Good article. I’m in my 40’s I’d still go clubbing if I had clubs to go to but Cork is just a dead zone too.
Actually a good article by a writer I don’t like. But this is is not about her.
She is right about the death of culture in Dublin it just couldn’t afford Dublin rents or someone put an objection in about the noise. People need a place to have fun and if they don’t get that then they go some where else eventually. The jobs and money will follow the people.
“In 2000, there were 522 in Ireland. By 2022, there were just 85.”
Knew it was getting bad but I’m shocked by the 85 number tbh
Zero nightclubs left in Galway nowadays too.
While I don’t go to night-club. I think what’s also missing are more things such as pool-halls, boxing centres, bowling or skating places, y’know?
A walk around Dublin is just boring restaurants or hotels and brand shops. We need more Plex’s!
What happened to places staying open later to make for lost revenue during the lockdowns? Also, Jaysus, the taxi situation in Dublin is bad.
Disaster, what a corporate shithole this country has become.
Disaster, with a corporate shithole this country has become.
Worked in a night club for two years and it really put things into perspective for me. Ultimately it looked to me like a complete waste of time and money. I mean seriously if you want to meet someone there are other ways. Not saying they’re a totally bad thing they have their place for people looking to drink a lot and have a good time but I mean I’m not surprised there is less now than before.
This country is designed for the old cunts who blew their money on dodgy holiday homes and fuck us over to be miserable so they can have their cake even after breaking the oven.
Price of drinks
I remember when letterkenny had about 6 within half a mile of each other
There are only 85 because I’d say most can’t get staff. COVID got them out of the pub trade by force, and now they don’t want to give up their weekends. Added to that, late license is €1,000 per night. If you don’t think you can get the money in due to not having enough staff to man the taps, why bother.
I’d say “late pubs” will do better.
Do the majority of people just prefer pubs now? I really hate nightclubs, only time I liked going to them was when there was a huge DJ on in D8 in Dublin or something. Everyone seemed to mind their own space and be courteous (probably because of yokes) compared to student night savagery.
I’m in my 20s. The problem with nightclubs is: too much covid & too expensive
Insurance is the biggest reason.
Worked in a club and we used to have our insurer settling obviously false claims for 5-10k. We paid the first 5k of every claim. (We had insane amounts of cctv and could prove the false claims)
They did this as it was cheaper than going to court. Unless a claim came in for over 20k we knew we were going to be eating a settlement.
Club closed 5 years ago. Its now an office for a tech company.
Examples of claims,
Girl falling down steps while drunk. 30k claim, settled for 7k
Girl decided to do the worm on dancefloor, got a cut on stomach from a piece of glass, 50k claim, settled for 15k.
Guy jumps off stage into crowd, another guy breaks his finger, 90k claim, settled for 25k.
All of these could have been argued in court but the insurance companies refuse to go and instead force a settlement.
If you decide to goto court without them your now unbacked for insurance so if you lose your fully out of pocket and insurance wont cover. If you do that your insurance will not be renewed the next year as your a risky client to be involved with as you didnt accept their advice.
This is why there are no clubs. Payouts for false claims are easily getting over 200k a year.
Also did you know a lot of the new hotels don’t have bars.
Walked into the new hard Rock Hotel thinking I could get a drink with the missus.
Nope.
The author’s point seems to be that people aren’t going to nightclubs because they aren’t enough nightclubs for them to go to.
However, they don’t seem to have considered whether it might be because fewer people want to go to nightclubs anymore.
Bring back the slow sets and the supper tickets and you’ll have to beat the feckers out of the clubs
> It showed that in 1991, close to one in four – 23 per cent – of adults went to nightclubs weekly. In 2021, that figure was 6 per cent.
I think part of that is just a drastic increase in home entertainment and socialisation options.
I also don’t think this phenomenon is unique to Ireland, but is happening everywhere where rents and costs have gotten out of control. Was in New York post-pandemic and it was very dead in comparison to what it used to be.
Take your baby by the hand…
Not surprised at all. There’s literally no point going out in Ireland for me.
I’ve been clubbing and going to music events/festivals all over Europe and Ireland is hands down the worst.
