Hanging with a statue depiction of someone probably related to me

Chinese Laundry Saturdays: 14th August 2010

Assessment Time: 09:00PM – 03:00AM
Opening Hours: 09:00PM – 04:00AM
Lockout: There was a lockout, but unsure what time it was. We were told leaving at 3:00AM that once we left we were not allowed back in. The lockout may probably have been 2:00AM
Address: 111 Sussex St, Sydney (above the Slip Inn)
Venue Website: http://www.merivale.com/
Promoter Website: https://www.jammusic.com.au/#/chinese-laundry
Occurence: Every Saturday. Promoters also do Friday nights.
Dress Code / Door Policy: There was no strict dress code tonight. Most of the guys wore casual – shirts and jackets with jeans. Girls were mostly dressed well here.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Standard Prices are $15 before 10PM, $25 After. Guestlists available for discounted prices from the promoter website
Guestlist: See promoter website for details
Inside: Nothing has changed since last time. Walk into the bottom level, where the Cave on the left to hold 100 people or so. Chinese Laundry room on the right where the main tiled floor holds 150 or so people. Secondary chillout room behind a wall where the only lounges reside for 50 or so people. TV in the chillout room is playing episodes of The Smurfs. Sand Bar on the top level with a large outdoor smoking courtyard for 200-300 people.
Cloak Room: No cloak room services tonight.
Bar Prices: $12 Smirnoff double blacks. Lines were 2-3 Deep at the Sand Bar and Cave most times. Courtyard and Chinese Laundry had much shorter lines and we bought from here instead.
DJs: Maseo (De La Soul), Act Yo Age, Kraymer, Samrai, Chris Fraser and more.
Music Style: House, Breaks and Rnb/House Mashup. All the commercial house songs were being played earlier as well as  a lot of hip hop, old school rap songs too in the Sand Bar. Later on the night it was more of the DJs playing songs they liked, which were not necessarily well known to the crowd, but still danceable to, which was the key point here. Occasionally in the Cave, the beat got pretty repetitive and we needed a break, from the breaks. (pun unintentially intented)
Crowd: Mostly a white crowd, but tonight there was an unusual higher number of asians than usual. Find out later there was a few Asian birthdays tonight, which explained it.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment
Atmosphere: It was a good turnout, but it wasn’t as sardine packed as last time I was here. It may have been because of the lineup not being as strong – the lead DJ was delegatd to the Sand Bar. Either way this turned out better dancewise – there was enough room to dance around without it being too dead. however places like the chillout room in Chinese Laundry were empty most of the time. For me, it was a good balance on the floor, but for people who liked packed out venues, tonight would be a little disappointing. People in general here are having fun and of course are dancing. any other non dancers just hang out at the outdoor courtyard.

Sand Bar Upstairs Dancefloor area

Video: Walkthrough all 3 rooms – Chinese Laundry, Cave, then Sand Bar, then the outdoor courtyard

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline
Mirror Mirror
We started the night at the Sand Bar upstairs, where fortunately there is a mirror overhanging on the wall. It is perfect to stare at yourself or to practise your dancing moves. Unfortunately friends were not fans of me staring at the mirror, they needed my attention, ha! How can one not get their eyes off themselves if they are so good loooking?

Man in the mirror

Shuffling in the Cave
We dance in the Cave. It’s pretty dark and this is where most of the people can get their shuffling on. I started to do my shuffle, and there was another dude who joined in on the action. He came really close to me, like within personal space, at times, but it was all good. We just continued to dance.

The 40 Year old Cavewoman
Theres an older, a little larger, woman going hard at it. Not quite shuffling or as fast as younger folk, but you can tell she’s dancing and spinning around and having a pretty awesome time. We dance and she told me it was her first time out in 2 years, as last year she gave birth to a kid. Suddenly we started to make out. haha, I’m kidding about that part. anyway, she made me guess her age, and luckily I had my age radar on. I guessed she was 40 on first go, and well, I was right. She introduced us to all her friends, which was the entire front of the cave. I didn’t even realise. lol. All friendly and seemingly having a good time. This is what clubbing is about!

"The Smurfs" on TV!

He’s teaching me how to shuffle
I’m feeling a bit lazy and not really dancing much. Then ok, I put the accelerator on and I go pretty hard at it. I’m spinning and doing all that I know. Then the dude who was shuffling with me earlier comes up and demonstrates how to shuffle. I already knew that and I demonstrate it again. He then tells me “you’re doing good, keep going at it”. ugh! Patronised! Like telling a chess grandmaster he is doing well with the 4 move checkmate – just keep at it and he’ll forget to protect that key pawn.

Heres me trying to do a 360 of the Chinese Laundry room:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Arrivederci

Sand Bar closed upstairs at 03:00AM. Tempted to dance more downstairs, but our friend was not too keen on the house downstairs, so we leave.

Recommendation
This wasn’t too bad a night at all. If I paid $25 it might have been a different story. If you got bored in one area, you could always escape to check out another area, which is what I love about multi room clubs. It was also good to see the outdoor smoking area finally extended to cover the whole area complete with heating as well. Perhaps a few more people would have given a better atmosphere. 

