Enter the Dragon

Located on 64 South Great George's Street, The Dragon was one of two dedicated queer nightclubs in Dublin until its closure in 2015.

It was youth-focused and, at times, chaotic – mainly due to the club’s unusual layout.

Samuel Riggs moved from Carlow to Dublin in 2011. He first visited The Dragon with Trinity College’s Q-Soc, on whose committee he worked as Public Relations Officer.

“My first impression of it was ‘This place is a labyrinth.’ You used to go through the front door, and go through, like, a corridor, and there were all these doors going off of it, and you had to go up one stairs, where everyone was congregating on the little platform, and you went up another stairs, and that was the actual dance floor, which was always just so wet.

“Yeah, my first memories were, ‘I’m drunk, I’m never going to find my way out of this place, this is insane.’”

The club’s unusual design was a often bone of contention for many of its patrons and performers. Philip Keogh, better known to the Dublin queer scene as his drag persona Victoria Secret, hosted numerous events, including Deal or No Deal and Dragged Up.

“It was one of the most awful performance spaces you could imagine,” he says. “It wasn’t exactly the easiest space to work around. They made the most with what they had, because when you’ve got such a narrow, long building, it’s very easy for that building not to have any atmosphere in it.”

Echoing Keogh’s sentiments is Cormac Cashman, who ran the queer student night PrHomo out of the Dragon every Thursday.

“There was a seating area up the front, done out in this tacky Eddie Rocket’s style red, the rest of the venue was kind of a different red that you might find in a burlesque venue. The DJ was facing the staircase that took you upstairs, so you couldn’t really dance in front of them.

“The DJ would then turn towards the dance floor, but directly in their eye line was the ceiling for upstairs, so it was just a weird, structurally-strange, place.”

Having the stage above the bar meant many patrons had to crane their necks to see performers. However, the performers that The Dragon drew in were fresh and exciting.

Noted Dublin performer and Ireland’s Got Talent semifinalist Paul Ryder viewed the performance space as a rite of passage for queer entertainers: “As drag queens, as performers, I think we’re just thrust into a situation sometimes and told ‘That’s your stage, there you go.’

“I’ve performed on beer crates, I’ve performed on unbelievable stages, so that’s part of your art, and that’s part of your internship in this world, to get out and entertain the crowd in whatever way possible."

While the space was difficult to perform in, it often encouraged creativity, as Ryder elaborates: “You look at the likes of legends like Pixie Woo who climbed the bars for the first time… Then you go to the latter end of the scale, where you’ve got Shannon O’Hara who fell off.”

Shannon O’Hara has entered drag infamy for attempting to climb onto the scaffolding, only to fall off the stage and onto the audience below. At the time of writing, the video of her fall has been viewed over 14,000 times online.

“From what I hear, even RuPaul has seen that video,” Keogh says. “The most interesting part was that she got up and kept lip-syncing even after falling.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if that bitch is in the south of France living her best life, being like, ‘Do you remember Shannon O’Hara,’ as she smokes a cigarette and wears a beret,” jokes Ryder.

Ryder created The Ringmaster's Drag Race, which was a staple of The Dragon when it was in its infancy. In its second year, he was asked who he would want for the final. After toying with the idea of inviting reality stars, he eventually contacted the manager of RuPaul’s Drag Race legend Jujubee.

“She was only delighted to come, and it was funny because the fee that was charged back then is nowhere near the fee that is charged now,” he says.

“And we had never heard of an American drag queen coming over to Europe. These were people we could only ever see online or on social media or through a television show we watched at one o’clock in the morning and we had her in the building and it was such an experience. The Dragon was the first ever club to book a Drag Race queen in Europe.”

From then on, The Dragon regularly booked performers from around the world. This included the likes of Drag Race stars Willam, Carmen Carrera (who stripped naked on the club’s stage), Alaska Thunderfuck, Shangela, Latrice Royale, Jinkx Monsoon and Michelle Visage, as well as pop acts such as Little Mix, Neon Jungle and Alexandra Burke.

“We had DWV for one of their last gigs, and on that show I fell off a wrecking ball and broke my wrist,” remembers Keogh. “My dancers had to take my boots off at the end of the night so I could go to A&E.”

The Dragon also helped foster home-grown Irish queer talent. Ryder elaborates: “When I started, there was no real room for something different. Everybody wanted to see the usual drag they saw on the circuit. It was the place where my drag kind of began, because I had just started my own style of drag, and it was new to the Irish scene, especially trying to attempt that club kid gender fuck. The Dragon for me was a blank canvas of, ‘Okay, you’ve been given this opportunity so you can try anything.’

”It was a place of trial and error with regard to what was working on the scene and what was new and fresh and different.”

With a strong youth focus with events like the weekly student night PrHomo, The Dragon is a place remembered most fondly by queers who came of age in the climate of marriage equality and Repeal.

On this, Samuel Riggs says, “I was like - finally I can relax into my identity, and The Dragon was a huge part of that.

“It was space where you could be a little more sexual, and it was where I really cut my teeth on Public Displays of Affection for the first time. And that was really important.”

Photographer Eleanor Rogers visited The Dragon a number of times in 2014. She had her first ever kiss with a girl there.

“My class in college were going out to D2 and it was over 19’s,” she recalls. “Me and another guy in my class, we lost everyone. I had been having a pretty rough time starting college because I was struggling with my sexuality, and it was at the stage where it was hanging on my shoulders. I hadn’t come out to anyone. I remember blurting it out.”She continues: “The guy I told wasn’t even a close friend, but he was gay, so I felt comfortable telling [him]. He said we should go to The Dragon. I was weary at first and was like ‘No,’ but he said, ‘You never know, something might arise that you can test it.’ We made our way to the Dragon and it was like entering an underground world that felt wrong but right.

“I remember a girl was eyeing me up. It literally felt like taking the plunge and we kissed. It was one of the most intense things ever. I’ll always remember that night so fondly, from talking to so many people in the smoking area about my confusing feelings, and everyone being so chill and not batting an eyelid.

“It was so strange for a country bumpkin being in this world for first time.”

The Dragon’s closure marked the end of an era. It was the loss of one of the few dedicated queer spaces in the city.

“Some of us mourn that place,” says Ryder. “The night it closed I was home at one o’clock because I couldn’t hold in the tears and I cried. It was the beginning of the end of some queer culture because we were losing venues, and club nights started to close down. I think we’re beginning to pick up and I think we’re a fresher culture than some cities, but it was a hard time when it closed down.”

In the years since The Dragon’s closure, Dublin has indeed seen a surge in club nights. Although there are now fewer dedicated queer spaces in the city, the club scene has found ways to thrive.

“It’s important that we have spaces to come together, but the venue isn’t what’s important about it,” says Cormac Cashman. “What’s important about it is the people who are there, and the memories you create. It’s not necessarily tied to the venue, but to the queer community itself.”