I’m a third party invite to a birthday at Helm Bar – and this weekend I’ve been so sick and its been pissing down buckets of rain the past few days as well as tonight, so I can only manage to go to a bar tonight, and not a club for a review – but regardless there is a dancefloor… so here we go!

Assessment Time: 11pm – 12:30am

Website: http://www.helmbar.com.au

Address: Aquarium Whart, Wheat Road, Darling Harbour Sydney

Dress Code / Door Policy: Smart dress code applies. I wore a collared shirt, vest, jeans.

Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free, its just a bar.

Guestlist: None

Inside: One bar for the entire area split into two outdoor regions and the indoor dance area. One outdoor area is corderned off for the birthday for 60 people with stools and tables. Same with the other area. The inside dancefloor can hold maybe 150 people or so. DJ area is to the left corner, placed outside. Outside there are views of darling harbour, but mostly boats.

Cloak Room: None

Bar: 1 bar

Music: House, rnb – all modern contemporary commercial music

Crowd: General crowd were all dressed nice but hard to tell – mostly caucasian early to mid 20s crowd.

Atmosphere: It’s raining heaps outside, so the atmosphere isn’t so good on the dancefloor. It’s not too busy and not too dead, but its ‘bustling’ near the bar area.

Dj started to turn the music up a notch.. signifying dance time! A crazy dude or two jump out and do some dancing. Friends want to dare how effective a chicken dance is at picking up chicks. Ok, so let’s try it out! So I jumped in with the most awesome chicken dance you have ever seen in your life. Let me tell you, you had to be there. I had the quacking, the flapping, the wiggling and the clapping down pat. It was genuine chicken dance at its most raw and energetic. Nobody would be able to resist. So the target group had 5 girls, and as I did my farmyard dance, they just looked at me. Only one imitated me and she was the one to talk to me.. it was the mother hen of the group -____-

Everyone else looked pretty uncomfortable being in the presence of James, le chicken man.

I do some lazy foot work and suddenly a guy comes up and dances really close to me. He’s beginning to sweat and he’s really into it and it catches on.. and soon enough we’re just yelling ‘woohoo!’ at each other. Then he leaves and dances with his amigo like madmen.

Well that was it, we left at 12:30 to go to Haymarket, but it was full and it closes at 2am anyway so there was no point trying to go inside.

Helm bar for drinks only and a little tiny dance. Aka a good bar for oldies – however bungalow or even cargo down the wharf would be a better choice if you wanted more of a dance and lively crowd. This is not a place for dance, but its clean. 4.5/10