Thursdays @ Albion Hotel Parramatta, Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:45PM – 12:45PM
Address: 135 George St, Parramatta
Venue Website: http://www.albionhotel.com.au
Promoter Website: Self Promoted
Occurrence: Every Thursday
Outside Line: Very short outside, did not take long to get in. You could also freely enter via the beer garden entrance tonight. Normal weekend nights you would only be allowed initial entry via the outside carpark entrance.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual is ok tonight. Tonight was a mix of casual and smart casual.. a lot of the guys just came up with their casual shirts and girls wearing casual one pieces.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night.
Guestlist: None
Inside: Enter via the carpark into the ‘gasworks’ nightclub room, a square-ish floor to hold 200-300 people. Stage area where bands would play during other events is converted to a dance area as well with the installation of 2 dancing poles. DJ area is up in the middle here as well. Bar on the opposite side of the room. Head outside to the beer garden about twice the size of the nightclub area, with an extra bar outside and inside the gambling area.
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. The line wasn’t that long. A probable 4-8 minute wait.
DJs: (From the website) DJ Tiklez, Anthum, G-Wizard, Tommy Funk
Music Style: Everything is covered here. Modern and retro pop, contemporary rnb, with some house tracks as well. Mostly tunes people could dance to. On the website it is listed as RnB, 80′s Funk, NRG.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly local people from around the area – Dominantly Anglo-Saxon, mostly from a European background with the rest being Aussie. There are also Middle Eastern and Indians here. Hard pressed to find an Asian here. It was also a noticeably large proportion of men to women. About 7 to 1 on initial count. A guy told us how shit he thought tonight was. I looked around, and there were people everywhere. It was just the dominance of guys that we was probably referring to. Ages varied from teenagers to people in their 30′s.
Entertainment: No extras.
Atmosphere: Pretty dark inside here, so it does feel more of a nightclub, especially at the front. Near the back it feels more like a bar as people aren’t dancing so much up the back. Most groups of people kept to themselves here. There was this one drunk kiwi or samoan looking guy dancing, and yelling with everyone. You can tell he is drunk as he has a beer in his hand.
Video: 2x 360 views. One from the back and one from the front

Click here to view the embedded video.

Right as I get home, I get an SMS invite from my friend M to go to the Albion Hotel Parramatta for some clubbing. Well.. I haven’t been here on a Friday night, so why not – it was probably cheaper here than a $25 cover charge at darling harbour – so here we go!

The Albion Hotel (Gasworks Nightclub)

Assessment Time: 12.15am – 4am (closing time)
Address: 135 George St, Parramatta
Dress Code: Casual OK. I was wearing my wig, black collared shirt, jeans and leather shoes.
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: $10 I think, or $15.
Inside: Gasworks Nightclub takes up about a third of the area of Albion Hotel. It is basically one big room with lounges against one wall, some tables/chairs on the other side, DJ at the front along with a massive podium (enough space to hold a band), and bar at the back.
DJs: DJ Tommy Funk.

Music: RNB and house. DJ mixed it up well – it was more house than rnb and thank god for that.
Crowd: Caucasian/Euro. All the girls dress pretty well here, not many girls with jeans here, lol. Seemed like an even ratio
Atmosphere: Vibe was good! Having the local football team win the semi finals had everybody here in a good mood.
Walkthrough Video

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline
Long time, no wig – A tale of 3 blind mice
I usually only use my wigs  now when I go to the white clubs just for attraction. So tonight, I had my trusty spiky wig on – it’s been a while.

Mouse 1) Blinded by the flash
I was dancing with a girl and I took a photo with her. Then I asked for a second photo with her. This time I took off my wig while she wasn’t looking. She looked at me with my normal hair and asked:
“Who are you??”

Before - asian guy with cool hair

After. She had no idea who i was

She was being serious. She didn’t recognize me at all. Strange, as it had only been about 15 seconds between the first photo and the secon photo. hahhaaha, wow do we all look the same or something? She didn’t seem drunk, or was she? Only urine samples can tell..

Mouse 2) M is a creepy man, but he isn’t really.
My friend is a good dancer, but he made two mistakes – He put on my wig near the end of the night, and secondly, he was born asian.

Once M put on the wig, two girls nearby right away said to him

“OMG is that you?? Oh you were creeping us out earlier tonight!!”

Of course, it wasn’t him who was creeping the girls out. It was me who was. I don’t even remember creeping out girls tonight – What an insult!!! M tried to explain that it was my wig (and rightfully so), but the girls didn’t believe him. hahahahaha oh how funny. Do we all look the same or something? She didn’t seem drunk, or was she? Only urine samples can tell..

Mouse 3) Blind leading the blind
another wig moment
I walked by two guys and, right next to them, I quickly put on my wig. I walked back past them again, literally 5 seconds since the first walk by.

Men: “hey, is that your real hair?”
Me: “Yup” (takes it off)
Men: “OMG! haaha we thought it was your real hair – you had us!”
By now they are laughing hysterically about what they just witnessed – an asian with cool hair rip it off to have black hair underneath. What are the chances.

So do we all look the same or something? They didn’t seem drunk – or were they? Only urine samples can tell..

Dancing on the chair
Is not allowed. The bouncers came and lifted him off and back onto the floor. He kept on dancing afterwards.

Dancing on a chair. About 3 seconds later he is kicked off by security

Pushups on the floor
Is approved as a dance move, as it is quite entertaining for the crowd. About 20 or 30 pushups if you can manage. I must beef up so I can add this move to my repetoire.

