Friends are at Pontoon Bar tonight, so this should be a good chance to see how it has progressed since opening night. Here we go!

Perfect @ Pontoon Bar - asian crowd rnb club sydney

12:40AM Upper Level Bar Line

Perfect @ Pontoon Bar (Ground Level and Upper Level: Wallaby Bar)
Assessment Time: 12:05AM – 2:45AM
Opening Hours: The bars are open throughout the day, but the event opens 9:30PM. Tonight it closes at 4:00AM
Lockout: Around 2:30AM, but definitely no re-entry after 3:00AM
Address: Cockle Bay Wharf (201 Sussex St from the other side)
Venue Website: http://www.pontoonbar.com
Promoter Website: http://www.facebook.com/perfectnights or http://www.theperfectnight.com.au
Occurrence: Every Friday since April 2011. Note that this is the event that succeeded Flow Fridays @ World Square Pub, after it closed.
Outside Line: Arriving just after midnight, there was a huge massive line outside the downstairs entrance. A good 70+ people waiting, which is ridiculous. So I went to the second, lesser known entrance upstairs. There was a pretty long line here too, but only about 30 people or so. It took 30 minutes to get in. This was including some folk who joined the line and got sick of waiting, and left. This was also the first week off for pretty much every tertiary school student in Sydney, so people were out clubbing in their droves.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Hats allowed. Most guys are casual in jackets jeans, pants due to the winter. It is encouraged by promoters to go ‘dressy’, but I did spot a friend dressed in sweatpants and a jumper, so there you go. Again due to winter, many girls have leggings on but most brave the cold and wear their clubbing dresses on. I actually paid attention to the dresses tonight and there were a number of questionable leopard print designs tonight. Tonight I wore a blazer, jeans, collared shirt, white sneakers and my ‘bad hair day’ cap.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full charge. $20 on guestlist before 11:30PM , $15 if it is a birthday guestlist.
Guestlist: Ends at 11:30PM. Email info@theperfectnight.com.au
Inside: The big difference from opening night is that the main entrance is pretty much downstairs, encouraging people to enter the downstairs area. After walking in, to the right is the cleared out dancefloor for about 100 people. DJ is right up at the back. To the left is the ar in the far corner, and the rest of the area is an open air design of tables and benches. Walk back out and up the escalators to enter upstairs. You first walk past the balcony / lounge area for 80 or so patrons, where it eventually transitions to the main dancefloor, slightly smaller than that of downstairs. Bar is on the right while DJ is on the left. A few lounges in the far corner as well next to the DJ booth.
Smoking: Downstairs the open bar allows for smoking. Upstairs the balcony allows smoking. There is no clear-cut border to where you can or cannot smoke, so if you are infringing on the edges here, you and your clothes will be insulted with some cigarette chemicals.
Cloak Room: $5 is the standard rate. It is located on the bottom level just outside.
Bar Prices / Line: $12.90 for a Vodka + Red Bull (They actually use Red Bull thank god). Upstairs, upto 1:30am, it is about a 30 minute wait (!). Theres about a 20 people at the bar continuously ordering with only 4 staff during peak hour. They simply can’t keep up, and patrons have to wait as a result. Downstairs, after 2am, is 5 minute wait at the Outdoor Bar. I’m not sure how it was earlier in the night.
Eviction Count: No fights spotted upstairs but there were two fights downstairs which were resolved very quickly by security.
Music Style: For a place of two floors one expects one room to be house and one room to be RnB, but the promoters have gone for the ‘Two RnB rooms are better than one’ approach, which works out well. The music is mostly RnB with pop, with some top 40 and commercial house mashup tracks thrown in. Closer to the end of the night, ye old school Hip Hop comes out on rotation as well. Mixing was also well done on both levels to keep the crown energy sustained.
Crowd & Ratio: Dominantly Asian. A handful of white folk have come tonight as well. Considering it was mostly uni students, the age range would be from 18-30, skewering to the low, low 20’s. The ratio was pretty much more guys than girls most of the night.. around 60/40. It wasn’t pretty lining up, where it was 5 guys to 1 girl in line. Upstairs was first to have the BBQ setting turned up high, while downstairs maintained a better ratio consistently throughout the night.
Entertainment: MC to keep things going.
Atmosphere: Upstairs was pretty busy throughout the night. Though at around 1am onwards it progressed to a very bad sausage fest. Dancewise it was a bit cramped at times, with a lot of time dedicated to let people through. That’s when we went downstairs where it was still pretty busy on the dancefloor, with the floor being at about 75% capacity at 2am, which is still good. There were *still* people lining up outside, but they just guys, haha. The back of the floor is quite dirty at this time – your shoes *will* get dirty. The front of the dancefloor was somewhat more clean I guess and busy. That said, I think at this time people preferred to continue to drink in the open area. So in comparison, upstairs seemed a bit more cosy, while downstairs, with the glass walls did seem to be more open, but a little bit more dirty. Both were pretty packed.
Video: Timeline / Music Montage
YouTube Preview Image

