Scott Dewees, a retired film location scout and a native of Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, first came to Belfast in 1987. He was 33. It was wet. There was a big sign on Belfast City Hall declaring: "Belfast Says No."
Back then, the arguments were about the Anglo-Irish Agreement. There were a lot of angry people about, and a lot of violence: “I couldn’t wait to get out of the place. But it was an experience,” he recalls.
Today, however, he is no longer a visitor. He lives there in a penthouse apartment overlooking the Titanic Quarter, with views of Belfast Lough, Harland & Wolff's Samson and Goliath cranes and the broad back of Black Mountain.
Currently he is one of 1,000 people who call the Titanic Quarter home. He is familiar with all the stories about the ill-fated liner that gave the development its name: “Yeah, yeah, I know what they always say here, ‘it was all right when it left Belfast’.”
Frequently abbreviated to "the TQ", Dewees came to Belfast in March 2011 with his friend Bernadette Caulfield, an executive producer on Game of Thrones. "She was a bit iffy about going to Belfast, so I came with her to help her to set up."
He never left. Now 62, Dewees is buying a penthouse beside the one he and Caulfield share. The dollar strengthening against sterling post-Brexit means he has “saved a bunch of money” on the deal: “I don’t want to say thank God for Brexit, but every cloud has a silver lining.”
Caulfield "works seven days a week, 12-15-hour days" when she is Belfast for filming of Game of Thrones. "She does not get Belfast as much as I do, but she loves it," says Dewees, who is of Dutch stock and has no Irish background.
“Belfast is a city in a country in a renaissance; what better place to be in than a city coming out of its civil war; it’s a wonderful place; all of my friends like it a lot, they can see why I am here,” he says.
Busy social life
He has a busy social life and even has a local in the city centre. "I go to McHugh's near the Albert Clock and have my corner where I sit. I tried Guinness the first year I was here but I put some weight on me, so now I have gin and slim, that's my drink. Everyone knows me there. My American friends come and say this is my Cheers."
Dewees feels he has a good grip on whatever is the essence of Belfast, particularly because he does not share the Troubles-related antipathy found among so many in the Republic: “I don’t have the personal baggage some in the South have; I just took Belfast as I found it.”
As a liberal Californian, he opposed Donald Trump and voted for Clinton. The decision of some of his friends back home to vote for Trump left him "stunned", he says. "I picked a good time to leave the United States. " Some of his other friends may join him.
However the local accent still stumps him sometimes, especially the habit of substituting "i" for "o", as in, "I can tell you right nigh…" as Gerry Adams might say.
Neither can he quite figure why “New-town-ards is Newt’nards”. Neither has he come to terms with local eating habits: “You don’t put enough meat in your sandwiches . But I’ve stopped whingeing about it.”
Otherwise, life is all good, he tells The Irish Times. "I love the smallness of Belfast, and the people. I just do. I have made friends, and some of them are now life-long friends."
Thinking about US presidents, he remembers John F Kennedy's 1963 address in Berlin. With just a little self-mockery, he says: "I am a Belfaster."
That includes the city’s habit of black humour. “I didn’t move here for the politics, I moved here for the gun control.”
