Danielle Courtney | Contributing Writer
Workmans is nestled at the edge of Temple Bar, on the final frontier of Dublin’s south side backing onto the Liffey. The clientele can be seen to sport a jet black star stamp on their wrists, compared to the cattle mark branding of Harcourt Street clubs. Previously the club’s emblem was a Facebook styled location mark with an S at its centre, adding a lure of mystery to its origin. It’s the not so secret secret destination for Trinity undergraduates every Wednesday for the Somewhere? @ The Workmans Club night.
On any given night you’ll encounter that guy who looks like Robert Sheehan, several lads with awkwardly angled snap backs, and a girl with hair dyed a myriad of greens and purples. Once I even saw a guy wearing ripped pyjamas. Generally you’ll spot half of D.U. Players and that guy from Fish Soc in the corner of the smoking room. It’s where the Arts Block smokers migrate for their nocturnal fix. With the proposed ban, it may be their final haven. Whilst the venue itself has the run down chic of a crack den’ akin to a house party where an iPod is playing in the dark of someone’s sitting room. Upstairs it’s indie with the Artic Monkey’s new album the fulcrum of the weekly playlist, and downstairs an RnB centric mix of Justin Timberlake to the Jackson 5.
It’s where the Arts Block smokers migrate for their nocturnal fix
Last week Somewhere saw a huge turnout as Trinity and UCD had their combined freshers weeks. With people queuing for over an hour to gain entry, Facebook’s news feed was littered with selfies of their drunken shenanigans, as Trinity’s hipsters tried to keep themselves amused and their friends informed of their whereabouts. Clubbers were photographed in various states of inebriation; queue skipping, refused from entry and general tomfoolery in keeping with Freshers’ Week’s high spirits.
Trinity FM twinned with the venue to host its launch night the same week, and The Hist sent its capitalism enthused debators to that side of Temple Bar, after its inaugural debate of the year. The day before an unexpected demand for tickets, resulted in a Trinity Ents Freshers’ Festival event being co-hosted by Workmans and the equally Indie The Grand Social, either side of the Liffey.
After speaking to several regulars of the club, who expressed their dismay at such a mainstream crowd, I approached the Somewhere organisers themselves to see how this irregularly large turnout affected the night, and on an ongoing basis. Could one of the most trendily non mainstream club nights become too normal for its indie Trinity clientele, most of whom use society cards like The Phil and Trinity FM to gain admission at concession prices?
Niall of the Workman’s staff informed me that this is not the highest turn out the Somewhere? club night has experienced in its handful of years in operation. However, the event did pull in high numbers, roughly a thousand, something they’ve experienced before, like several other student focused clubs during expected social weeks like Freshers’, Reading and Rag Weeks respectively. Could this popularity during Freshers’ Week be simply put as Junior Freshmen exercising their new society cards, or an outpouring of Trinity’s established Indies prior to the commencement of the full scheduled week 6 timetables?
When I asked whether the excessive popularity last week signaled a new intake of Junior Freshman regulars to the venue, and a shift or even a turnover in the club goers, I was told that the event, as per its norm, drew a crowd of largely twenty year olds, despite its 18+ entry age requirements. This indicates that rather than the crowd of Workman’s shifting towards a younger audience or mainstream standards, previous attendees turned up en masse verifying its centrality to Workman’s hipster circles.
For now the ebb has subsided, and this week saw a large but more typical turn out of Trinity’s finest Indies. With Somewhere? @ The Workman’s Club celebrating its third birthday next week, there is the potential for an equally high number flocking to the club, and queues of an hour if not more. Newsfeeds could be spammed by more queue selfies, and those waiting to gain admission might once again reiterate how mainstream Workman’s has become, and how they were regulars before anyone in Dublin University even heard of it.
