Sharpshooters
Eamonn Dorans - Temple Bar - Tuesdays from 11.30

News - April 2002

This April, Sharpshooter welcomes Belfast's colossal REVVLON. The 8 foot wonder is making a rare appearance in Dublin to perform and host Dublin's queer indie night. Admission is 5 euros for students with valid I.D. and 8 euros otherwise. Doors open at 11:30 and Miss Revvlon + Renttecca grace the stage at 12:30. 

Review - April 2002

The cavernous sub-terrain of Eamon Doran’s is the perfect habitat for the various species who gather there on Tuesday night’s indie-queer event: SharpShooter. Having negotiated arch bitch Harlot Brontë loitering at the ticket booth (€8/€5 with student ID), the eclectic and alternative sounds emanating up the stairs from the collective palette of hostess Renttecca and her minion-freaks; dave and Rachel reminds one that the cheesy, idiosyncratic and somewhat autistic pop served up by every other gay night in Dublin is not necessarily the insurmountable correlative to gayness that the current Dublin scene would have us believe.


SharpShooter’s populace is plural, non-defined and polymorphous. The dance floor is a heartening spectacle of the indulgent posturing of ambiguous forms frenetically appropriating the alternative sounds and lyric riffs to their own individual queerness. This club is the dark nemesis of the shiny, happy George. The ubiquiteous Renttecca, when she isn’t churning out mobilising tunes from her black tower, weaves through the boy-girls, girl-boys and freaks with condoms, hot food and words of wisdom.

            The musical frame is initiated and maintained by Renttecca who punctuates indie/rock milestones (The Clash, Nirvana, New Order, Depeche Mode, Blondie, The Ramones) with more current tunes (Suede, Radiohead, Placebo, Bjork, Hole). Hair with a permanent hard-on, Bostonian dave serves up the more obscure delights from his corner of the globe (Lesbian Folk music etc) and that girl Rachel brings it home with a balancing injection of British indie (Ash, Hefner, Belle and Sebastian etc).


The seating configurations are refreshing with a lower crypt replete with shadowy corners and candlelit recesses of flickering visages and diverse conversation. The sonic formations and physical spaces of the club enable gays, bisexuals, straights, whatever to express their own perceived queerness in whatever way they please and to display their dysfunction and exorcise their demons which are daily suppressed by the heteronormative mores of jobs, college, pop music, bus routes,…


Thus, when full, the dance floor looks like a rich and awkward tapestry of unorthodox posture and unsocialised gesture. At SharpShooter, there is no definitive gestural, dress or societal code to assume, one hasn’t to be ‘gay’ or ‘straight,’ just ‘queer’ in its multifarious and infinite incarnations.

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With Thanks to Don
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