Fibber's

It's unfortunate, yes, but this coming year will probably see the first generation of newbies among which NOBODY knows what Fibber Magee's is. Forgetting about "Bacchus", I shall refer to Fibber's as if it is still standing.

Fibber's is dark. Fibber's is dank. Fibber's sells alcohol. Fibber's plays excellent music. Fibber's plays it loud. Fibber's plays it very loud. Fibber's smells. Fibber's is sweaty. Fibber's is on Parnell Street. Fibber's should be a part of everyone's college experience. Fibber's have a baldy DJ. Fibber's has a beer garden where you go to give your beating eardrums a rest and cool down a bit. Fibber's has big smelly rocker guys who look like they'd kick your ass at a moments notice but when you talk to them you realise they are all wusses at the end of the day. Fibber's has goths.

Fibber's, Is No More.

--Spock

Located just off O'Connell St, Fibber's is a night club that has gone through many guises. It was called Fibber's for many years until recently the management decided that it was time for a change.

First they turned the basement into a seperate club called Subterrania, this club was totally different to anything Fibber's (or the customers) had seen before. People wearing Adidas were invited into the building, later emerging with the bulging eyes and pallid skin normally associted with those folks unfortunate enough to have been captured by a cult and been injected or administered large amounts of drugs and subjected to rythmic mind control music for many hours. Eventually Subterrania was closed down when the police raided it for evidence of a sinister underground cult called "neeeeah", it was later uncovered that the members of this sinister cult would identify themselves to each other using bizzare hand signals in a similar manner to the Freemasons in the greater British empire. These hand signals varied according to the rank of the individual, initiates were restricted to simple hand gestures and wiggling of posteriors, while the higher ranking members were capable of performing bizzare and elaborate and potentially hypnotising movements with their hands. The night of the raid was a dark one for the Gardai as they lost several of their members months later when the desire to wear tracksuits and shave ridiculous patterns into their heads. The cult was obviously not eradicated, it has since gone underground and has not been heard of since.

Once the management had been cleared of charges involving luring leather clad psychopaths into Subterrania to be used as muscle bound thugs for the cult, they decided that a change of image was in order, the upper floor was renovated and the usual customers were moved down into the deep dank bowels of the basement where the full horror of the time spent by the cult in the basement was revealed. Many customers never recovered and to this day can be seen strapped to tables in mental hospitals murmering "not right, too bright, too bright" and being operated on.

Eventually the upper floor was reopened, much to the delight of the, by now, traumatised individuals. As one of the first people to enter the new club (now known as "Bacchus" after the Greek god of wine) I was able to witness the looks of horror on the faces of those poor people. Glass was evident and unbroken, there were working lights and the toilets (previously a source of pride at their decrepitude) were clean.

The customers retreated downstairs again and never returned, except when the downstairs bar was REALLY busy and the doors weren't locked. It was peaceful for a while, but it was not to last. A club, called the Back Gate was connected to the Fibber's beer garden, previously a place of solace and relaxation. Evidently the staff and customers of the Back Gate were born in a field, or at least sprung from the loins of something in a field since they were devoid of the DNA strands in their genetic structure responsible for closing doors. As a result, the harried and lost Fibber's customers were regularly treated to the dulcet tones of Boyzone and Five.

Generally speaking, the customers like to remember Fibber's thusly, some particularly deluded individuals still see it like this :

Upstairs we had the bar and the pool tables. You came in through the front door and to your left were the window tables while to the right was the bar. As you walked further into the bar there were cubicles, rife with scarred grafittid wood, while to the left were the pool tables. And at last you came to the dance floor, where the only light was from the glow of the beer and the occasional working light bulb in the ceiling.

Downstairs was the smaller bar,it hasn't changed very much except with the introduction of proper tables and tiles on the floor. There is a dance floor, smaller than the one upstairs, and there was a bar, but there are more tables there now.

There was a beer garden, and it was good, and then it was a building site, and that wasn't so good. Now its a beer garden again, but seeing as how you can hear the utter SHITE being played in the Back Gate next door, it isn't all that relaxing any more.

There has only really ever been three complaints from anyone in Fibber's

  1. The drink is vile, to which is said "generally yes, live with it"
  2. The music is crap, to which is said "fuck off somewhere else then" (althought occasionally the argument about goth music being moaney wank and metal being incomprehensible shit ensues)
  3. There are several fat bastards dancing violently out there, one of them broke my arm, to which is said, often with a tear in the eye "ah, but thats what makes it Fibber's"

Fibbers, as this writer recalls, had a wonderful friendly atmosphere (as long as you weren't in white jeans or Adidas gear) awful drink, and incredibly violent music. It was perpetually dark and the lighting was enough to give a brick an epileptic fit. You'd have to have experienced it to know what i'm writing about here, but while each element of the club sounded absolutely horrible (crap drink, violent fat people, etc) it was one of the best, nicest places you could go, to meet some of the finest human beings in Dublin.

--Silk

As an aside here, there is a mailing list in existence which is also called fibbers. It originally was centred around the club, until they went and "renovated".

fibbers (small f) the list is now a reasonably happy and busy alternative-geek-and-sort-of-a-community-list, like redbrick.babble with slightly more relevance. It's now subtitled "Discussion list for Fibbers regulars, irregulars, and others".

It's mentioned here cos a number of Brickies were instrumental in making the list what it is today - most notably Toaster, Wishkah and Silk, aided and abetted by Carrot and others.

If you'd like to join the list, mail fibbers-subscribe-request@listserv.heanet.ie with any message at all.

The list is mid-volume, and run mainly by gothwalk (me) in my more public guise as Drew Shiel.

--gothwalk

It still exists(fibbers, not the list) it's full of emo kids though these days. Twiggy, tulean and robby tend to hang out there.

Origionally from the Encyclopedia