Free CDs!
The Dj asks the crowd whether anyone wants free CD’s. FREE!! Who doesn’t? He tosses out 4 or 5 CD’s to the crowd standing on the podium, and they greedily grab the CDs. It’s mayhem. I didn’t get any.

However about 2 hours later while I was on the podium, the DJ asked if anyone wanted free CD’s. FREE! Hell yeah! I was ready. He threw out 1, 2… 3 CD’s. They were gobbled out. He had one last CD, and threw it at me. It landed at my leg. Luckily everyone else on the podium already had got a CD, so I calmly bent down to pick up my new CD. Score! It’s got some pretty good tunes for this year.  were only 5 of us on the podium.

It never became a sausage fest
Usually after 2am, many of the girls of a club leave, and there are just men left. Not here. Even though there were probably 10 people left at around 3.30am, it was 5-5 each. Pretty nice!

Coda
We left at closing time.. legs weary and tired.

Recommendation
If you’re in the area, check it out. A nice place indeed. 3.5/5

Assessment Time: 9pm – 12:30am
Address: 135 George St, Parramatta
Dress Code: Casual OK. I was wearing my business attire – collared black shirt, blazer, black pants and shoes.
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: Free for the whole night. No guestlist necessary
Inside: Gasworks Nightclub takes up about a third of the area of Albion Hotel. It is basically one big room with lounges against one wall, some tables/chairs on the other side, DJ at the front along with a massive podium (enough space to hold a band), and bar at the back.
DJs: DJ Fresh doing the whole set tonight.
Music: RNB and house. The DJ was very good tonight, mixing RNB songs and house songs. Busted the DJ playing the same house song twice. Once early on around 9.30, and once again at around midnight. no sound difficulties. It was at the right volume and not too loud.
Crowd: Caucasian/Euro. A few groups of girls, and not many guys. Interesting.
Atmosphere: Dead initially. C and I had a bit of a dance initially, and there was another couple dancing ballroom style. In total that’s 4 people on the floor, with about 15 people looking on from the sidelines. About 2 hours later it picked up, and there were about 30 people on the floor at the peak. The place could probably accomodate 100 people easily. A surprising turn out for a Thursday night as I expected it to be totally dead. The general atmosphere was pretty fun, mainly because the guy/girl ratio was even steven.

Timeline
Breaking the empty dancefloor:
When it comes to the good old dance in a dead floor, only C is confident and gutsy enough to do it with me. It was 9pm and the RNB music had started to crank up, and we had super itchy feet. Onwards we go! We dance and make up stupid moves while people look. We get tired and C has to leave… we leave the room in a state of awe. Oh yeaahhh.

I have a fan copy my dance moves (and I give some dance advice)
Later in the night the big podium is open and I jump up for some moves. There is a white guy (ok they’re all white in here) looking at my moves, and out of the corner of my eye I can see him trying to copy my moves. Oh I feel so flattered! I talk with him and he tells me how awesome i am at dancing. Of course, i don’t think I am good, but lucky for me, I am at a white club where not many people can dance properly! It’s been a while since I had someone ask me to teach them how to dance, so I teach him some basics – (bend the knees, and use the arms more rigorously is what I told him) and he is now that much closer to enlightment.

Later he became my wingman and we try to hit on girls by grinding with them. Sadly that didn’t work. Plus since there weren’t many people here, we quickly ran out of girls.

What is the point of going to a club and dancing at the same spot?
Since 9pm, there were two girls near the door. One was sitting, and one was dancing by jumping up and down. It was now midnight, and they were both there in the exact same spots. I thought I would talk to them into coming to the dancefloor.

So I asked why they were dancing in this same spot the whole time:
“i dont know, we like it here”

You girls picked the most silly spot to dance. You’re already here, so just dance wherever you want guys!

I scare my newest fan girl away – I called her a bad word
I’m doing some knee high dancing, and I don’t know why. A girl comes up next to me and copies my dancing. So i made her wave her hands as well while we pretend to run. Then I told her:
“why are you running? you look like an idiot”
That’s when she ran away from me. I don’t think my sarcasm came across too well in that one. But in any case she did look like an idiot waving her hands and doing knee high steps. Given, I was doing the exact same thing, but I make it look cool. hahaha.

Coda
Friends had to go for work the next day, so I leave as well.

Recommendation
For a Thursday it was eventually a good turn out. If the population doubled or tripled it would have been pretty awesome. If you ever find yourself in the Parramatta west area and just feel like a simple dance then come here.

Me and the band - Blacktown RSL (we were here for 4 minutes)

Albion Hotel,  Parramatta
Me and C outside of Albion Hotel. It’s currently the best place to be in Parramatta on Saturday nights. Good euro crowd, and music is mixing between RNB and House. We ask some other punters who just left – they said it was packed and pretty good. Cover charge is $15. C hears the house music inside and doesn’t want to go in. So we leave. We ask a local and she says there isn’t much else. So we try to get back in but the bouncer says its a 1am lockout. The time was 1.01am.

Collectors Hotel, Parramatta
The music was ok, but the venue looked small. Didn’t look like a nightclub. The line was long, and full of Islanders. Not my or C’s kinda crowd. We left

Roxy hotel, Parramatta
Closed! What on earth? We had wondered why there were no Saturday night pictures on the Roxy website.

So we left Parramatta at 1.30am to go home.

Coda / Recommendation
Saturday night Parramatta area recommendation is Albion Hotel. There isn’t much else out west, except The Mean Fiddler. Also get to these places a bit earlier. 1am lockouts suck.