Crowd - Live Art Space (3:30AM)

Friday I’m In Love @ Oxford Art Factory
Assessment Time: 2:10AM – 4:00AM
Opening Hours: 6PM to late.
Lockout: Unknown.
Address: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.oxfordartfactory.com/
Promoter Website: Appears to be self promoted. But there was probably an act earlier on in the night at the Live Art Space Room.
Occurrence: Every Friday.
Outside Line: There looks like a line but its actually a smoking area – there was no line upon approaching and entry. I’m sure though that during peak hours there would be a huge line outside.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Pretty casual. Not sure about hats – didn’t spot anyone with hats.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free at time of entry for the Live Art Space Room, but this is normal after 2AM. Unknown whether there was cover charge beforehand. Free all night in the smaller Art After Hours Room.
Guestlist: None at this time
Inside: There are two main rooms which reside below street level. (1) Live Art Space Room: Walk into this larger room where live bands can play for small crowds. A stage is setup at the front, with dancefloor for about 200-300 people, with an elevated level at the back with 4 or 5 lounges. Tables and chairs on the left while the bar is on the right. Behind the Bar is the (2) Art After Hours Room, about half the size as the 1st room, it also has the bar, and a more narrow rectangular area for dancing for about 100 or so people. 2 or 3 lounges are in here.
Cloak Room: Surprisingly no cloak room tonight. it’s hard to find dark little spots here where you can hide your stuff.
Bar Prices / Line: Asahi and Vodka combo – $15
Bathroom Facilities: You piss on a brick wall (purposely designed). Otherwise enough taps to go around with the shared trough.
Eviction Count: One eviction spotted – Marty got kicked out at the end of the night. 
DJs: Unknown
Music Style: Live Art Space Room: Hip Hop, Rap, 90′s Pop. Art After Hours Room: Old School RnB / Hip Hop / Pop / Rock. Little to no mixing performed. Pretty much nothing from the past 10 years was played at this time.
Crowd: Almost all Anglo-Saxon crowd, and mostly locals here. Ages look like it varies between teenagers to more mid 20′s to early 30′s. Hard to tell in the dark.
Ratio: It was pretty even, with a slight tendency towards guys at times, which is surprising at this time of night.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: Both room were quite busy and near capacity. People are all into the mood, and with minimal seating, people are forced to dance. It got a bit stuffy in the smaller Art After Hours room but that comes with the extra people. After about 2:30 numbers started to quickly drop, and people were all forced to move to the larger Live Art Space room to keep the vibe going. Smart move. Overall people are quite happy to dance and mingle tonight.
Video: 

Click here to view the embedded video.

Arrivederci - kicked out
Marty and some drunk girl sat up on the stage area and she proceeded to pull him to standing up position on stage, for what was presumably an impromptu dance. Suddenly within seconds, bouncers POUNCED on Marty and kicked him out!! Hahaha oh shit. Well that was the end of the night here. The drunk girl remained in the club as we left to quickly follow Marty out. Oh the injustice of it all.

Final Thoughts & Recommendation
A popular place with the locals, and with free entry and reasonably priced drinks with good classic music, I can’t see why it can’t go wrong. Despite the rain and Stereosonic the next day there was quite a big turn out. A cloak room would help though. I liked it, but Marty wasn’t so into it.

Score: 7.5/10

The Main Room of Oxford Art Factory

Fridays (Miles Dyson) @ Oxford Art Factory
Assessment Time: 12:30AM – 03:15AM
Opening Hours: 8:00PM – 5:00AM or 6:00AM
Lockout: None
Address: 46 Oxford St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.oxfordartfactory.com
Promoter Website: www.atmydestination.com
Occurrence: Every Friday
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual was the norm here. anything goes.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 for the main room. Free in the smaller room. After 2AM, it was free for all. I think this was total bullshit, as the main DJ Miles Dyson’s set didn’t finish until 3AM. People were able to experience one half of the DJ set. I wouldn’t complain if I was on the freebie side, but tonight I am on the paying side of things, and I wasn’t happy about it. The guy who was supposed to check for stamps via the back entrance was just hanging out at the other back door protecting the beer storage. Useless.
Guestlist: None
Inside: Walk inside and underground to the first room which was the main stage area for DJ acts. This room had an upper lounge area overlooking the dancefloor, which could hold 100 people or so comfortably. Bar on the right wall, and stools, chairs, lounges on the left side of the lower floor. Continue walking to the other room which is a bit smaller. Bar on the left, lounges on the right and a narrow strip in the middle to mingle around. This could hold about 80 or so people.
Cloak Room: Located in the smaller room entrance for $3 an item. Non-Asian venues get it so cheap.
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight, but in the small room the line was a few people deep, while in the main room, there was really no line at all – you could get service anytime you wanted.
DJs: Main room: 9PM-11PM Random Weapon, 11PM-1AM Datadex, 1AM-3AM Miles Dyson (GER), 3AM-4:30AM Karton (ACT), 4:30-Close Audiophilez
Music Style: Electro House, Breaks. I do like my electro house music. Miles probably played a lot of his classic songs and some new ones thrown in as well. You would enjoy this set if you were familiar with the music. There was a moment or two where I couldn’t feel the rhythm and dance halfway through the set but otherwise I was pretty happy with the set. The euphoria of having Miles come back was good enough to keep me going throughout.
Crowd: For the Miles Dyson set, it was the initial core of Miles Dyson fans and friends they dragged along. Mostly a 20′s crowd, caucasian. Spotted probably 4 other Asians in here.
Entertainment: No extra things here
Atmosphere: Initially only about half the dancefloor was packed, and I was surprised. Last time when Miles came down to play there was a noticeably bigger crowd, but it might have been today was a Friday. Who knows. It appears the crowd here was here for the music, and pretty much everyone was dancing away.
Video: 360 in the main room