Go to Germany, Netherlands or Belgium if you wanna see proper nightclubs. Opened 24/7, top of the range dj lineups and most importantly, people actually go there for the music, not to get coked out of their minds looking for hook ups or fights. (Even though some places have “dark rooms” if you’re looking for a hook up)
Ryanair has plenty of cheap flights to those countries and EVERYTHING there is cheaper than here. A night out in BASIS (20 mins on the train from Amsterdam Schipol) will end up costing you less than a night out in Dublin.
While licencing (each night that was open late costs the guts of €500, including of course the fee for the solicitor making the application, they always make their money, see below) and gentrification are issues I’m surprised there is no mention of insurance.
I used to run a quite large nightclub venue and worked in hospitality for 15 years, insurance (and the level of security required partly by insurance overheads) was often crippling. I don’t blame insurance companies alone for this issue, though they bear partial responsibility of course, but it’s not insurance companies milling claim letters into late night businesses, that would be personal injury lawyers and their “creative” clients. Both knowing of course that unless you had evidence in 4k from multiple camera angles of either nothing happening to their client, their story being exaggerated or not any fault of the establishment, that a judge would be more than happy to throw other people’s money at them.
The only party that actually suffers in this scenario is of course the venue, through higher premiums, everyone else gets paid…
Honestly, I used to go to Berlin quite regularly a few years back and enjoyed a lot of the fringe techno/ambient culture. (A music-critique friend of mine characterized the atmosphere around techno in Berlin as around classical music; they want to get it right, and take it very seriously.) Reclaimed spaces, semi-legal venues (one literally just the top floor of an old appartment building), old industrial plants etc. I was not rich, sometimes brought alcohol in a plastic bottle to drink before going into the club, never used a taxi, just night public transport, knew where the cheap kebab and falafel was and was ready to walk there for an hour… Later I was happy to learn that you can often find at least a few islands of this in other European cities (especially capitals).
When I moved to Dublin 2 years ago I hoped to see some of this culture here as well, at least after Covid wanes. Maybe I am too old now and don’t know the right people but I feel like there is literally zero of this culture here right now? I guess Hangar sort of had this vibe before it closed in 2018? Anyway, I hope this still gets picked up in Dublin, even though I don’t see how, given the rent situation.
Going out is too expensive. Better off having a party at home, having friends over. Get your sex off tinder.
This is what the vinters wanted lot’s of silly priced pints and such.
Ah well.
In my hometown we had 5 (6 if you count the one that would close and open up under new names and management every other year)
I think it’s a combination of things: expensive to buy and run, insurance costs, people having less disposable income, dating apps meaning you can get a ride without going out trying to pull someone on the dancefloor. Also more and more young people have less friends and leave their homes less often.
It’s terrible that Ireland is becoming so unnatractive to young people.
All I remember from nightclubs is the asshole bouncers that wouldn’t let me in, because they didn’t feel like it.
I’m not surprised. The extortion in the clubs is a joke.
Not surprising but don’t agree with the other over lack of premises being the problem.
the fact nightclubs spent years absolutely fleecing consumers is why they’re dying.
Dublin only ever had a shitty night-club scene since the late 90’s thanks to nanny state licensing laws and the media hysteria about Raves.. But at least there were the old ballrooms, like the Olympic and small theatres like the SFX. Not many places you can have a casual bop now.
And the quality of clubs are very poor. I keep saying the best club I’ve been to in Ireland is the Foundry in Carlow. You go to anywhere in Dublin and you are walking into a dungeon with fucking terrible drinks and awful service. Also in general bars are dying too. In my area there isn’t a bar to be seen for an hour and a half walk in any direction. I grew up in a small village and you would be surprised how much the local bar means to the area. Communions, confirmations, birthdays, funerals, anniversaries all in the local. It brings the community together but that is all slowly being taken away.
Even aside from pubs there is fuck all in most of these new developments. There are no corner shops. No cinema without having to drive somewhere for it. It’s just a house and some empty fucking grass.
Doesn’t the law require everything to close at 3 am? I lived in Dublin a few years ago and the concept of a nightclub didn’t really exist at the time, which makes sense when such rule exists (there were, however, bars with music and sometimes djs, but wouldn’t call them nightclubs – apart from Hangar, as someone mentioned above)
There’s a whole list of reasons for this, but a big one as to why nightclubs never recovered from the 2008 recession is self inflicted in my opinion.
