Spring quarter at UCSB normally signifies the warm weather coming back, lighter schedules, and of course day drinking. In my opinion, one of the best and most iconic places to day drink in Isla Vista is definitely Dublin’s.
Dublin’s is awesome if you are looking for a chill pub vibe. Decked out with pool tables, booths, dim lighting, and a full-sized bar with some iconic stools, Dublin’s is definitely the place for you. If that was not enough of a reason to go, Dublin’s is now doing weekly Tuesday night karaoke and often holds trivia events. So fun, right?
At the beginning of April, my final quarter at UCSB, I was faced with the question I knew was coming since my Freshman year. Do I do Dub’s Club? If you don’t know what Dub’s Club is, let me explain.
Dub’s Club is a UCSB tradition surrounding drinking basically every day at this local bar hot spot.
The challenge of Dubs Club is drinking 40 days out of the entire quarter at Dublin’s with the prize being your name immortalized on a plaque on the wall of the bar. To my surprise, if done right, this time commitment is more realistic than it seems. Let me break it down into some statistics.
Spring quarter is roughly 49 days of scholastic instruction and around 79 days total. If you started Dubs Club on the first day of school, you would have to go drink at Dublin’s around twice a week. Seems doable, right?
When I was finally considering doing Dub’s Club, it was around the third week of the quarter. This would mean that I had under 60 days to go to Dublins 40 times. The idea of committing to drinking this often seemed unrealistic to me. I was skeptical, but I humored my friend by continuing to listen.
The second component of Dub’s Club is purely financial. When you are going to drink at Dublin’s multiple times a week, that means you are dumping money into this activity multiple times a week. I definitely raised my eyebrows when I did the math.
The minimum amount of money you can spend individually at Dublins is around 5 dollars. This means that as a consumer you are spending roughly 200 dollars minimum in one quarter at one bar. Wow. That’s… a lot.
Despite the logistics of cost and time commitment, Dub’s Club is also known to be a large social commitment.
When I was still on the fence about joining, I turned to my friend and active Dub’s Club enthusiast, Kirstin Bui, who said she did it “… because I knew it was a social event and I wanted to get to see people every day before graduating. It also seemed like a lot of seniors did it as a tradition before leaving Isla Vista.”
She’s definitely right. It really does feel like everyone is doing it and taking it pretty seriously. I even had another friend who lost his Dubs Club punch card at Coachella and was utterly devastated.
Now writing this in week five of the quarter, I will admit I did not end up doing it. In the end, the idea of immortalized glory at Dublins was not enough for me to commit. While my friends were trying to persuade me to give up my morning coffee ($5) to make the commitment to Dubs Club ($5), at the end of the day I just could not do it. But I did and still do see the appeal. And while I am watching from the sidelines, I still enjoy going to Dublins and making memories by cheering on my friends.
So the question still stands, is Dubs Club really worth it? And honestly, you are just going to have to wait and find out for yourself!