Good Friends
Bad Habits

The most important contribution to the success of gigs at The Lower Deck was its proximity to an easy public drinking spot, which is to say, anywhere along the Grand Canal. The canal is good. It's old Dublin. It was built over a span of 50 years by our grandads' great grandads. The canal is hearty. It’s vintage. It’s for everyone. It's so easy to get caught up in Dublin as representing Ireland as a whole, that sometimes you need something to remember there's life outside this place. The canal is the city's connection to the Shannon, to the rest of the country, to the people. Of course, it's for the people. It's for the lads on cans, the girls on the town, and the kids, my God it's for the kids, and a nightlight for addicts, even the sneaky after-work pints with the D4 bastards. The canal is all of ours. The canal is the city's compass, of right and wrong, and north and south. Find the canal and you'll know where to go. The ghost of ol' Paddy Kavanagh is more than happy to offer some direction. 

Mostly, what would happen is we would all head out in the early evening, slightly too early, and sit along rotting wooden walkways, sipping cheap cider and sugary vodka as the sun passed beneath freshly-built apartment blocks. When it came time to go see the bands we liked, we would head inside to the timber-walls of The Lower Deck and we would watch the bands we liked, but only the bands we liked. The atmosphere among friends sitting by murky water as it lapped among the reeds was too good to pass up for anything but the best. Thankfully, we saw a lot of the best. Adebisi Shank released their first album in The Lower Deck and I got soaked in champagne. Ran's last ever gig was there too and they dedicated their last song to me -- the highest possible honour a human can achieve. There was even a crazy Patrick's Day show with Kidd Blunt that involved a lot of crowd surfing in a space whose ceiling you could almost reach up and touch. 

Memories of The Lower Deck are vivid, though pretty fuzzy. Its heyday occurred during the very small portion of my life where I actually drank. But, much like the fire in your belly after a naggin mixed with half of a bottle of Oasis Blackcurrant downed in the cooling Dublin night and all in one go, everything I remember is warm, if a little blurry around the edges. 

Happy hijinx of boys playing games, daring each other to jump in the rancid needle-floor canal water, obsessing over who liked which girl and when and what the hell and I told you I liked her, hummed songs turning to warm vapour as you exit through the main door into the orange tinge of tungsten streetlight, tshirts to jackets as the sun sets, jackets back to tshirts as the bands play and the room heats up and sweat sheds over shared drinks and bites of pizza, an unprovoked Latvian who punched Rob in the chin and kept walking, running for the 10 o'clock bus on an early night, running for the last bus on most others, or walking calmly into town for a NiteLink or a night cap or a wilder night in general, dancing in Doran's 'til death or ‘til dawn (whichever came second), finding a whole packet of unopened Marlboro Reds and offering them to everyone around you because everyone likes a guy with cigarettes to share, talking to girls you thought were attractive and them being uninterested within five minutes, talking to friends and them being uninterested within two minutes because you kept talking about the girl you were just talking to, not talking because your voice hurt from shout-talking so much over the music, praying to God that your phone battery would last just one more text to find out where everyone else is, wondering why you didn't run for last bus, or run faster for last bus because the good bits were always the earlier bits, the bits before people got messy drunk and cried over hurt feelings and broken relationships, and how they say it's over for good this time, not just maybe will-they-won't-they like last time but honest to goodness over-over I swear, and then next week when it comes time to make plans and you get that one text from Rob, and of course Rob, because Rob was the one to text us all, and the phone lit up and said "Cans by the canal?" and before the backlight could even think of a dim, you had already replied, yeah, sure, what time, where will I meet ya, who's playing, who's going, any plans for after, and the loop continued over and over until one weekend it just didn't, and everyone was in college, or London, or some fucking dreadful combination of both, and ah jaysis wudja luk, it's been ten fucking years man, how've you been, yeah, alright, grand, no complaints, how about yourself, yeah, good, and that's the extent of the conversation, until you bring up the old days, down by the canal, cans and the good stuff, and chats, those chats in particular, man, and then you're right back where you used to be, together, connected, friends.