Timeline

$50 Sugar Daddy
So I looked down and spotted $50 on the floor! OMG! Fifty bucks! I better not pick it up, lest it be someone else’s. So I kept my eye on it for a good 60 seconds before I picked it up. A lot can happen in 60 seconds you know! Within that time frame, anybody could have picked up that note and I wouldn’t have known it was theirs or not. Or a random high heel could have stepped right in the middle of it and ripped that note apart! Besides, I had some tough exams this week, so I deserve it 🙂 Regardless, I hold the wet, alcohol soaked $50 in front of my friends and cry: “DRINKS ON ME BITCHES!! YEEAAH YEEAH!”

Two white girls nearby spotted me yell this out and wanted drinks too… Umm yeah right I was going to give some random girls free drinks! But, but wait…  they were chicks!! Hahaha.. plus it was a sausage fest so got them a drink and in return I got to chat them up, and get some free dance/grinding time – woop woop! haha

Thank you, mystery $50 note.

Caucasians at an asian club

with my two newest fans

Stop and stare
Alright, so when you dance with the only white girls in the club, YOU ARE GOING TO GET STARED AT. You can just feel the eyeballs of every person within a 2 metre radius dart towards you and you try to pretend you can’t see them staring, but you know they are staring! So creepy, especially from the guys! If you are good looking specimen of the Homo sapiens species, you would know what I mean.

Guys also came up and chatted me up to chat the girls up. It’s quite interesting to see how many guys do hit on girls on a typical night.

The state of affairs on the floor.
Late in the night, the dancefloor downstairs is wet from spilled drinks, and idiots who have littered the floor with pieces of toilet tissue. I even spotted someone by the wall chucking up her drinks, dessert, dinner, and lunch… disgusting, smelly, putrid, chunky orange patch on the floor that was not cleaned up for a good half hour. Freaking gross. The cleaners were probably like “Meh, CBF”, and joined in the sausage fest at the time.

I love my hat
I refer to it as my directors cap. People liked it. Possibly because my hair has been so shit and I’ve been lazy as a pet coon in regards to styling my hair. So guys, if you run out of wax/gel/whatever .. I highly recommend the hat option.  

Arrivederci
Left at 3AM. Got a bit tired of the guys. 

Recommendation
Lots of people here, come early (before 11PM) for when the ratio is better and when the lines are shorter. People are young and pretty. Music choice is faultless for the contemporary RNB fan.I came later and copped longer lines, and more sausage as punishment.

Long lines are a total turn off, though at the time of writing, they will have waitresses/waiters for reserved areas to get you express drinks – meaning that if you’re just a regular patron, you will have to wait even longer for drinks! Boo!! It would be better if there were fewer people, haha. Well, it’s a fine balance between profits for the promoter and getting patrons the best experience.

Overall I found it an okay night. It’s hard to get drunk in here though – security is tight here and looking to kick people out for any sign of intoxication.  I can say though, that it’s better than the old Flow event, for sure.

Tagged with:
 

3 Responses to Perfect @ Pontoon Bar: Friday 24th June 2011

  1. Anonymous says:

    Guest-list actually finishes @ 11:30PM !

  2. Anonymous says:

    The event also starts at 9:30

  3. julian says:

    ya fuck them aye?

Leave a Reply



by