Crowd upstairs early in the night - Velvet Fridays

Velvet Fridays @ The Vault
Assessment Time: 11:00PM – 02:15AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – 03:00AM
Lockout: Unsure. however there is an internal 2AM lockout to go downstairs again, unless you are getting your stuff from the cloakroom.
Address: 122 Pitt St Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.vaulthotel.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.velvetfridays.com
Occurrence: Every Friday
Outside Line: On arrival, there were probably 3 or 4 people ahead of us, so it was a very short wait to get inside.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Strict Dress code – Guys to wear collared shirts, clean sneakers ok – and ladies should wear something dressy, but can get away with casual. Most stuck to the dress code here.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free before 10:30PM if on guestlist. $15 before 11:30 on guestlist, and $20 thereafter.
Guestlist: Sent mine to velvetfridays@live.com.au . Fast response, all queries answered.
Inside: Have you ever been to Haymarket Hotel? It’s exactly the same. If you haven’t been … Walk inside the side alley entrance to enter the middle level main room. The Vault was formerly a bank years ago, so there is a high ceiling, and with it is an upper level DJ area which also doubles as a lounge for whoever is allowed up there. Back in the main floor, there is a bar, a ‘shots’ bar, podium for 2 or 3, and carpeted dancefloor for 100 or so people. Tucked away in the right corner is a set of stairs that lead you downstairs to the underground dancefloor area, which also has a bar, ‘shots’ bar and dancefloor for 100 or so patrons. There is also a dancepole here.
Cloak Room: $4 per item. Very reasonable.
Bar Prices / Line: $16 long island teas, $24 or something for three tequila shots? Basically there is the main bar for all your orders, but if you are only here for shots, there are specialised smaller “shots” bars on each floor, serving tequila, jagerbombs, and some other kind of shot. It’s a very clever concept. There wasn’t much of a selection but if this is what you were looking for, then you didn’t have to wait long. otherwise waiting at the bar may take some time – upto 5 to 10 minutes.
DJs: Peter Gunz, Flipsta, Hyper, Biggie, Stunna, Stib
Music Style: Primarily RnB, mostly American Black contemporary RnB. Mixing is done well, some repeated tracks due to the nature of multiple DJs. Bleh.
Crowd & Ratio: Pretty much almost everyone here is Asian Australian, there are some caucasian girls in corsets but they are here for tonight’s promotion, whatever it was.
Entertainment: Dancing pole, MC to keep things going.
Atmosphere: During the early hours of the night, most people are on the ground level as you walk in.. drinking, chatting, and what not. It’s quite noisy. Anyway as the night wore on and people danced more.. the upstairs got warmer and warmer – people could only hide downstairs, where the aircon was more efficient here in the smaller confined space. By 2AM, pretty much everybody is downstairs, and less than a handful of patrons can be found upstairs, either relaxing or dancing. You would think a large room such as this wouldn’t heat up, but it has. Kind of like St James Hotel’s main room when it got packed.
Video: 360 upstairs

360 underground

Walkthrough both levels

Timeline
First impressions
I was pretty disappointed when i walked in – was this it? One room? My friends were equally dumbfounded, and I thought about leaving – but aha! There is a downstairs room! We went down where it was much cooler and henceforth we stayed here most of the night.

Man vs pole
Theres a dancing pole in the underground level, and various people are dancing on it – girls guys, while creepy people take photos of the girls. anyway later in the night one of the guys wants to go on the pole on the encouragement of the MC. So this really big muscle guy jumps up and swings his whole body weight around and around the pole, until the thing breaks off!! Wow, that’s a first if I ever saw one. He’s sitting there and the pole lies by him in two pieces. The damage isn’t as so much to be worried regarding the pole, its the mark left in the ceiling:

Oh, here’s a photo

Where the dancepole used to be before a guy broke it

Phone stolen
One girl in our group had her blackberry lost or stolen, and it was just left in her wallet. She walked into the bathroom with it in her pocket, and when she left she checked again and it was gone! Tried to call it straight away and it was SWITCHED OFF ALREADY. It was never handed in to the bar staff, so whoever stolen phone – FUCK YOU asshole bitch muthafuckas!!!

Arrivederci
Combination of exhaustion, heat, a dying crowd upstairs and exams for a friend the next day hath warranted leaving.

Recommendation
So long as you follow the crowd upstairs and later downstairs there are plenty of local Asians to mingle with. Music is good for an RnB lover. The venue itself also provides for a cosy atmosphere downstairs, but not so much atmosphere, while shot bars are also a novel idea. It’s worth visiting.

Velvet Fridays @ The Vault – 7.0/10