‘A loss for culture, another win for corporate’: Partygoers on Dublin nightclub Izakaya’s closing night

At 11pm on Saturday night, the queue to enter Izakaya Basement had already wrapped around the corner of the Hoxton Hotel in Dublin city centre well before the nightclub opened its doors for the final time.While excitement was building, the buzz was dampened by the fact that this would be the “last dance”. The closure came one month after Yamamori Izakaya, the nightclub’s owner that operates other Japanese-inspired clubs, bars and restaurants in Dublin, came to a “mutually beneficial agreement” with Trinity Hospitality, the leaseholder of the neighbouring Hoxton Hotel.The two parties were involved in High Court legal proceedings earlier this year, in which representatives of the Hoxton Hotel sought an injunction to stop Yamamori hosting late-night DJ events in Izakaya Basement.READ MOREAlthough the basement nightclub closed its doors for the final time at 2.30am in the early hours of Sunday, the restaurant upstairs will stay open until the end of the year. “We hope to be able to share the next chapter soon,” its owners said in a farewell statement last week.Katie Gilbert was heading to the nightclub after spending some time on Drury Street with friends. Izakaya closing down “just feels like a massive f**k you to the people who are just trying to have some fun,” she said.“It means more than just Izakaya closing down,” she went on. “Rave culture in Dublin ... it’s a bit commercialised and that’s not what it [should] be about.” She said she connected with many of her friends in Dublin through the city’s rave culture and underground DJs. “The way they come up is through grassroots venues like Izakaya.”“It’s another loss for rave culture and another win for corporate,” she said.Drey Cahill had just finished playing a DJ set in the Pawnshop, across the road from Izakaya, before joining some friends a few doors down at Dublin Ink Factory. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Wigwam, Pawnshop, Turk’s Head,” he said, naming establishments on the street, “you could just walk by Izakaya and have a buzz”.“For me it was the place to go to on the way home, I liked it for its randomness, there was no definite kind of vibe but there was always a high-energy buzz,” he continued. “I’m actually going to pop in just before I go home – as always,” he said with a laugh.“It’s sad to just see these venues go,” he said. “These venues are a good middle ground for people who don’t have a place to share genres ... Izakaya was a nice place for all mixes of people to have a drink and have a buzz in.”“We have a problem with culture not being given the space to express itself in this country,” Cahill said, “if people don’t show they care about their culture in Dublin, this will keep happening – there’ll be nothing left.”Jack Cleary is also a DJ and has played at Izakaya many times. “From Izakaya’s point of view, 100 per cent they had to give in, they don’t have the money that that hotel has to tie up things in legal proceedings,” he said of the abandoned High Court case.As a farewell message to the much-loved venue, he said: “You’ve done the right thing, you’ve made thousands of people happy, you gave us a platform to express ourselves and we are forever grateful. Well done.”