The often quite high entrance fees and sky high drinks prices are very true, and we’re often a reason why when my friends and I were going to nightclubs in the mid/late 00’s would predrink and then go in much later while only being 1-3 inside because we couldn’t afford any more, but there might be an argument there over rent/licence/insurance etc costs (I honestly don’t know).
But one thing that always irritated me, with a few exceptions, was the sheer lack of effort put into many Irish nightclubs: if you’re going to charge so much, you need to give people an incentive to spend. That can be anything from unique events, to real ear-to-the-ground cutting edge music, to excellent design/decor, or any mix of these things and others. I was in Budapest earlier this year and they have these ‘kerte’ ruin bars that are just extraordinarily unique and give a sense of something you can’t get at home. Even something simple enough like tripod when it replaced Red Box having a pop/dance/live-or-rock-or-indie split among its three rooms with a huge beer garden for people more inclined to stand outside and chat with strangers offered something a little different. Early days Bernard Shaw with the big blue bus and some utterly fantastic music, Time in Naas or Spirit on Henry Street (I think it was Henry St?) with a much bigger, showier affair.
But nightclubs in Ireland were, and became increasingly bad at, just being copy-paste low effort affairs with nothing unique by way or scene, setting, music, etc to offer whatsoever that could easily be replicated with a half decent speaker and a play list at home. They just seemed to expect as their right to have places flooded simply by having the doors open, staff behind the taps, and a daytime radio quality playlist in the background. And the attitudes of bouncers did very little to help – there were soem exceptions but they often had an attitude of “get in there and out of my fucking face of I’ll break yours… And I’m watching you!” which never sat well at all.
**TLDR:** the cost issue might be more complicated logistically that was hard for them to avoid, but the poor customer service from many bouncers on top of the bare minimum effort put into these venues was a massive reason why they have died off as they have.
In a sense it’s bad, but as someone who utterly despised nightlife in Ireland (nightclubs, pubs) during my young adult days, I’m hopeful folks in their 20s will find some other means of socialising that doesn’t involve heavy drinking and dealing with all the aggro/drama that brings.
Not a single night club on the south side of the city between city centre and bray, it’s a joke
Youngsters are binge drinking less and doing activities that don’t involve getting off their face in a shitty overpriced nightclub and this article is making it sound like a bad thing.
38 comments
Good article. I’m in my 40’s I’d still go clubbing if I had clubs to go to but Cork is just a dead zone too.
Actually a good article by a writer I don’t like. But this is is not about her.
She is right about the death of culture in Dublin it just couldn’t afford Dublin rents or someone put an objection in about the noise. People need a place to have fun and if they don’t get that then they go some where else eventually. The jobs and money will follow the people.
“In 2000, there were 522 in Ireland. By 2022, there were just 85.”
Knew it was getting bad but I’m shocked by the 85 number tbh
Zero nightclubs left in Galway nowadays too.
While I don’t go to night-club. I think what’s also missing are more things such as pool-halls, boxing centres, bowling or skating places, y’know?
A walk around Dublin is just boring restaurants or hotels and brand shops. We need more Plex’s!
What happened to places staying open later to make for lost revenue during the lockdowns? Also, Jaysus, the taxi situation in Dublin is bad.
Disaster, what a corporate shithole this country has become.
Disaster, with a corporate shithole this country has become.
Worked in a night club for two years and it really put things into perspective for me. Ultimately it looked to me like a complete waste of time and money. I mean seriously if you want to meet someone there are other ways. Not saying they’re a totally bad thing they have their place for people looking to drink a lot and have a good time but I mean I’m not surprised there is less now than before.
This country is designed for the old cunts who blew their money on dodgy holiday homes and fuck us over to be miserable so they can have their cake even after breaking the oven.
Price of drinks
I remember when letterkenny had about 6 within half a mile of each other
There are only 85 because I’d say most can’t get staff. COVID got them out of the pub trade by force, and now they don’t want to give up their weekends. Added to that, late license is €1,000 per night. If you don’t think you can get the money in due to not having enough staff to man the taps, why bother.
I’d say “late pubs” will do better.
Do the majority of people just prefer pubs now? I really hate nightclubs, only time I liked going to them was when there was a huge DJ on in D8 in Dublin or something. Everyone seemed to mind their own space and be courteous (probably because of yokes) compared to student night savagery.
I’m in my 20s. The problem with nightclubs is: too much covid & too expensive
Insurance is the biggest reason.
