Max HeyraudThis Pride, and every Pride, it’s essential to honour the legacy of Sides DC, the queer club that changed everything.
Opened in 1986 on Dame Street, Sides DC wasn’t just a safe space for Dublin’s LGBTQ+ community; it was the city’s first true dance club, a crucible for underground culture long before it was branded that way. In pre-decriminalisation Ireland, it became a radical refuge where identity, politics, and music collided on the dance floor.
Sides is widely credited with introducing house and techno to the Irish capital, years before either sound found footing in the mainstream. It brought in music that was raw, physical, and liberating, soundtracking a space that moved queer nightlife out of the shadows and into something defiantly future-facing.
Its influence still ripples through Ireland’s club scene today, making it not just a historical footnote, but a foundational chapter in how Irish dance culture was born.
Located where the Trinity Hotel now stands, the venue was once a refuge for Dublin’s queer community, a purpose-built, high-quality space that promised safety, expression, and release. Spearheaded by local nightlife figure John Nolan, the club drew inspiration from the freewheeling energy of New York’s gay scene, with Nolan having spent time immersed in the States’ queer scene circuit and big-room party culture. He was no outsider; he was part of The Family, Dublin’s underground royalty.
Backing came from Cyril O’Brien, an investor with serious queer nightlife pedigree. O’Brien would go on to operate The Gym, a hugely successful gay sauna, and later The George, now an institution, both just metres away on Dame Lane.
The club was defined by its early residents, like Liam Fitzpatrick and Martin McCann helped establish the club’s house-forward identity, drawing from the sounds of New York and Chicago while building something distinctly Irish. As the club evolved, a new wave of influential selectors took over the booth, figures like Johnny Moy, Liam Dollard, Billy Scurry, Dave Hales, and Joe McHugh, all of whom would go on to define Dublin’s wider club culture.
Sides DC arrived at a pivotal, uneasy moment in Irish life. The country was still emerging from a devastating heroin epidemic, and earlier that year, the nation had voted against legalising divorce, a stark reminder of the Catholic Church’s enduring grip on public morality. The troubles in the North raged on, with political and sectarian violence still deeply felt across the island. Meanwhile, Ireland was mired in recession, marked by mass unemployment, inflation, and record levels of youth emigration. For many, leaving the country felt like the only viable future.
Sides was a portal to another world in an Ireland defined by repression, poverty, and control. It was an act of resistance and radical care, opening its doors at a time when being openly queer in Ireland still came with real danger. Within those walls, Dublin’s queer community found more than just sound systems and strobe lights. They found freedom, safety, and joy, things that felt rare, even revolutionary, in 1980s Ireland.
For comparison, Sides DC kind of felt like Dublin’s version of Manchester’s The Haçienda, a boundary-breaking space where straight and gay men and women, people from both the North and South of Ireland, and even from opposite sides of Dublin’s class divide could come together under one roof. United by dance music and, notably, ecstasy, it became a rare common ground in a deeply divided country.
This was one of the first spaces where MDMA hit like a train. “Then all of a sudden, there were yokes there, you know what I mean? That’s how the Dublin crowd got into it, and that’s when it all changed for me,” Liam Dollard recalled in the documentary Notes On Rave. The impact was seismic. In a conservative Catholic country, Sides didn’t just introduce house and techno, it offered an entirely new way of being.
The cultural weight of Sides DC still lingers decades on. Its legacy isn’t just written into Irish club history, it lives in the memory of everyone who passed through its doors. In a Facebook post, Dublin DJ Mark Kavanagh reflected: “The atmosphere was so unparalleled and unprecedented that the hairs on my neck still stand up thinking about it now, almost quarter of a century later.”
“Sides didn’t just change our world, it changed the world full stop.”
