FIrst impressions of the bowl

Stereosonic Festival Sydney @ Olympic Park Showgrounds
Assessment Time: 3:45PM – 11:00PM
Opening Hours: 12:00PM- 11:00PM
Lockout: None
Passouts: No pass-outs are allowed
Address: Olympic Park Showgrounds, Homebush Bay, Sydney.
Venue Website: www.sydneyolympicpark.com.au
Promoter Website: www.stereosonic.com.au
Occurrence: Once a year since 2007, held early December / Late November, held in different capital cities.
Outside Line: Transport via train was no hassle, while lining up to get inside the stadium was pretty fast as well – I walked all the way to the right of the multiple gated entry where there was no lines.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Pretty much you can wear anything that is in good taste, but you can’t bring in alcohol, weapons, drugs etc. I was wearing a toothpaste costume.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $150 at the gate, while early bird ticket prices ranged from $110 to $135. The Sydney festival sold out a few weeks beforehand. A friend bought an e-ticket via a “promoter” and subsequently had his ticket invalidated at the gates – he was basically, conned and ripped off. he had to pay $150 at the gate for a brand new ticket. What luck. Always be careful when buying tickets not from Ticketek or Moshtix.
Inside: Think of the Easter show, and replace everything with music. Here is a map of the layout. In the stadium and some of the other smaller grassed stages, there are floorboards placed, so that you don’t stomp on the grass and get all muddy feet, in the event that it rained.
Cloak Room: There was one available but I didn’t use it today. Last year it was $3 per item.
Bar Prices / Line: I bought stuff but don’t remember prices – a can of Smirnoff red would be at least $10. These are typical for festivals.
Bathroom Facilities: At the stadium there were long lines for women, and not so long lines for the men. Outside there were plenty of port a loos for everyone (so as far as I am aware)
DJs / Artists: Armin van Buuren, Carl Cox, LMFAO, Empire of the Sun, Afrojack, The Bloody Beetroots, Avicii, Benny Benassi, Ferry Corsten, Dirty South, Kaskade, Dash Berlin, and more.
Music Style: Artists primarily reflected on electronic dance / dance culture music.
Crowd: People of all ages are here from all backgrounds to see their favourite act or to enjoy the show.

Atmosphere: I was at the stadium most of the time and it was pretty much packed the whole time I was there. On arrival there at around 5pm the moshpit was full, and no longer people were allowed inside. The floor of the stadium was also full and people were only being allowed to trickle in as people left. I had friends who came here earlier at 2PM and were able to just get places within the moshpit area. The crowd steadily built up through Afrojack and Benny Benassi sets so that we could watch LMFAO. The LMFAO set was arguably the peak of the numbers in the stadium, as well as my personal favourite set – simply because people were singing along and the guys were really into it. Highlights include actually popping champagne (“Champagne Showers”) onto the crowd, and the cameraman zooming into all the crotches during “Sexy and I know it” – Total gross out but hilarious at the same time. It was pretty bad that they came late 30 minutes late on stage, at the expense of shorter sets from AvB and The Bloody Beetroots. We stood around for 30 minutes just thinking.. when *are* they going to come on? Thank god that they weren’t cancelled. After the LMFAO set, quite a few people left the stadium (probably to Dash Berlin, whose set I heard was bloody amazing) – the rest of the people here were sticking around for The last two acts, or just had no idea who they were, and wanted to experience. I missed the entire Bloody Beetroots set, but got to experience the Armin van Buuren set. It was pretty good, but it would have been better if I was in the moshpit.
Video: Music Sample / Timeline

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Timeline
Phone reception is simply atrocious
Pretty much from about 3PM onwards, I was unable to make ANY calls to ANY of my friends, just due to the amount of people here today. It totally sucked ass as I couldn’t meet up with my friends. So I just hung out with the friends I had already met earlier today. It was worse than new years eve, as new years eve call dropouts only last three to four hours – I was here for a good 5 or 6 hours! IT SUCKED HAIRY BALLSACKS.

Sydney is the biggest city, and so is this festival
Later in the evening, Stereosonic was declared Australia’s largest event in terms of attendance. I would say also probably the best overall line up in years for the general populace as well. I even had friends come out of festival “retirement” to come out for today. Never say never. You would be seriously missing out if you didn’t come out to see this line up. Like seriously. For the days upcoming beforehand, it was raining heaps, and lots of people sold their tickets, to the astonishment that today was a bright sunny day. A shame for them.