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video: Jump from the second room to the main room

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Timeline
Have you met my friend
So, there is an Asian girl in this place, and I don’t know if you knew already, but we Asians can spot all the other Asians in a nightclub. So eventually we are chatting but she has to leave and ‘meet up with her friends’. Oh, so where are her friends? “Over there” she says, pointing to the other side of the room. OK, see you later. She walks away and stands in the corner on her own, drink in her hand, approximately 2 metres away from me. Err… where were her friends?? Oh, I see. That was cold girl, real cold.

Lied in Translation
Dancing to the music, and a random girls joins us for dance. Cool. So we tried to talk to her. Now, talking to someone in the middle of the dancefloor usually results in absolute failure or a walk away of the said girl. So, lets talk. She doesn’t hear me first time. I say something else. She still has no idea and then tells me very slowly:
“i don’t speak english”

Haha omg hilarious. I can’t believe this. I thought non-english speaking people existed only in Asian nightclubs. I guess she was just here for the music.

Later in the night she came back to me and started conversing with me in PERFECT ENGLISH about how good the music was. WTH!? She just told me she couldn’t speak English! Unbelievable, the audacity of some people in this club tonight.

Lots of dancing
Well the primary purpose of tonight was to dance to tonight’s DJ, which is what I pretty much did. Pretty much the electro house music here allowed a beat to have me shuffle around and stomp around like a madman. Good enough to dance to but not too hard to make it sound like the repetitive hardstyle songs. Later in the night I had some followers dancing away with me. Cool

Arrivederci
Stayed for a few more songs with the next DJ but eventually left. I was only here for the main act.

Recommendation
I liked it. I came here just for the music and I left satisfied. Was only unhappy that people were allowed to freely enter after 3AM, it meant I paid $20 for the exclusivity of one hour with Miles Dyson. Could have been better if more people were here as well.

Me and Miles Dyson

Destination? (Sydney) @ Oxford Art Factory: 6/10

How loud is it you ask?

Here’s a video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Later at 4 or 4:30 the DJ changed to someone else, and the music was less danceable for us, and we left.

Crowd is all caucasian. At this time the place still had about 30-50 people which was amazing. Drinks are good value too.

Me and M were dancing crazy style, and got some dancers with us. A guy came up and insisted we dance using our middle fingers as instruments as part of the dance. So we ended up dancing around with our middle fingers in the air, around the place, etc etc. Interesting.

Oxford Art Factory is a nice place to visit for a dance, if you are into the housey/dubstep kind of scene.

7/10 only for lovers of the music genre advertised that week.  I cannot recommend for normal innocent clubbers.

Pavillion – Two girls in the front, 4 on the side, and indian guys for the rest of the people on here. DJ was playing west coast rap. My favourite anthems were being played (Dr Dre,  Snoop Dogg, etc). A crazy indian was dance-cracking onto the two girls in the front. He was out there, just shaking his body loose. I wondered where my energy was tonight. I think I get intimidated by other good dancers in a desolate setting.

Shark Bar/Hotel – I walked in and there was nobody on the floor. I was about to leave, but they started to play “Push it” by Salt N Pepa. I love this song so I *had* to get up there. So I jumped up and did a little boogie to the song, to the amusement of everybody staring at the elevated dancefloor in the middle. Everyone who looked at me I looked back, and they would stare away. A group of people at the very back took a photo of me and waved hi. The song ended and I ran off.

Spectrum – My usual friends had gone home, so I met up with the French backpackers for some dance. We checked out Spectrum first. Free entry. House. We went upstairs and it was *dead* as. A handful of people dancing, a handful of people sitting down, a small room, and that was it. I don’t think this was meant to be a place for clubbing. Reminded me like an oxford st version of Manning Bar at USYD. I can’t imagine that place being a place for clubbing. We left quite quickly.

