When I Was Young...

Reading the lovely Lynnie's blog post about her 80's mix tape made me think about my very misspent youth in the hotspots of SoCoDu and Wicklow.

We started off at the tender age of 16 in a local (now defunt, thanks be to god) hotel nightclub called Cinderella Rockerfellas... it was a bleedin' tip, but in the late 80's, what other choice did you have apart from bottles of Stag and Ritz. Then it was but a hop, skip and jump down to an even worse dump called O'Sheas. This was a classy joint, where your feet were guaranteed to stick to the floor and there was always a scrap going on. Fake ID was the order of the day here - nobody of legal drinking age would want to be seen dead here!

Once we hit 18, a new spot opened up - The Alternative. This was legendary and indeed has it's own Facebook page where one can reminisce about the joys of Bock the DJ, the Michelin-starred curry suppers with guess the meat, and warm cans of Satzenbrau. I think I probably spent about the GDP of a small African country on booze and admission fees in this place. When we got bored/ran out of lads to snog, we hopped onto the 84 out to Greystones to Cabanas. Just as bad, and a right bastard to get home from if you didn't manage to snag a lift!

Time for a change of scene and now having friends with cars, we headed for Hollywood Nights/Fights/Shites where the door policy was strict and a membership card was sought after by all. It was actually a great place and there are fond memories of doing the Timewarp on the speakers with bottles of Corona in hand with DJ Wicked Willie playing Betty Boo. Eventually they closed it down, to reopen briefly as Deep - utter pants.

So we were off again. The Dart took us to Dalkey where we would get polluted in The Queens and then try to persuade a taxi driver to take 5 of us up to Jesters - 50/50 success rate on this. God this was a hovel. Always jammers, never enough seats/stools, mad queues for the bar and the cloakroom. But plenty of talent, which to be honest, was the only reason for trekking up there!

Finally, we reached the top. Club 92 (aka The Club of Love) or Knackerydoo as we lovingly called it. I can't repeat half of the stuff we got up to here or certain friends of mine will have me murdered. it Needless to say it was NEVER me who made us all wait while a hotdog with 2 kilos of coleslaw was eaten. This was the cause of killings as no taxi would take us home while the mystery scoffer was filling her face. By the time she finished, every bloody taxi in the county had gone and the walk down to the main road was not a pleasant experience. I was cute and managed to finagle a Gold Card from the Manager rather than payment for a job I did there. Best move ever - free in every night with this baby. There used to be killings amongst the girls to see who was coming in with me. The routine was simple. Chat up Liam & Sean at the door to see if he'd let any of the others in for free, head to the cloakroom & hide ticket in bra. Check out talent en-route to loo for lippy application. Walk around scoping talent/sussing out who we needed to avoid. Buy beer. Repeat until kicking out time.

Actually The Club of Love holds a very dear place in my heart, as it's where I met The Hubs. would like to point out that I was ossified that night and don't know what on earth attracted him to me! In fact, the next time I met him, I had to be reminded as I drew a complete blank on the name AND the face.... shameful. Luckily, he's not a man to be dissuaded easily and I was worth it!

So, my MixPod over there contains a selection of my favourite songs from that era... to bring back all sorts of memories