119 @ St James Hotel

119 @ St James Hotel

Friend has a farewell party and I’m a lucky 3rd invite. Unluckily the chosen event is 119, which has moved to St James Hotel, from the old location of Space Nightclub. Tonight is the opening night. So here we go!

119 @ St James Hotel Sydney
Assessment Time: 12:00AM – 04:00AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – 04:00AM
Lockout: None
Website: http://www.infinityproductionz.com (At time of writing the website is not operational yet)
Address: 114 Castlereagh St, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual ok. Hats ok. People here are wearing mostly collared shirts and dresses.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 Full Cover Charge. $20 on guestlist before midnight. Free before 10:30pm if on guestlist (usually only the first 10-15 people in line manage to get in before 10:30 for any of these type of promotions)
Guestlist: info@infinityproductionz.com
Inside: St James comprises of 3 levels but tonight’s event was only held on the top level. Enter via the middle level for the bar and chillout area, where there are tables and stools aplenty. Upstairs walk to the main carpeted area, where there is a wooden dancefloor to hold about 100 people. A DJ in the far corner. More lounges around the place to sit down and chat. Bar on the opposite end of the dancefloor.
Cloak Room: $5 per item.
Bar: $21.50 AUD for three shots of absinthe. The wait was about 5 minutes.
Music: Contemporary RnB tonight
Crowd: One of the last remaining places where every single person is asian. Usually there is one or two unlucky white people who either have yellow fever or accidentally walked into here, but none could be spotted. The crowd is a half mix of locals and internationals. You can spot the fobs by their fobby hairstyles.
Entertainment: No MC, but a photographer. My favourite photographer Will the Kill was here tonight. He’s surprised that there are so many non-local fobby asians here tonight.
Atmosphere: If wasn’t that good. Previously when Urban Agent promoted, it was packed out like sardines and hot as hell. Tonight, it wasn’t that packed. I would say the dancefloor was pretty much filled out the entire night, and the lounge seats were taken, but you see, the dancefloor and seats only took up half the entire floor space, there was lots of standing room, and, only a few were standing around. Despite this, there were enough people here to warrant staying here the rest of the night. Still, there was something in the air that didn’t make it a lively atmosphere, it was kind of muted – it wasn’t as wild as you would expect a crazy club to be. It might be that there wasn’t an MC.
Video: Walkthrough to the main room

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Timeline:
Recognized! Booyah!
It is always an ego boost to be recognized. I’m at the bar and a girl is giving me a strange look.
Her: you’re that guy with the website.
Me: YES! OMG!!!1 WOW!! OMG EVERYONE – SHE READS MY WEBSITE!! *points*
Her: Yes.
So we have this massive discussion on clubs and events. She is a promoter for another event. The whole time my friends assume I am trying to picking her up. Funny, but no. I have more evil plans for other girls…
Website Recognition count: 3.

Picking a girl up
I’m with a friend and one of her female friends. She has a boyfriend, but I was not foretold of this. Of course, me being me, I tried to get my grind on with no luck. So I figure, ok she doesn’t want to dance, so lets do something fun. I bent down, wrapped my arms around her knees and stood up, lifted her above the ground and I span around the dancefloor.

She is literally beating me and screaming at me. Haha ok, after a few seconds she is placed back down, and she runs about 5 metres to the corner off the dancefloor. It was like she saw a ghost. Wow. I had to apologize, and I was then told she had a boyfriend and that she loved him very much. I could still dance with her, but I was no longer allowed to touch her. LOL.. wow, I cannot even touch her – that is a request and a half! You are serious, right? Yes, she was.

Shot virginity broken for our dear friend
James: We are having shots. Want one?
Friend: Sure!
James: Here (hands over a shot)
Friend: What is this?
James: It’s called absinthe. (Friend: never heard of it) Try it.
Friend: ok!
You can imagine the look of disgust on her face. Oh its hilarious seeing people’s reactions to absinthe. She took the shot down entirely like a champion, but pretty much was in a funny state rest of the night.

Lots and lots of dancing – good that there is space.
The good thing about a club that is not at capacity is that you have room to dance and do your own thing. It was too dark for many people to notice our awesomeness though. I think near the end of the night we had some guys join us for a mini dance off but they were just men.

“We’re leaving the club now”
That is what the girls said as I keep hitting on them. 3 hours later when the club closed, I spotted them outside. Cold!! I’m James Tran, man.

Arrivederci
We did leave at closing time.

Recommendation
Hard to tell how this event will go in the future. I don’t know many events that have lasted the distance at St James Hotel. I know that I won’t be coming back here. I still hate paying $25 for entry, and despite what was mentioned earlier, the atmosphere just was not there for me to enjoy a good time. Just a few more people, some podiums and an MC.. and tonight may have been more decent. I only stayed as I met a lot of my friends here, who are probably sick of the other clubs on offer, lol. I have a feeling they will not be coming back here either.

119 @ St James Hotel – 4.5/10

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3 Responses to 119 @ St James Hotel (New Venue Grand Opening): Friday 16th April 2010

  1. dr_stoopid says:

    Not worth returning to. St James is excellent as a lounge – comfortable seating, reasonably priced drinks and food. As a club it isn’t as functional. The dancefloor is too small and the ventilation is terrible. The carpeting really creates a stuffy environment and traps a lot of the heat.

  2. yeeha says:

    oh no. trannie has another trash pic of me.
    there was room on the dance floor round 9 o’clock besides this dude that thought he had moves. that the rest of us were just watching while drinking.
    woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

    • James says:

      hahahahaha… i didn’t realise you were in the pic! always smashing as usual 🙂

      woooooo!

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