We then stumbled upon Oxford Art Factory and settled in..

After Work Art Fridays @ The Oxford Art Factory (Art After Dark) (29th May 2009)

Note: This review is primarily for the ‘Art After Dark’ Room’, and not the ‘Live Art Space’ where a cover charge applied.

About Oxford Art Factory (assessment time 1.30am)
Address: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst
The Bar: Jugs of beers and cocktails offered for a reasonable price.
Website: http://www.oxfordartfactory.com
Inside: Walking downstairs, there are two rooms:

Live Art Space: Carpeted area with central wooden dancefloor, with DJ up on stage. At the back is an elevated area where more lounges exist. It was mostly dancefloor space.

Live Art Space - Oxford Art Factory (image oxfordartfactory.com)

Art After Dark: (where we were) A further flight of stairs down takes you to this room. It’s pretty small, holding about 100 people max. A bar as well here. The room has a high ceiling length, and a big TV on one end of the wall. It’s been painted white, which is different. Tonight there were only lounges along the wall, and not sticking out as in the picture.

Art After Dark Bar - Oxford Art Factory - This is where we hung out (image oxfordartfactory.com)

About After Work Art Fridays: (assessment time 1.30am)
Entry Fee/Cover Charge: Free for the Art After Dark Bar, $15 for the DJ in the Live Art Space Room tonight. After 3am it was free for all.
Crowd / Dress Code: Artsy types. People in their 20′s and 30′s. Lots of hats around. anything goes.
Atmosphere: I was expecting not many people to be here, so guess how surprised I was when I saw the whole room packed! Well, it was 1.30am, and it was a small area, but usually at an average to bad venue, 1.30am is when people start going home. So overall it was a good sign.
Music: Art After Dark Bar – Earlier in the evening there were live bands playing, but we missed that. So when we arrived, the band area was cleared and there was a DJ playing a mix of music across pop, rnb, retro and rock. Basically a bit of everything, and each upcoming song would be of a different genre. Somehow though the crowd was fully right into every song being played.

Live Art Space – DJ Sega (USA) was the main act playing tonight, (Indie). I didn’t get to check him out. Later another DJ was playing around 3am, with some dubstep beats, and another artist came up for some raps where I could practise some krumpin on the very open dance floor. The crowd here were all the hardcore types left, so everybody was into it.

Timeline

Not much dance room
Because of the TINY amount of room and the way in which the room was designed, our group of 8 people basically took up the middle section of the floor area. This meant every person walking in and out to the toilets or the bar had to go through our circle or around us. So basically the entire time our circle would be interrupted and I was, at least, constantly shuffling back and forth, with people hitting into us and spilling some beer onto each of us. Also because of the room, there weren’t many other large circles.. usually a max of 4 people would be per circle. Also I couldn’t pull off any crazy antic dance moves!! It was really cramped, but not shoulder to shoulder, I had about 20cm of room around me.

Boobs! (So your loyalty to this blog has paid off)
The screen in this room was playing some movie from the 80′s (You could tell by the hairstyles – it could have been the 70s). When we got in, there was a zoom in of a woman’s boobs, and someone was fondling them, just to test out to see how bouncy they were. A minute later, a couple are having a cigarette on the sofa, while the woman, still topless,  starts dancing behind them!!  It was the most bizarre film clip, but she was a pretty good dancer with her arm movements. Her boobs stayed bouncy throughout the dance routine.

I look up a few moments later and I see a naked man lying on bed, his bum crack towards the camera. gross. Back to dancing. Look up again after another few minutes, and there’s a young man and her partner – and guess what she’s doing – SHE’S TYING A CLOTH AROUND HIS DICK LIKE A BOWTIE!! What the hell! What kinda stuff is this??? He then stands up , with this cloth dangling from his dick, and he stands behind the bedpost. That was all. So bizarre!

It wasn’t surprising that there were couples making out everywhere in the room.

I wore casual. I am rewarded with solo dancing.
We mostly stayed within our circle through the night. A friend dances around with his bald head and basically gets all the attention! Damn. I had nothing. No wig, no hat, just my shirt, jeans and dodgy sneakers – I was very casual and  quite content just dancing it out on my own. Everyone else was dressed their own style. Crazy hairdos, different fashion styles.. half the crowd wearing hats – it would have been quite difficult to attract attention. Only later in the night near closing time, the music became..  I don’t know.. I wasn’t too into it anymore and wanted to just dance it out in the other room.

Coda
We all get kicked out of the Live Art room around 4am. Music was still going in the Art After Dark Bar but nobody was dancing. We were all buggered and left, quite happy with this  place. I liked this place and would recommend it if you like all sorts of music, don’t mind crowded packed small  bars, and mingling it up with the artsy types. You know who you are.