Doyles, sitting there quietly opposite Trinity, it took me about eighteen months of living in Dublin to realise the place existed, the wonder of discovering a house party full of particularly drunk Trinity students. Being drunk, that can be a great thing. Being sober, it can be disconcerting. Being stoned out of your bin, knackered and sleep walking, after six hours of meetings, it can be horrifying, fascinating and somewhat exhilarating but only if being snide is your thing. So some how we keep finding ourselves back there. There have been nights there where intoxicated with the glee of drunken pranksterism we've pilfered drunks galore, ran around pretending to chaw our jaws shouting 'woo....woooo' at timid looking types in an effort to get them dancing, we've swung from the lights (briefly), instigated dance floor sit-downs for 'one more choon (again briefly), found ourselves in such paralytic states of cider intoxication that drinking cans in public there was a sound idea and to be preached to all and sundry. Doyles is fun, but like most places in Dublin, it's intoxication rather than the venue that creates the atmosphere and all in all that means an anti social behavioural sort of night. So the promises have been made again, never to return. It reminds me of how three years ago, a few of us made a pledge after many nights of enduring nu-metal tripe in Fibbers that we would never return.

We returned about twice, pissed out of our heads of course and the victim of an old friends reluctance to go anywhere else. Past the surliest bouncers in the world, into that cavern of a club to be glared at by handfuls of teenagers all competing for a place in the most pissed off teenager in the world championship. It was real, 'fuck you I won't clean up my bedroom tantrums left right and centre on the dance floor, as angry Goths whipped each other with whirling hair and splashed sweat at each other. Fibbers was always for Goths and metal heads that had skipped the small town and were reaching for something different in Dublin. There's been a few occasions I've gone back in the last year, to be refused for lack of ID only to see brief glimpses of kids in Placebo shirts and Craddle of Filth gear running wild at the bottom of the stairs. Doyles is like that, it's the Fibbers of the trendy Bohemian set that feel no guilt about listening to a DJ that looks like a particularly lazy monkey spinning the same set list again, and again and again. Doyles is a smaller Whelan's, people are so impeccably dressed its fucking amazing on the one hand and disheartening on the other, the punters are clones of whatever NME rock band seems best situated popularly at the moment, Franz Ferdinand seem to lead the fashion stakes at the moment, hence loadsa sweep over haircuts, blazers and Converse a-go-go. As in Fibbers here's only one way to cope in there, copious amounts of drink and a hefty head ache in the morning, neither of which are positive. Make sure to watch out for the inevitable flying glasses, as the previously unconscious drunk at the opposite table flings there pint at you in a forgetful frenzy to reach the dance floor as the Strokes blare out. Pompously, I do worry about my generation, but only when sober.

Labels: Doyles, Music, Out, Rant, Society