Chinese Laundry Saturdays – 14th August 2010 – 6.5/10

About Chinese Laundry
Location: 111 sussex st, Sydney
Website: www.merivale.com (Slip Inn)

About ‘The Club Club’

Music: House, Breaks, rnb mashup over 3 rooms
Crowd: Young
Dress Code: Casual accepted
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: $20
Occurrence: Every Saturday
Website: www.jammusic.com.au

Atmosphere: Packed and loud. Hot and dark in the main and break room. Relaxed in rnb room.
Timeline
Getting in
Unlike last week where we just turned up, this week there was a guestlist made by birthday girl and we didn’t wait that long to get in, though we still had to wait as we turned up just after midnight.

Atmosphere
We went into the main room, which was packed to the rafters. The music being electro house. We got our own spot, but it was really dark (literally couldn’t see the people next to us as there were no lights) and it got HOT.. very quickly. We didnt last 5 minutes before leaving. Same story for the breaks froom despite the two huge fans. We went to the rnb room.

Music
The rnb room was much better.. there was actually room to dance but it wasn’t a party atmosphere, as all the lights were on, and was basically the room to cater for the people who don’t know their house music, so an rnb house elctro mashup would be a good introduction. Not surprisingly, this is where us and some other random asians hung out for the entire night.

Creepy guy
Creepy old guy comes and joins our circle without invitation. Fine. He then talks to the girls. Fine. But doens’t talk to us. Not so fine. The girls excuse themselves and it was us 3 guys and the creepy guy. In this particular scenario he should walk away, but instead stays in our circle and keeps dancing. Oh god. The moment he turned his head to the left I immediately left the circle and so did Peter, leaving poor an stuck in a 2-man circle with creepy man. We laugh as we watch an talk to the creepy guy. It took a good 5 minutes before he could shake him off.

I’m famous on facebook

Meet a friend of a friend of the birthday girl and he recognises me from facebook.

“You’re famous on facebook” he says. He tells me my name is James. I have no idea who he is. I’m pretty sure he’s referring to the photos of me dressed as a japanese school girl… but that’s another story. Though it is disturbing knowing guys are facebook stalking me.

Coda
A yes to coming here only with friends, but its a good place to go. Going alone, the people are mostly to themselves (I think anyway but I didnt really give talking to other people a try), but its a good place for the less common types house music. Though, Tank would probably be better if you’re a commercial house type of person.

My Timeline
Pre-arrival
Was due to meet ange and her friend, but they got caught up in a birthday party and went to Red Room, a 90′s rnb style club, so I went alone.

11.30pm
Cover charge was $20. (thought it was $10/$15?). Went to the crowded electro room but I couldnt dance freely. It was mostly a jumping up and down affair with the banging of your head to the beat. Checked upstairs a but nobody was dancing yet. Upstairs had the smallest dance floor area. So I ended up in the darkier experimentalish-house room where there was a crowd, but it wasnt too crowded. There was enough room for me to go nuts.

12.30pm
I notice people guys looking at me dance. They must’ve thought I popped, but are seemingly impressed (I think).

I head upstairs and they’re playing a song that “1, 2, 3, 4… push it push it” song. I jump to the small floor, find a small space and go nuts. Right away 2 girls dance with me, their boyfriends watching along. A quick wave to the boyfriends, and they dont seem to mind. One of them is chuckling and declares that he loves me. Phew? I am introduced to all, but the only name I remember now is that of Graham.

Graham comes in and starts dancing. His main dance move was of a gorilla like stance moving forward. I imitated him by doing some freestyle laps of the imaginary pool that I was in, but I don’t think he got the joke and kept dancing like that. It was his style the rest of that entire night. I hung out with Graham and his crew most of the night.

1.30ish am until 3am close
I excuse myself and head downstairs. I dance for a bit and come back out. I walk by a guy and he stops me. He’s holding a beer and says to me: “CHECK THIS OUT!!!” and beckons me. He is facing a mirror. One of those wavy curvy mirrors. We both stand in front of it and lean back, both of our heads stretching to infinity. We both put our arms in the air and they become twice as long as our short stumpy bodies.

He was drunk and I thought it was hilarious. So me and this dude go to the floors and dance a bit. We go into the Electro room and we dance with this girl who can shake her stuff. Bit of fluff chat and we part.

Head back upstairs to Graham. He tried to introduce me to random girls on the floor.. which I appreciated, but exactly do you say after when he introduces you as:s “HI GIRLS ! THIS IS JAMES !!” >>> Pan to James, who is madly dancing and waving ‘hello!’… I still don’t think dance floors are a premium medium to pick-up as such.

3am until 4am close
We headed downstairs and most of Graham’s crew chilled while me and G kept dancing in this small room. Graham says he comes out partying every month or so, and that he loved 2nite. I enjoyed it as well. After finishing up at 4, we parted our ways.

Summary
One of the great places for different variants of house music. Behaved crowd. Enjoyed it!