Worked in a club and we used to have our insurer settling obviously false claims for 5-10k. We paid the first 5k of every claim. (We had insane amounts of cctv and could prove the false claims)
They did this as it was cheaper than going to court. Unless a claim came in for over 20k we knew we were going to be eating a settlement.
Club closed 5 years ago. Its now an office for a tech company.
Examples of claims,
Girl falling down steps while drunk. 30k claim, settled for 7k
Girl decided to do the worm on dancefloor, got a cut on stomach from a piece of glass, 50k claim, settled for 15k.
Guy jumps off stage into crowd, another guy breaks his finger, 90k claim, settled for 25k.
All of these could have been argued in court but the insurance companies refuse to go and instead force a settlement.
If you decide to goto court without them your now unbacked for insurance so if you lose your fully out of pocket and insurance wont cover. If you do that your insurance will not be renewed the next year as your a risky client to be involved with as you didnt accept their advice.
This is why there are no clubs. Payouts for false claims are easily getting over 200k a year.
Also did you know a lot of the new hotels don’t have bars.
Walked into the new hard Rock Hotel thinking I could get a drink with the missus.
Nope.
The author’s point seems to be that people aren’t going to nightclubs because they aren’t enough nightclubs for them to go to.
However, they don’t seem to have considered whether it might be because fewer people want to go to nightclubs anymore.
Bring back the slow sets and the supper tickets and you’ll have to beat the feckers out of the clubs
> It showed that in 1991, close to one in four – 23 per cent – of adults went to nightclubs weekly. In 2021, that figure was 6 per cent.
I think part of that is just a drastic increase in home entertainment and socialisation options.
I also don’t think this phenomenon is unique to Ireland, but is happening everywhere where rents and costs have gotten out of control. Was in New York post-pandemic and it was very dead in comparison to what it used to be.
Take your baby by the hand…
Not surprised at all. There’s literally no point going out in Ireland for me.
I’ve been clubbing and going to music events/festivals all over Europe and Ireland is hands down the worst.
Go to Germany, Netherlands or Belgium if you wanna see proper nightclubs. Opened 24/7, top of the range dj lineups and most importantly, people actually go there for the music, not to get coked out of their minds looking for hook ups or fights. (Even though some places have “dark rooms” if you’re looking for a hook up)
Ryanair has plenty of cheap flights to those countries and EVERYTHING there is cheaper than here. A night out in BASIS (20 mins on the train from Amsterdam Schipol) will end up costing you less than a night out in Dublin.
While licencing (each night that was open late costs the guts of €500, including of course the fee for the solicitor making the application, they always make their money, see below) and gentrification are issues I’m surprised there is no mention of insurance.
I used to run a quite large nightclub venue and worked in hospitality for 15 years, insurance (and the level of security required partly by insurance overheads) was often crippling. I don’t blame insurance companies alone for this issue, though they bear partial responsibility of course, but it’s not insurance companies milling claim letters into late night businesses, that would be personal injury lawyers and their “creative” clients. Both knowing of course that unless you had evidence in 4k from multiple camera angles of either nothing happening to their client, their story being exaggerated or not any fault of the establishment, that a judge would be more than happy to throw other people’s money at them.
The only party that actually suffers in this scenario is of course the venue, through higher premiums, everyone else gets paid…
Honestly, I used to go to Berlin quite regularly a few years back and enjoyed a lot of the fringe techno/ambient culture. (A music-critique friend of mine characterized the atmosphere around techno in Berlin as around classical music; they want to get it right, and take it very seriously.) Reclaimed spaces, semi-legal venues (one literally just the top floor of an old appartment building), old industrial plants etc. I was not rich, sometimes brought alcohol in a plastic bottle to drink before going into the club, never used a taxi, just night public transport, knew where the cheap kebab and falafel was and was ready to walk there for an hour… Later I was happy to learn that you can often find at least a few islands of this in other European cities (especially capitals).
When I moved to Dublin 2 years ago I hoped to see some of this culture here as well, at least after Covid wanes. Maybe I am too old now and don’t know the right people but I feel like there is literally zero of this culture here right now? I guess Hangar sort of had this vibe before it closed in 2018? Anyway, I hope this still gets picked up in Dublin, even though I don’t see how, given the rent situation.
Going out is too expensive. Better off having a party at home, having friends over. Get your sex off tinder.
