From experience, using the bridge means pinging the admin on slack about it, and convincing them that it's even worth doing, and then being stuck in "The IRC Room", instead of the others rooms in which people are actually communicating.
https://github.com/wee-slack/wee-slack
I use it extensively for everyday Slack, where I don't care much about inline media and inline formatting. And for a text client, weechat + this plugin handle it pretty gracefully.