Aoife Considine-
Pete Doherty--the hipster's excuse for wearing a hat indoors
When did it become okay to wear a hat in a nightclub? I don’t mean baseball caps or those sock style beanies either. I mean full on, wide brimmed, fuck-off, felt fedoras. I had my first experience of the Workman’s Club, 10 Wellington Quay, on Wednesday night and it made quite an impression on me. Not so much the club itself, a beautiful 160 year-old building still with most of its original interiors, but rather it was the clientele of said establishment that made this lasting impression.
I’m not exactly known for dressing conservatively, but on Wednesday night, although wearing a nude playsuit and black blazer and okay I may have been wearing ugg boots due to the fact my heels were in my bag in the cloakroom, I felt out of place. I wasn’t outlandish enough in my dress but hey, at least I wasn’t wearing a hat indoors!
Girls were literally going around in full on hats! To make matters worse, I seemed to be the only one perturbed by this. As I wandered around the two floors of this hipster-riddled club, I counted about four or five people wearing hats and though this may not sound like much, it’s enough to have made an impact on me and for me to remember my annoyance the next day despite my slightly intoxicated state the night before.
“Hipsters”–as they’re known–don’t actually annoy me that much as individuals, as I’m quite friendly with many that would be tarred by the hipster brush who are in fact lovely, well rounded people, but it’s when they get together in these clubs, and the level of hip is at high concentration, that they really start to grind my gears.
For starters, these folk love to sit, and so their clubs are full of seating and their dancefloors empty. If you want to sit down and have a chat, go to a pub or stay at home. Why in God’s name would you go to a noisy throbbing club to sit down for the chats, only to find that the quiet chat you’d been looking for has ended up in you shouting at your mate across a table while gesticulating wildly with your arms in an attempt to convey whatever emotion you’re trying to portray.
Then there’s the music. I must admit here that I really loved the music in the Workman’s. It appealed to the indie bopper kid inside me and I found myself bouncing up and down to Darwin Deez, Radar Detector played by a live band with great gusto, much to the embarrassment of my poor boyfriend. This embarrassment was the result of me being the only one of few who was actually using the dancefloor to dance. The cool kids lined the walls and stood towards the back, drinks in hand, nodding along to the beat and giving the occasional indie appreciation toe-tap. Why go to a club and not dance? Myself and the drunken blonde girl in the cool blue top seemed to be the only ones who knew how to use a dancefloor properly.
After a good spout of throwing shapes, a drink was sorely needed. Since I’d paid in for a friend, she offered to purchase me a cocktail. Thank you very much kind madam I thought to myself and off we went to the bar only to discover that their card machines weren’t working. We had to track to an ATM around the corner and back before we eventually got our fruity concoctions. To be fair, they were lovely, although by this stage I was rather fed up of the place. I downed my drink before paying a visit to the bathroom upon which my d
ecision on whether to leave the place would be made.
The queue was short and the other girls in it were polite and there was some pretty slick graffiti on the doors. Maybe I was too soon to judge, maybe the Workman’s wasn’t the terrible hipster haven I’d cast it aside as, just maybe… a girl then arrived in a maroon fedora commenting to her friend about “just how awful it is for like, all the people in Japan since the earthquake, maybe we should organise an awareness night out or something?”
Hats off to you love, I’d heard enough, I was leaving.
