Today is the last day of my job. Quite a sad affair, but it was another reason to celebrate. I’ve pretty much had a lot of pre-drinks tonight at a bar nearby, and just to make my friends happy I have sorted out a guestlist for The Vault tonight, as most did enjoy it last time, so here we go!

Me

My little reserved area

Velvet Fridays @ The Vault
NB: Tonight I was pretty drunk..
Assessment Time: 11:25PM – 02:15AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM(?) – 03:00AM
Lockout: Unknown tonight
Address: 122 Pitt St, Sydney. Opposite the Westin Hotel (1 Martin Place) Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.vaulthotel.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.velvetfridays.com.au
Occurrence: Every Friday since late 2010
Outside Line: 2 or 3 people outside the front. Friends who weren’t before were worried it was a representation of a bad night inside, but two floors can hold enough 🙂
Dress Code / Door Policy: Smart Casual is encouraged here – some of my friends wore just shirts and jeans with sneakers, and were able to get in. I had a blazer, jeans and clean white sneakers.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free before 10:30PM if on guestlist. $15 before 11:30 on guestlist, and $20 full entry. Tonight is the farewell of me and my job, so I’ve been granted free entry, a small reserved area by the bar and a bottle of Chandon sparkling wine .
Guestlist: Emailed mine to velvetfridays@live.com.au at 2PM earlier in the day, and received a response and confirmation, which was good.
Inside: Walk into the side alley entrance to be presented with the ground level dancefloor. Bar and Shots Bar on the left. Dancing floor area in the middle and right to hold 50 people or so. Close right corner is where the DJ is. On your upper left is a VIP area / lounge for maybe 20 persons. Bathroom is here. In the far corner on the right are a set of stairs that lead downstairs. Walk downstairs to enter the “cooler” underground level room where speakers play music from the DJ on ground level. Podium for 6 people are on the left side. Lounges span the length of one of the walls and a bar takes up the other end of the room.
Cloak Room: I remember pulling out a $5 to pay for the cloak room but I don’t know if I got change.
Bar Prices / Line: Line in the upstairs bar was not long – probably 2 deep for a 5-10 minute wait. Same for the underground level.
DJs: Unknown, but probably the same ones as last time.
Music Style: Mostly RnB the entire night.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly Asian Australian tonight. I don’t remember encountering any other nationalities, though amongst my personal group tonight were some backpackers from Korea and Brazil
Entertainment: MC to keep things going.
Atmosphere: Half the time I was upstairs, but during the time the floor wasn’t too busy, you could get your own spot and room to dance without being squished, but there were always people around you when you danced. Downstairs was much more of a busy affair throughout the night, where you are kind of restricted to your own spot – however more people were down here which added to the good vibey atmosphere. Tonight kind of glad that there were no fights that threatened the club to be shutdown, unlike last time I was here.
Video Montage: Walkthrough ground, under ground level, and music sample of the night. 
YouTube Preview Image
Timeline
Tonight’s the night..
I was pretty tipsy when I entered (I looked sober) and so I was pretty happy to sit down and do nothing. However the promoter I sent my guestlist to, did manage to find me, and thrust upon me a bottle of Chandon to drink. I suppose that’s a small thank you gift to me for bringing 20 or so people here. I concede defeat, drink the vile potion of sparkling wine, and pass it on to more deserving friends. When I am under inebriation, I become super James.

Don’t you know who I am
Super James is chatting to people. I think I got into a debate about something with a girl. I then put my foot down and declared. “Don’t you know who I am?!?”.
“You’re James Tran!”
“Oh, you remember..”. I didn’t remember her name at all. I fail in so many ways.

Podium nightmare
Drunk James has found a girl to dance with. So we started to dance, and I saw the podium, so I marched right up and grabbed her hand to get her to follow me up. Her hand was pulling back, not willing to go up. Was she shy? I turned around to ask her. When I turned around, it wasn’t her at all standing there – it was another dude I accidentally grabbed!! OMG NO…. The unlucky guy has this puzzled and disgusted look to that was saying “why are you holding my hand?”. His friends were laughing so hard that I tried to pull him up onto the stage. So freaking embarrassing! UGH! Well that guy has a story to tell for the rest of his life – the time I tried to pull him up on stage and possibly grind with him.

Arrivederci
Apparently I caught a taxi at 2:00AM home, to the despair of my friends who waited for me but didn’t know where I went.

Recommendation
I am pretty sure my friends had a good time here today. I was happy with the service provided by the promoters as well leading up to tonight, so nothing to complain about. however I was pretty intoxicated, so tonight’s experience was definitely swayed in favour to the event tonight. Do give this place a go on Fridays – Rnb asian lovers always seem to have a good time here, and I can see it pretty much becoming a Friday hot spot.

Tagged with:
 

One Response to Velvet Fridays @ The Vault: 28th January 2011

  1. James says:

    Promoters have decided to take a “break” and stop the event over winter. It is unknown if the event will return after winter .

Leave a Reply



by