Exams are done and I’m in dance withdrawal. I want to go out for 24 hours straight – starting with a new event tonight (ending with Stereosonic + a nightclub tomorrow), so let’s check it out!

Far end of the bar. Looking towards the dancefloor.

Chamber Fridays @ Hotel Chambers
Assessment Time: 11:45PM – 1:35AM
Opening Hours: 9PM – Unknown (3AM?)
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 53 Martin Place (It’s on the corner of Elizabeth St and Martin Place, across the road from Martin Place Bar)
Venue Website: http://www.hotelchambers.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.cliqueevents.com.au
Occurrence: Tonight was the grand opening, to be run every Friday for as long as possible.
Outside Line: No line upon entry.
Dress Code / Door Policy: People were either well dressed, or casually dressed – but casually dressed in a good way, not a daggy way. Hats were allowed as well as sneakers.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: We paid $20 for entry. The promo poster mentions $15 all night entry – this might be for people on a guestlist, but I don’t know. We also got a free shot of a red thing upon entry!! Good value but not such a good taste.
Guestlist: Try a promoter, otherwise send to admin@cliqueevents.com.au. $15 on guestlist??

Inside: The venue layout is pretty “rectangular”, being long and narrow. The entry is on the West end – walk into the standing area where there isn’t much except some lounges tucked away on the right. The DJ is on the far East end. In between are numerous lounges along one wall, while the bar sits on the middle opposite wall on the other side. The walking path was about 5-7 people wide. At the DJ area where most of the dance action is, there isn’t much room. This is not just a dance area but also a thoroughfare area to the lounges  behind the DJ, meaning potentially more crowded conditions. It appeared they had at least 3 or 4 birthday areas reserved just on this side of the club behind the DJ. Anyway the standing room was quite small – to fit about 20 people, otherwise you will just have to dance somewhere a bit further out.
Cloak Room: $3 per item as far as I remember. Pretty good value. Though we didn’t see anybody manning the cloak room, so I don’t know if it was in use today of it was a leftover sign from a previous night. The umbrella that we brang was kindly offered by the promoter to be left at the reception desk for tonight.
Bar Prices / Line: Bartender charged us $5 each for 2 bottles of Smirnoff Double black – so good! We told him how good the pricing here was. Then he told us it was a mistake – it was $10 per bottle of Smirnoff. Goddamnit. Still okay pricing.
Bathroom Facilities: It was quite chat in the Mens. There was only one basin and someone had already decided to deposit the contents of his stomach all over it and clog it up. Not cool. More than enough room to find a urinal to pee.
Eviction Count: None spotted, though to keep things orderly, there was an RSA Marshall, pacing the club looking for drunk people. Last time I saw one of these guys was at Club Fusion down at Cronulla. No drunken antics allowed here I guess.
DJs: A mix of DJ’s tonight. Eko / Sirdee / Sivi / Nacho Pop / Wendy Samantha.
Music Style: It appeared each DJ had their own style. When we entered approaching midnight, we got commercial Rnb, then from 12-1AM it was mostly Commercial House (Think Ministry of Sound), then after 1am it was old school RnB. Basically it was a different genre every hour during peak time. Yet somehow, just somehow, they managed to double up some songs during the night. Groooan. Nobody cares apparently, so long as the repeated song is “Low” by Lil Jon.
Crowd: Earlier on it looked like some corporates were still here, assuming from a Friday night after work drinks, maybe about 10-20 when we got in. The rest of the crowd were a mix of Asians, Indians and Euros. It also looked like some people were also here to support some of the acts here and the DJs (Note to Self: Get T-shirts emblazoned with my name on the back). Ages varied wildy from young 20’s to 30’s.
Ratio: Slightly more men than women tonight.
Entertainment: MC hosting throughout the night. Also there were two artists who performed one or two of their original songs for the crowd to dance to. One of the guests played a bit of drums to add to the music, worked quite well actually, though he did seem a bit sick of playing it after a while.
Atmosphere: In terms of numbers there were probably 100 people at any one time until around 1:15 when people began to leave. It was at this time the lights got turned down. Before this time, the lights were dimly lit on, giving a relaxed, friendly kind of warm feel. Most people hung around the one corner near the DJ so it did seem to appear busy. Basically on the dancefloor it was busy and quite friendly, but everywhere else, it was a pretty sparse – you could get a lounge at any time if you wanted in the far ended areas. On the main floor people were in their own groups dancing and chatting, though it was a bit loud for some of the girls I overheard. It was also pretty warm in the middle of the floor, but at the entrance and the back lounges, it was pretty cool.
Video: Walkthrough & Music Sample

Timeline

A special guest, all the way from…  “.. all the way from Sydney’s West!” Was the proclaimation. You would think it would have been somewhere with more glitz and glam after the build up moments beforehand. I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Anyway the guest was an 18 year old Tim Batista who confidently stood up, said some words and performed some rap songs. Pretty cool, I congratulated him afterwards.

Whinging for his song to be played
Paul Lizzy all the way from overseas is the other performer. In return, he seems to have agreed to a one hour stint of being MC and playing the drums, which he does quite well but with with a bit of reluctance. You could tell he was super keen for his track to be played though, as everytime the DJ ended tracks, he would tell the DJ via microphone “Play my track play my track”, but the DJ kept teasing him by playing other tracks, LOL. This was followed up by a glance at the DJ booth, where this big mean ass looking dude was just staring at Lizzy, as if to telepathically tell him to keep going. Anyway he kept whinging and finally his track got played. I mean it’s fine to whinge, but don’t whinge up on stage in front of everyone to hear. It wasn’t a nice impression. I didn’t congratulate him afterwards.

Paul Lizzy at work

Arrivederci
There’s only so much time you can spend in one small area to dance before you get a bit tired of it. We left at 1:30AM to continue the journey to attain 24 hours of clubbing. Security recommended us to head on to a gay club for some daytime clubbing such as Arq or Phoenix Bar. Sure thing!

Final Thoughts & Recommendation
A combination of bad weather and Steresonic festival the next day dampened numbers for tonight (Friends reported that other clubs were similarly low on numbers) but still a respectable number turned up. I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt just for this weekend, but it would be interesting to see how it goes the next few months. Though the random mix of rnb/house/rnb may not be for everyone (I like all genres so I was happy with it). Promoters that we spoke to tonight were also quite friendly, so at least this venue is in good hands.

Overall score: 5.5/10