Da Vinci's in Westport was often viewed as a "posers" pub in the 80's, but I didn't find it too bad at all, it was quite trendy I'd say.
As the name suggests, they were referring to Leonardo da Vinci and so they had an artists palette as part of their logo as well as examples of his artwork on the walls (prints, not originals of course!).
The ground floor had a bar and a small lounge area on a raised floor.
Upstairs was the main attraction though, with it's small dancefloor with DJ's playing regularly. It could get really crowded at times, but there were some great lively nights to be had there.
A lot of revellers often ended up having it as the last pub on their pub crawl before hitting the nearby discos!.
The colour shot above shows the location of Da Vinci's - the double-roofed white building in the corner of the car-park. Pic taken in 1982.
The black & white images were both taken in the upstairs area in 1981.
Photos by DC Thomson.
Happy, happy, happy days.
ReplyDeleteRemember hearing Blue Monday here for the very first time. Got up to dance and thought it would never stop!
Loved Da Vinci's in all it's incarnations (maybe with the exception of it's Pink Elephant phase) right up to it's criminal demolition a couple of years back and we had to say goodbye to The Westie.
Sniff.
Originally Da Vinci's had a small balcony affair linking the two floors. I used to have to DJ on the ground floor next to the bar which ran along the back wall. The equipment that Frank (Esposito) had at the time could only be described as prehistoric. Around 1980 Frank decided to refurbish the place, filled the hole in and created The Studio upstairs along with its raised dance floor. This time I managed to persuade Frank to buy some decent kit and the once re-opened the place went balistic. I was the resident Dj there for around 2 years. I remember turning up for work and the q was all the way from the door and on to the hawkhill. At its peak folk alledgidly came from Aberdeen and Edinburgh. It was also a favoured haunt of Billy McKenzie, Paul Quinn and occasionaly Edwyn Collins. I still bump into people who remember it fondly and some who thought it was full of posers. However it was one of the few clubs where you could play New Order 'Temptation' with Ami Stewart 'Knock on Wood' or Bauhaus 'Kick in the Eye' with Kid Creole 'Annie I'm not your Daddy'. There were some great Dundee Dj's around at the time not least Dave Calikes and Phil Jordan, as well as The Sweeney's, Phil Blacklaw etc etc.
ReplyDeleteRemember Keith Ramsey as dj at Da Vincis.The dance floor had a full length mirror and was one of the first places where blokes would dance on their own.My old mate mate from DC's,Neil Morris was always on the dance floor.They closed the balcony because to many pints were accidentally spilt over the patrons below.
ReplyDeleteUsed to go here every Saturday with my friend and stand most of the night with a vodka and lime because we had to save our money for the Fountain Disco or Fat Sam's....loved this place apart from one night in 1985 it was wrecked upstairs with a fight and I ended up in casualty with a 5inch cut from a thrown beer tumbler ....met my hubby here and 35 years later the rest is history!!
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