only threw this party 4 u
3 years of running HONEYPOT, a club night and community for gay girls and friends
On Friday, July 15, 2022, we threw our first HONEYPOT party. All day, our group chats were alive with buzz, good luck texts, and last-minute pleas for guestlist. My brain operated in a similar swirling fashion, playing out every possible scenario in which it all went wrong. What if everyone hated the music? What if the party got gate-crashed by one of the TikTok trolls who left homophobic comments? What if, despite the event being sold out for two weeks, no one showed up?
On the DART into town, all dolled up with one place to go, I practically vibrated with anticipation. We had done all the work: pooled money from our savings to cover the venue rent, posted the party on Instagram, covered town with our stickers and posters. Now, we just had to wait. There’s a photo of me in the green room before doors opened, taken by Niamh. When I see that photo now, I feel tender toward that 24-year-old version of myself, so worried about making sure everyone else had the perfect night that I forgot that I was allowed to enjoy it, too.
I floated around those few hours in a daze, chain-smoking away my nerves, thanking people for coming, watching the venue fill up with friends and friends-of-friends and total strangers. Megan was headlining, one of the first people who encouraged us to start HONEYPOT in the first place. We danced on stage with her to the final song, Belinda Carlisle’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth. The next day, hungover and bleary-eyed, I went through my camera roll with the rigour of a scientist, as if checking for evidence that it actually happened. When we got the film photos back from Niamh, we marvelled that we didn’t know there were so many dykes like us in Dublin. They had always been there, of course. But now there was a space for them, for us, to dance. I went to Merrion Square the day after our first party, lay on the grassy hill in the sun, and closed my eyes, feeling like a significant shift had happened in my life.
There’s so much that I want to say about the past three years, too much to fit neatly into one concise story. I could talk about how I went into the office I worked in at the time and told them about our idea; how my work friends helped me brainstorm names, designed our logo, and stuck HONEYPOT stickers on their laptops. I could talk about how so many of our collaborators are people we met in the Tengu smoking area, people we later hired to play at our parties, or make visuals, or shoot and edit videos. I could talk about the airport pick-ups for international headliners and the post-party smokes after the club closes. I could talk about the friends that took trains and planes to come and party with us. I could talk about the big Pride blowouts and the giddy hunt for the afters. I could talk about the stress; the bitchy DMs, the slurs that were scrawled on our first photos, the patronising comments from people who seemed committed to not taking us seriously. And I could talk endlessly about the magic; dancing up the front with my friends during an unforgettable set, DJing for the first time at our Valentine’s party, getting that first big Mixmag feature.
Like any worthwhile creative endeavor, it has been intense, gratifying, exhausting, terrifying, life-affirming, and fun, often all at once. Our lives have changed a million times over since that summer of 2022. The whole time, HONEYPOT was there, humming ambiently in the background like the way the club sounds from the distance, giving us stuff to do, ideas to dream up, and endless reasons to throw a party.
So much of my twenties have been spent on dancefloors. I love how immersive the club is—the lights and fog, the music loud enough to rattle something loose in your chest, the unexpected thrill when the DJ pulls out something totally unexpected. It pulls you out of your head and into your body. And it’s where so many of life’s dramas unfold: friendships, crushes, breakups, revelations, moments of euphoria and connection and self-actualisation. I’ve met some of my closest friends through HONEYPOT, people who I tell all my secrets to, who know exactly what to say to make me laugh, who feel like family. At my birthday this year, watching Emma and Pauline on the decks, I looked around and counted how many of my friends I’d met through HONEYPOT, queerness, and clubbing: almost everyone. Naturally, they were all shaking ass and going mental.
People love to complain about Dublin nightlife, and they’re not wrong. Our licensing laws are a joke and there’s so little institutional support for clubs or creative work. It makes projects like this really hard to pull off. But it’s not impossible. You just have to care—about reimagining the possibilities for a city, about building community, about art and weirdness and having some fucking fun. HONEYPOT brought me back to Dublin at a time when I was thinking of leaving. It made me realise that the city is full of creative, passionate, curious, silly, adventurous, clued-in, caring people. You’ll usually find them out dancing.
HONEYPOT wouldn’t exist without Emma, the same way that the version of me that exists now wouldn’t, either. Without them, the emails wouldn’t get answered, the invoices would be paid late, and the lineups would have way less sonic cohesion. They’re type A in the best possible way, with a big genius brain and the confidence and energy to make literally anything happen. I’m very lucky to be one half of this team. And so lucky to be a lesbian!
Cheers to three years. Thanks for dancing with us x
 | A guest post by
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love love love! HONEYPOT forever 💛