Willie Quinn

Grab your old spice and brylcreem and get ready to dance around your handbag on the sticky floors we`re off to visit some Dublin nightclubs of the 1970s to the 1990s. In the 1970s, Dublin nightlife operated under the bizarre conceit that gargle could not be served late unless accompanied by a “substantial meal”. Thus was born the chicken-in-a-basket era, a ritual so entrenched it barely registered as absurd at the time. So in Catholic Ireland were not going out clubbing, you were dining. The wine was often undrinkable, the food barely edible, but the dancefloor made up for it. Clubs were not yet about the glorified playlists called DJs. They were about socialising and getting the shift during the slow set at the end of the night. A venue that embodied this world was Zhivago. Opened in the spring of 1970, its slogan, “Zhivago, where love stories begin,” was everywhere, plastered across cinema screens and newspaper ads. It was a nice way of saying “maybe you`ll get your hole?”Loosely inspired by the film Doctor Zhivago, it had a faux-Russian décor, and three separate floors. One floor was reserved for slow sets, and it was there that countless courtships were formalised without the need for leaving room for the holy spirit for three minutes at a time. Zhivagos was the haunt of some of the showband crowd, but we`ll visit the ballrooms of romance proper on another DTM trip. It was also the first club in Dublin to play James Brown’s Sex Machine, a moment remembered with near-mythic reverence by those who were there. Live acts were common, including The Chips, featuring a young Linda Martin. But another legendary presence there was not on the dance floor but guarding the doors. Security was headed by Jim “Lugs” Branigan, he gets his own trip soon in the DTM but I couldnt leave him out here! Lets stall it now to Tamangos (where none of my gang would go) located in the White Sands Hotel in Portmarnock. Its evocative name suggested the exotic amid the grey suburban sprawls. Inside, it delivered a kind of day-glo glamour. In its heyday, Tamangos was thick with Irish international footballers, RTÉ personalities (before any gobshite whose talent consisted of a makeup tutorial account counted as a "celebrity") and dipso minor politicians. Mohair suits, ozone layer fatal hair, Deirdre Barlowe glasses were the dress code. Even legendary pirate station Sunshine Radio broadcast from there sometimes. Sunday nights were legendary, and so were the underage discos on Saturday afternoons. Tamangos endured, reinventing itself repeatedly and surviving well into the 2010s. Now we fly to St. Margaret’s Road in Finglas to beseige The Castle nightclub. Unlike the others this was an unapologeticly local venue to get a jar and a mot when the pubs closed at 11:00PM, this is where people went. Its reputation was rough, though most of the stories were the urban legends of pearl clutchers and taxi drivers who never darkened its nicotine and vodka impregnated walls. It was an ear ache inducin spawning ground where lads with anaemic bumfluff and leather jackets bumped uglies with and birds with NFL level shoulder pads fueled by pints of Harp. Good clean fun once you can convince the blokes you know someone they know who will burst them if they try and loaf you. And in my personal experience its places like here that time travellers and aliens go for the craic. Now lets segway to the Pod in Harcourt Street, which was the quintessential "modern" club venue by the 1990s. Designed by Ron Arad, The Pod was an architectural statement before it was a nightclub. Shiny and industrial, though not in a way I could stomach, it brought homogenised international design and became a kind of sterile status symbol for weekend cocaine cowboys and youngones more fond of examining their visages in every reflective surface instead of dancing. At its peak it was named the best club in Europe, which unsurprisingly to noone, also signalled its decline in relevance.