This is what the vinters wanted lot’s of silly priced pints and such.
Ah well.
In my hometown we had 5 (6 if you count the one that would close and open up under new names and management every other year)
I think it’s a combination of things: expensive to buy and run, insurance costs, people having less disposable income, dating apps meaning you can get a ride without going out trying to pull someone on the dancefloor. Also more and more young people have less friends and leave their homes less often.
It’s terrible that Ireland is becoming so unnatractive to young people.
All I remember from nightclubs is the asshole bouncers that wouldn’t let me in, because they didn’t feel like it.
I’m not surprised. The extortion in the clubs is a joke.
Not surprising but don’t agree with the other over lack of premises being the problem.
the fact nightclubs spent years absolutely fleecing consumers is why they’re dying.
Dublin only ever had a shitty night-club scene since the late 90’s thanks to nanny state licensing laws and the media hysteria about Raves.. But at least there were the old ballrooms, like the Olympic and small theatres like the SFX. Not many places you can have a casual bop now.
And the quality of clubs are very poor. I keep saying the best club I’ve been to in Ireland is the Foundry in Carlow. You go to anywhere in Dublin and you are walking into a dungeon with fucking terrible drinks and awful service. Also in general bars are dying too. In my area there isn’t a bar to be seen for an hour and a half walk in any direction. I grew up in a small village and you would be surprised how much the local bar means to the area. Communions, confirmations, birthdays, funerals, anniversaries all in the local. It brings the community together but that is all slowly being taken away.
Even aside from pubs there is fuck all in most of these new developments. There are no corner shops. No cinema without having to drive somewhere for it. It’s just a house and some empty fucking grass.
Doesn’t the law require everything to close at 3 am? I lived in Dublin a few years ago and the concept of a nightclub didn’t really exist at the time, which makes sense when such rule exists (there were, however, bars with music and sometimes djs, but wouldn’t call them nightclubs – apart from Hangar, as someone mentioned above)
There’s a whole list of reasons for this, but a big one as to why nightclubs never recovered from the 2008 recession is self inflicted in my opinion.
The often quite high entrance fees and sky high drinks prices are very true, and we’re often a reason why when my friends and I were going to nightclubs in the mid/late 00’s would predrink and then go in much later while only being 1-3 inside because we couldn’t afford any more, but there might be an argument there over rent/licence/insurance etc costs (I honestly don’t know).
But one thing that always irritated me, with a few exceptions, was the sheer lack of effort put into many Irish nightclubs: if you’re going to charge so much, you need to give people an incentive to spend. That can be anything from unique events, to real ear-to-the-ground cutting edge music, to excellent design/decor, or any mix of these things and others. I was in Budapest earlier this year and they have these ‘kerte’ ruin bars that are just extraordinarily unique and give a sense of something you can’t get at home. Even something simple enough like tripod when it replaced Red Box having a pop/dance/live-or-rock-or-indie split among its three rooms with a huge beer garden for people more inclined to stand outside and chat with strangers offered something a little different. Early days Bernard Shaw with the big blue bus and some utterly fantastic music, Time in Naas or Spirit on Henry Street (I think it was Henry St?) with a much bigger, showier affair.
But nightclubs in Ireland were, and became increasingly bad at, just being copy-paste low effort affairs with nothing unique by way or scene, setting, music, etc to offer whatsoever that could easily be replicated with a half decent speaker and a play list at home. They just seemed to expect as their right to have places flooded simply by having the doors open, staff behind the taps, and a daytime radio quality playlist in the background. And the attitudes of bouncers did very little to help – there were soem exceptions but they often had an attitude of “get in there and out of my fucking face of I’ll break yours… And I’m watching you!” which never sat well at all.
**TLDR:** the cost issue might be more complicated logistically that was hard for them to avoid, but the poor customer service from many bouncers on top of the bare minimum effort put into these venues was a massive reason why they have died off as they have.
In a sense it’s bad, but as someone who utterly despised nightlife in Ireland (nightclubs, pubs) during my young adult days, I’m hopeful folks in their 20s will find some other means of socialising that doesn’t involve heavy drinking and dealing with all the aggro/drama that brings.
Not a single night club on the south side of the city between city centre and bray, it’s a joke
Youngsters are binge drinking less and doing activities that don’t involve getting off their face in a shitty overpriced nightclub and this article is making it sound like a bad thing.