Devout Review 1 - Opening Night
Friday October 19th - 2001

What a difference the summer has made to Galway's scene! Dispite a lively bar scene, with the much loved Zulu's and Strano's, there was a general feeling that the club in Liquid, Studio 152(now closed and replaced by a strip club!) just wasn't worth going to. The venue was small(capacity 150), dirty and dull and the cover charge was often £7/8! Coupled with the taxi ride to Salthill it was clear that an alternative was needed.

Pride 2001 proved that Galway could have a gay club to be proud of with over 600 people attending the Black Box pride parties. Given a good venue and the community atmosphere which was lacking at Liquid we all wondered why there wasn't a club like this every week. Now thanks to Devout we may have just found it!

I arrived at the club, located in Bogarts Salthill, around 12.30 and I was first of all blown away by the venue! It has to be the best designed club in Galway. The massive video screen hit me first but I think it would have been more impressive with a few camp classics running on it. It has loads of potential for theme nights. 

The club soon started to fill up and by 1am I'd say the venue was near capacity but it was more than comfortable. Great air-conditioning, lighting and sound. The club has an amazing chill-out area called "Secrets" which was great for meeting up with friends and I spent most of the night there.

The dance floor is BIG but I couldn't help noticing how few of the crowd were actually dancing. Most were standing on the raised walkways around the dancefloor which is just ideal for talent spotting! The music was too hard for most tastes and when the DJ played the more commercial Basement Jaxx the floor was mobbed. I think that was the main complaint from most people I talked to. As a friend put it "Could have done with some tack!" But the DJs are different very week so we didn't bother about that too much.

Panti cut the ribbon in the way that only she can and her appearance gave some credance to the promoter's claim that we were getting something new and fresh to Galway. Her performance was unique!

The Dancers on the podiums were very dull! A man and woman dressed in Matching bikinis dancing to each other suggestively across the dancefloor just looked STUPID!

All in all a great opening night but lacking that spark that the black box had. My feeling was that far from geting something new we were just getting HAM in Dublin. That might work for a while but I'm not sure that will be sucessful in the long run. It needs to develop it's own identity and stop looking to Dublin and Belfast for inspiration!! As everyone knows "West is Best"!!!

Galway Boy.

Opening Night - Press Release - Click Here
Pre Launch Information - Click Here
User Review 2 - Click Here

Reviewed Sent in by Galway Boy November 2001
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