My friend is here tonight, and I haven’t been, so I take M and Daz with me in the quest to not only visit all the clubs in Sydney but also to go forth in the search for the best chocolate ice cream in Sydney, haha, so here we go!

Dancefloor @ Coogee Bay Hotel Sydney

Saturdays @ Coogee Bay Hotel
Assessment Time: Midnight – 03:00AM
Opening Hours: Unknown – 03:00AM
Lockout: None
Website: www.coogeebayhotel.com.au
Address: Coogee Bay Rd, Coogee, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual was ok tonight. Sneakers and hats allowed. Half the crowd wore t-shirts, the other half, casual collars. Only a handful of people including us were nicely dressed. I certainly felt very well dressed as I walked in tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free tonight, but these guys have the fingerprint scanners installed. I get worried when a venue has this technology as it would only mean violence has occured here before.
Guestlist: None tonight. It was a regular Saturday, and the Coogee Bay Hotel does its own promotions.
Occurence: Every Saturday bar special events where entry fee applies.
Inside: The actual club is just one section of the whole complex – similar to how The Albion is setup. Walk in and the live band room is on the right, sports bar on the left. Keep walking in to enter the large beer garden at the back, and bistro on the left. On the right is the club. In the walkthrough video below, we walk from the entrance straight into the club. The clubbing room itself has a wooden dancefloor to hold about 100-150 people comfortably. Some lounges around the surrounding carpeted areas. It feels a little bare, but the whole place is dark, so you eventually forget about the barebones setup. 
Cloak Room: None
Bar: Did not buy from the bar tonight. However throughout, the line was about 2 people deep. Expect at least a 5 minute wait.
Music: Non-Commercial House, Dubstep, Rnb/pop mashup.
Crowd: Mostly young people here. Teenagers and early 20’s. A handful of people in their 30’s as well, who have come for a bit of a dance after dinner I guess. Pretty much everyone here was caucasian, and probably locals. I would not imagine a non-local making the trek all the way out here on a regular night.
Entertainment: No MC, no podiums. Just the DJ and dancefloor, and some UV lights
Atmosphere: It was busy throughout the whole night. It never got too packed, so you could always have room to dance. Sometimes it got close to squishy but nothing to worry about – you could dance somewhere else – the dancefloor was large enough to accommodate – people danced on surrounding carpet areas as well. Pretty dark in some places around the floor but lighting keeps the floor itself well lit.
Evictions: I saw 2 dudes in total kicked out for being drunk. One was ready to start a fight on the dancefloor. The other was throwing TAB betting sheets all over the sports room and pretended nothing happened when questioned by security – paper littered all around him – hilarious.
Video: Walkthrough

Timeline:
Mission Dirty Sanchez Failed
The very first thing (after finding the dancefloor) was to look for the famous Coogee Bay Hotel chocolate ice cream to eat and report back on. Unfortunately we arrived after the bistro was closed. Booo!

People are.. friendly
Only in these white clubs do you see heaps of people making out. The girls here are generally friendlier than compared to the asian clubs.

Do they love asians or don’t they?
Being in Coogee Bay, everyone here is basically not used to seeing asians. You would probably be assumed to be a tourist if you were an asian, seen here.
I’ve just walked into the live band room. Immediately a table of 4 guys see me and (assuming because I am an asian or that im well dressed, or both) they immediately cheer and point at me, presumably for my bravery to come down here. Hi fives, and lots of “yeahs!” and “woos!”, then we all shook hands and parted company. I felt like buying them a beer, but I really didn’t want to pick guys up.

Keep walking. A man is front of me. His friend sees me and tells his friend “Get out of the way, Jackie Chan is behind ya!”. A joke, I took it light heartedly, but I wasn’t quite sure in the tone of his voice if he was joking or being deadpan serious. I look around, and the only non-caucasian was my buddy M who was just following me. The band wasn’t playing, and just before we left, they started pumping out some RnB over the speakers! I wanted to dance, but then had a look at the menacing crowd. Sure they were probably very friendly, but they definitely were not dancers. We didn’t dance.

Dancefloor: M and I dancing. Drunk guys come up and Hi 5 and we do lots of stupid dance. Definitely friendly and cool.

With a coogee local! That is not how he normally looks.

Conclusion: This place is friendly for all natios. Way more than The Mean Fiddler, even though I liked it there.

The short man
There was a short man who looked amish but had a brown beard, and he danced funny. For a good 5 minutes he stood there pointing his hand in the air, his finger tapping an invisible button. He was surprisingly dressed well like us. You can see him as part of the 360 video below:

M lost his phone M lost his phone, assumed it was stolen. A week later, staff member called to say someone had handed in the phone. His Nokia was not steal-worthy at all. Yet another reason not to get an iPhone.

Don’t trust a friend you met tonight
Daz has met a girl, who was the only asian girl in the whole joint, and she asks to put her bag down with us. So we put the bag with a dude who knew one of my other friends. Told him to take care of it. When the club closed, bag was missing. Dude has gone MIA. She starts to cry – her passport and all her money was in that bag. I didn’t have the number of this dude with the bag.

The next 2 hours was spent consoling this random person. She kept telling us that we could keep the money as long as she gets her passport back – as if we would steal stuff! She didn’t even want to go to police, as she assumed she had to bribe them to get anything done – thats how it operated where she came from. We are pretty lucky. anyway, harsh lesson learnt – use a cloak room. Oh wait, this place didn’t have one. Lesson is, don’t ever put your little purse down.

Post Mortem
Next day, it was revealed that when the club closed, the dude who was meant to take care of the bag forgot he was meant to take care of the bag. He thought it was a strangers bag thinking that the lost bag would be reported lost to police (it was), he dumped the bag on the sofa instead of handing it in to bar staff. He didn’t want police on his back. What a douchebag. A few days later, the bag was handed back to the backpacker, minus all the cash.

Arrivederci
We are ceremoniously kicked out at closing time. The sports bar room remained open if you wanted to keep on drinking.

Recommendation
A generally friendly crowd and good dancing atmosphere and music to break some moves to. However the night was ruined with the lost bag and Ms lost phone. People are so unfreakingreliable. I’m sure this place has its merits though I probably won’t come back here – it does take a while to get here from the city.

Saturdays @ Coogee Bay Hotel: 5.5/10