a growing Irish cultural renaissance, evident on both sides of the Atlantic, and fueled by emerging names such as Yeats, Synge and Shaw. A century later, try Heaney, Friel, McCourt . . . One hundred years ago, the growing new city was also agitated over the cause of Irish independence. Fenian John Devoy was one of the more prominent nationalist figures spurred on by the still fresh nightmares spawned by famine, crushed rebellion and land agitation. On top of all this, there was the 100th anniversary of the 1798 Rebellion. The New York St Patrick's Day Parade organisers, never ones to drop tradition lightly, even relaxed the ban on floats in the parade to allow a couple to rumble along Fifth Avenue in memory of 1898's patriotic dead.
Yes, New York in 1898 was a helluva town. And an interesting place to be Irish - if you were making a buck.
New York in 1998 is still a helluva town. The Bronx is up, the Battery down and being Irish can be a big plus on the old CV. But there remains the burden of great expectation.
Today's "new Irish" might have only themselves to blame for the chest-thumping consequences of being the "best educated," most hip generation to ever forsake Erin's shores and storm the ramparts of the still almost new world. New York's present crop of Irish - Catholic, Protestant, dissenter, gay and straight - have succeeded quite brilliantly in shedding the shackles of a mere few years ago while facing into the daily storm that constitutes making a living in this biggest of apples.
Most of them freshly remember the time when they watched from the wings as a small group of fellow exile agitators and their American political allies battered on the doors of Reagan-era Washington in search of comfort, joy and blessed visas. The 1980s arrivals who are now going for broke in the 1990s were greeted then by the consequences of a gap in the Irish immigration story, one that was not of their making.
Between the Irish immigrant wave of the 1950s and the 1980s landfalls, US immigration law had taken an about-turn in favour of family reunification. The Irish, generally young and single, didn't fit the profile of the typical 1980s arrival.
From the ooze of illegality and frustrated dreams, however, emerged the Irish Immigration Reform Movement, a grassroots lobbying group that could invoke, in those with the longest memories, an air of old Tammany: banners, passion and the connections to get a fix in. The fix went in and out spewed thousands of Donnelly and Morrison visas.
Over the past few years, those lottery lifebelts have been put to good use. The "new Irish," once released from the bondage of undocumented life on the fringes, threw themselves into New York's unique daily grind with gusto. It would all seem to be a recipe for a happily-ever-after ending, the good life in America and holidays back in the land of the Celtic Tiger, where further efforts can be made to persuade the doubting mammy that 3,000 miles of seawater is no big deal at all.
It isn't and it is. Therein lies the new and unexpected dilemma for the new Irish. No matter what way you look at it, even if Ireland is merely the click of a computer key away, or a few hours out of Kennedy, it is still "away". The new Irish, and those who have taken the next step to becoming the new Irish Americans, are the first to be presented in large numbers with an intriguing possibility dished out by the twin engines of economic advance and advanced technology. It is now possible to re-emigrate "home" while, in some cases, never even fully forsaking New York. There are not a few New York Irish who have returned to Ireland while leaving a business up and running in Queens, the Bronx or its technically suburban and increasingly green neighbour, Yonkers. The spur is often comparative economic equilibrium, a novel concept in the context of Ireland and the US. For some, going back is promoted by the arrival in the world of children, little Yanks, and the belief that they will grow up better educated and somehow less materialistic in the old country.
This latest twist on the great New York Irish story is without precedent. Borders, the ocean and psychological notions of dislocation have been shunted aside. There is a great restlessness abroad as New York and cities such as Dublin almost become, in the words of Irish American writer Pete Hamill, "suburbs of each other".
One of the successful new Irish New Yorkers walked into the office the other day. He's heading back to Ireland to get married and start a family after mining the coalface here for a number of years. He's done well for himself because he can make a computer work again. The Greeks used to put people like him atop Olympus.
Was he not worried about the soaring property prices back home? He rummaged in his briefcase and pulled out a scroll. It was an architect's design for a large house which will be built for his ex-exile family in the plush Meath countryside. Many Irish in America have long complained of the myth of the returning Irish Yank. "Sure you're all millionaires over there!" That's quite a reputation to live up to, especially when, for most Irish New Yorkers, daily life is a matter of sprinting to stand still.
But, for more than just a few, reality is now beginning to catch up with that myth and a terrible new burden has been born. You're only really "making it" in America when you can afford to come back "home".
Next thing, making it will be having two homes - one here, one there - and a life spent as a glorified transatlantic commuter. The pioneers of such a lifestyle are already fast at it. There are moments, indeed, when the thought of life in the New York of 1898 seems to retain a most idyllic appeal, blessed as it was with the ironic peace granted the immigrant soul by a one-way ticket. But that was then, and this is definitely the new Irish now.
Dublin-born Ray O'Hanlon emigrated to New York in 1987. He is senior editor of the weekly Irish Echo and author of The New Irish Americans, published by Roberts Rinehart