Last Saturday (1 Sept), six of my friends and I went for a night out. We started in AKA. How gay is that bar! It’s wonderful. If you didn’t know, you’d think you were in a pink punt palace – a bit like the Front Lounge. I’d imagine there are loads of tourists sitting in there with their ‘pints of the black stuff’ wondering if it is a gay bar. We should all descend on it one night and freak them out. Ha! In fact we should all descend on a really straight bar and take over. Break for the Border anyone?

The most straight bar in Dublin used to be The Harp – you could have been excommunicated from the gay community for even walking in to use the phone. Now that it has become the trendy Q Bar, you’ll see loads of cuties with their bottles of Smirnoff Ice in the lower level bar. I don’t know why this is. Maybe all the newly-arrived gay guys see a bar called Q Bar and just assume it’s gay. You know – Q Bar. Queer Bar. Who knows?
Back to Saturday night, after AKA we headed into Tante Zoe’s in Temple Bar. If you haven’t been, go. Wonderful Cajun food (try the swordfish) followed by pecan pie you would steal off your granny. I think I may have slipped a few points on the classometer when I picked my teeth with the corner of the wine menu.

(…have just realised that if I start putting down real names in this diary entry, some out there will know who I am. What to do? I think false names. Oh bugger it, I’m going to stay with the real names, less hassle…)

Okay, so my boyfriend, Colm, and I and the rest of the gang headed over to GUBU.
I must say I love GUBU. I even love the doorway! The bouncer ain’t bad either.
Saturday night was packed when we went in at 10 but it slackened off about half an hour later. Half of me was glad people were leaving – we got seats! The other half was wondering where people were going — probably the George. I have a problem with Saturday nights in clubs. I just feel that I don’t need to go to a club on a Saturday night when I can go to the same clubs on week nights or Sunday nights and get some entertainment thrown into the bargain.

The thing about GUBU is that it looks good. People look good there. This adds to the atmosphere. Plus the beer is usually tasty and so is the music (if you hear Madonna’s ‘What It Feels Like For A Girl’ repeatedly played on the juke box then you know I’m in the bar!). Have I given the impression that I like GUBU, that I think it is GOOD?

The evening ended with Fintan doing cartwheels outside Isolde’s Tower and nearly breaking his back. And then it was time for the Nitelink home with 50 U2 fans returning from Slane singing ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’. (Note to self – never use Nitelink again.)

-------------

 
Am slightly bricking it. I was commissioned by Time Out (Dublin Guide) to update the 2002 issue’s gay and lesbian chapter a few months ago. As well as rewriting the listings page — how quickly Dublin clubs come and go! — I have to write a feature on the drag scene. And I have to have it ready by Friday. And it’s Wednesday. As I said: am slightly bricking it.

I’m not a lazy person. When work has to be done, I’ll do it (especially if it involves massage oil and that guy in the Peter Marks advert). It’s just that I thought I knew more about the drag scene than I actually do – and that’s where the Internet comes in. My epitaph shall read: Thank God For Google.

I’ve amassed loads of info, now it’s just a matter of working them into a 500 word article that will be good enough to be in a publication that will be bought by people from all over the world. Gay, intelligent people. People who will be expecting a sassy piece that will tell them all they need to know about Dublin’s dragsters. Two words spring to mind — oh shit.