Justin Hynes tries to get to grips with the world of modified cars
There's lot of baseball caps in here. A helluva lot of sportswear. A lot of hoodies, athletic waterproofs, box-fresh sneakers - in fact, the RDS veritably crackles with the static electricity generated by the movement of a thousand or so track suits through its echoing halls.
And echoing around at the moment is a cacophonous clash of music that painfully merges what these days people aberrently call R&B and the sort of hip-hop that usually involves men in oversize jeans climbing out of 'pimped' Hummers and into the arms of swooning bikini-clad girls recently risen from loungers beside an infinity pool the size of Lake Michigan.
What's it all for? The clash of style, music and attitude should give a little away. This , is 100% Modified, Ireland's response to MTV's Pimp My Ride, a national gathering of people who sucked up The Fast and Furious and embraced the notion of tearing apart 10-year-old Micras and turning them into a single litre of 'muscle' car. Me, I'm more The Past It and (just mildly) Curious.
Indeed, I'm uncomfortably the oldest person here - and I'm hardly ancient. Apart from me, the only people here over the age of 30 are the bewildered security personnel, all of whom look as if they're expecting the breakout of either an E-fuelled rave or a Glock-wielding gangsta turf war at any moment.
And that seems to be the whol vibe of modified cars - a lot of bravado juvenile machismo, a desperate desire to be 'urban' instead of suburban and a large dollop of crass sexism, with all the companies displaying their wares also displaying the wares of promotional girls dressed as the 'hos' the wide-eyed, geeky boys here wish they were.
But that's on the surface. First appearances can be deceptive and cruelly stereotypical. Talk to any of the guys (and it's mostly men, though there are a sprinkling of women involved) and it becomes apparent that most of them couldn't give a hoot about gangstas, homies and hos. Indeed, most snort in derision at the mention of either Pimp My Ride or The Fast and the Furious. Most here just like cars.
Paul Cunningham is a 25-year-old modifier from Tyrrelspass, Co Westmeath. His brother runs a mod shop called FC Autostyling. Paul has brought a 1999 1.6 litre Toyota Corolla GR6 to the show. It's not your average 'modified' motor, the sort seen sporting a neon strip underneath, a body kit applied with Blu-Tack and some tatty alloys bought at a bring-and-buy sale.
Every panel on Paul's Corolla has been cut, moulded, re-shaped or replaced. There are new brakes, suspension mods, a full body kit, a full interior re-trim in candy apple red leather, a sound system so big it look as if it was last employed by The Who. Okay, I think it's gaudy but the work is beautiful, from the '02 Subara Impreza front lights cut to fit the front of the Toyota to the hand-stitched leather trim covering the dashboard.
The price? Paul reckons it cost around €25,000, not including the purchase price of the car, to put this together.
"That's the criteria," he says. "Every panel has to be different. If you've changed almost everything about the car then I would call it modified. If someone's gone to that trouble, then they deserve some respect."
But despite the dedication shown by many within the sub-culture, respect from without is hard to come by.
A large element of this surely comes from the culture's leering sexism that sees all its fan magazines peppered with 'glamour' photographs of naked girls.
But despite this, modifying does attract women, even if they were hard to find at 100% Modified. After a long search, though, Claire Joy's 2.0 litre Focus hoves into view.
A 23-year-old Cork woman, Claire says she was bitten by the modifying bug when she was 17.
"I guess it was because I used to watch rallying on television. From there it was onto modifying and I checked out Cruise Ireland (www.cruiseirl.com) and the interest grew from there."
But what about the pastimes' dubious attitudes to women?
"I just ignore all that. It doesn't really bother me. Sure, most guys ask me whether the car is mine or think it's my boyfriend's but that doesn't bother me. It is a bit of a boys' club but there are some women involved and the numbers are growing."
Andy Batten is deputy editor of Flush Bus, an Irish magazine dedicated to modified cars. Despite the magazine's laddish editorial style and the ubiquitous girly photos, he says they are keen to involve more women in modifying.
"In the first six or seven issues we had no women involved," he says. "But in the last few months we've featured three cars modified by women. And they're good too. They're often less tacky than the guys' cars. They've got better taste."
However, the biggest issue facing the culture is the perception of it as a pastime which kills through excessive speed and racing.
"There is a problem," admits Paul Cunningham. "The guys who think it's great to tear around making a lot of noise. But the truth is that a lot of the real modified cars here weren't even driven here, they were low-looaded in. You can't drive a lot of these cars fast. They're lowered and the roads here are too bad. There is a real difference between boy-racers and people who modify cars."
Claire agrees. "You do get followed by the Guards a lot. They just see the type of car and think "boy racer". But I have no interest in racing. I like to have a fast car but you can't use it here. The roads are too bad and there are too many Guards. You will get caught."
However, not all of those involved are so law-abiding.
Last month Flush Bus reported on a night out with street-racers. Racing on emtpy stretches of road in the city or in the Dublin mountains, the magazine's reporter spoke of speeds of 150mph being reached to secure winnings of thousands of euro.
"It does go on and is growing," says Andy Batten. "The Guards don't seem to be doing anything about it. It's highly illegal and we don't condone it but is part of the scene. We felt we should document it."
Inherently, there is nothing wrong with modified cars or the people who modify them. But just as US hod-rodding - built around a street-racing youth culture in the 1950s - eventually embraced style over murderous content, modified cars would seem to need an attitude adjustment.
The mix of power, macho posturing and soft porn encourages the sort of daft on-road behaviour that fills accident reports. Concentrate on the design and not the destruction and a sub-culture that to outsiders still seems the automtive equivalent of Roy 'Chubby' Brown may just go mainstream.