By Brendan Foster
If you passed the murky black building at 232 William Street in Northbridge, littered with torn band posters on the walls you wouldn't give the place a second glance.
But this unassuming building – like others dotted around Perth – used to be a hedonistic haven for nightclub-goers...prior to to dating apps, social media and an orgy of porn online.
The Firm once thrived in the second floor of the old Melbourne Hotel.Credit: Photos: AHC McDonald & Brendan Foster
Back in the halcyon days of clubbing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, clubs were a social hub for sub-cultures, pint-size communities and people looking to hook up.
Every Friday and Saturday night in Perth, people would be dragged unwillingly (but mostly willingly) to dark, beer-soaked barns, where bungled attempts to get laid were an important, if daft, rite of passage.
Gobbles - and other Perth clubs - once attracted the cream of the country's talent.Credit: Lost Perth
The clubs were full of flamboyant characters – goths, punks, mods, bogans, sport-lovers and office workers hovering over dance floors and bars, reeking of sweat, Brut 33 and vomit.
Beers were a couple of bucks each and spirits might cost you double that on a bad night. Clubs weren't awash with drugs, but many were drowning in booze.
There was no drug addiction or depravity beyond drinking yourself into a mild coma.
So where are they all now?
The old cutting from the Daily News that triggered our interest.
After finding an old nightclub guide from the now defunct Daily News dating back to 1989, WAtoday decided to scour the streets of Perth and beyond to see how many (if any) of the 33 old haunts still existed.
Back in these clubs' heydays Bob Hawke was still the PM, the Eagles were a struggling Perth side in the VFL and the Dockers were still six years away from becoming the laughing stock of the AFL.
The Firm, Gobbles, Pinocchios, F. Scotts, Limbos, Freezer, the Underground and Tarantellas would not register to anyone born before dial-up internet, Mark Zuckerberg and smart phones, but for a generation or two of revellers these clubs were a precious respite from the bland, mundane ordinariness of our everyday working lives.
Remarkably three nightclubs have survived: The Hip-E Club, Connections and Club Bayview.
Some of the old venues have simply had a lick of paint, changed their names and continued life as a club. Club A is now the Matisse Beach Club, Tokyo Joes in Subiaco is Club Havana and the Freezer in Northbridge has become the Penthouse Club. The Hippodrome has been gutted and turned into a commercial space.
Others have been turned into apartments (Club Rumours), as hipsters and the urban elite crowd the inner city. Some have simply vanished off the map (Christies of Fremantle and Clouds in Adelaide Terrace).
Many now have a more interesting life: Alligators in North Perth is now a strip club, the indie hovel the Underground was bought by the Malaysian government and is used for student accommodation and the ladies-only nightclub in Belmont, Studio Seven, is home to an Asian restaurant.
The legendary Tarantellas in Fremantle was swallowed up by Notre Dame University and Club Freo De Janeiro is now a chemist.
I've had countless misfortunes and adventures in just about every single club in Perth and Fremantle.
The first time I went to Pinocchios as a nerdy 16-year-old Catholic boy and saw people locking tongues on the dance floor, I felt I'd entered the dark terrain only reserved for Sodom and Gorramah.
To say it country simple, like most folks I enjoyed it. Having once experienced this pleasure, I repeated it and repeated it and repeated it, weekend after weekend.
And while I normally find nostalgia and sentimentality repugnant, so many of my "firsts" were experienced in a club.
My first swig of beer was in a club; my first and only cigarette; my first short-lived sexual encounter and my first drug.
There were countless mornings of me throwing up down a dark alleyway or park after another failed attempt at seduction.
I had dozens of child-like crushes and unrealistic infatuations based around a pair of glasses, a band t-shirt or simply a flick of the hair.
I would fling myself onto the dance floor – arms flaying about and head bouncing around like a bobble head doll, very rarely making eye contact with the hundred or so other drunks.
And while there was something tragically sad about "looking for love" in these places, I had hundreds of nights of uninhibited exuberance.
Given the cultural diversity served up to us daily, standing in an ear-bleeding venue night after night would appear soulless and barren.
But so many friendships were formed in these incubatory bunkers that masqueraded as lunatic asylums with dance floors.
Lately, obits have been written about the demise of nightclubs due to draconian drinking laws, the extension of pubs hours, or the intrusion of hipsters.
Social commentators have pointed the finger squarely at Tinder for killing off clubs, and claimed people no longer want to go out to pick up because they can just pick up their phone.
But deep down I think - or at least hope - people will always go to clubs. Because despite many of us denying it, they can be places of unadulterated joy.