Packed to the rafters
All the main acts were at the main stadium, which was situated a few hundred metres away from the rest of the action. As mentioned earlier, this resulted in a lockout of the mosh pit area, the floor, and even a lockout of the stadium itself. I unfortunately got locked out of the stadium alongside some other folk. It was about a 30 minute wait of protesting and watching other people climb over the fence then we were finally allowed to be let in, under police supervision.

Video: The shitty side of Stereosonic (and other festivals): Lining up for ANYTHING. 

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On someone's shoulders

Now I’m sitting raised on this dude’s shoulders, on the phone, looking out back at the crowd – the crowd are are all staring, cheering at me or however people react to seeing a toothpaste bottle arising into the air. My friend spots me (I couldn’t spot her) and finds me a few minutes later. That was awesome.

Condoms and other bad things
Here is a photo of one of the many condom balloons thrown around the place. Somewhere behind I could smell someone puffing on some sticky icky. A friend also got asked if he had pills. All in a typical day in a festival. LOL

Condom Balloon!

Life being a bottle of toothpaste
While a friend was being asked for drugs, people only were asking me if I had toothpaste. Then this was followed by people squeezing whatever part of my costume in order to excrete the wonderful, white, magic substance that is known as toothpaste. And the most common question I got was “where was the toothbrush?” – In my pants of course.

I didn’t get really hot until about after 3 hours, when I started to sweat profusely. It was quite disgusting, and I was glad that sunset finally arrived to cool me down.

Mixing it up with the crowd

Sticky, icky floor
Half of the time people are kicking cans away from themselves, to other people. So many people have spilled drinks in this heat, that the floor has become quite sticky. So sticky that beer cans are sticking to the bottom of the soles of my shoes. Yes, fucking BEER CANS ARE STUCK ON MY SHOE as I dance. It’s ridiculous.

Spotted by a fan?
Out of the thousands of people who came here today, surely one of them read this website. Well, someone did, and that someone found me. Haha! I was pretty amazed that I was spotted, but now that I think about it, I *was* in a Giant Toothpsate Costume

Arrivederci
Finished at 11PM. Transport out involved a long walk around the station, but we got on the first train right away, no waiting around. I was pretty exhausted and ready to go home. However, I got a call from a friend in the city….

Final Thoughts & Recommendation
A great lineup and as I said before one of the best I’ve seen that a festival pull. No idea how these guys will top it for next year, but I’m a shoe in for next year. Definitely a festival to go to.

Though I wish prices were cheaper as well as less of a requirement for people to have to be locked out of stadiums or be held up waiting for acts. I spent at least an hour of my time doing these things, when I could have listened to other acts.

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

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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

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

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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 Arthouse
Location: Pitt St opposite Hungry Jacks/ Pure Platinum
Inside: Main room with main DJs, and a secondary room of similar size but darker atmosphere  playing breaks.

About Together
Music: House
Crowd: Caucasian, Pretty.
Dress Code: Casual
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: Gia mentioned she paid $30 before midnight. We paid $25 at 2am. $20 prepaid on the Paul Strange presents website
Occurrence: Weekly Saturdays
Website: http://www.paulstrangepresents.com/
Atmosphere: (2am) Pretty much a dancing mood in main room, but it was not too packed. Most people were outside in the back having a chit chat. Secondary room was pretty dead at this time.

Timeline

Lining up troubles
That’s us in the guestlist line. We were told to line up here. Then we were told to line up in the other line, as we were not on the guestlist. After about 30 minutes we got to the front, and we were told we didn’t have pink armwrists, so we had to line up back on the guestlist line!!! What a JOKE.

After lining up again in the guestlist line, the guy recognized us and apologises, then lets us in.

More Kissing
We met T and her ex’s Brazilian friends, and they were friendly. Half the time was spent playing tonsil hockey with T, while the others cheer and whistle on loudly as we pash. (I’m still shaking my head as I write this.) I secretly wanted Gia, but she had already found a pashing partner. By this time my hormones have overriden any sense of logical rationing. My heart says no, but the prostate says yes.

Music
Brilliant, I had no complaints. House was done very well

Coda
Leave around 5am, very very tired… I didn’t really get a chance to criticize this place, though I would advise on getting prepaid tickets.

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.

About “Destination?”
Cover Charge: $20, $15 on guestlist. Lollipop on entry.
Website: www.atmydestination.com/sydney
Crowd: Both young and old.. mostly white people. The future music festival was on earlier so there were a few people from there as well.
Atmosphere: A bit dead. Most people turned up at 2am for Miles Dyson then left at 4am.
Music: Breaks and Electro House
DJ List: Open – 12am Shamozzle / 12am – 2am fRew / 2am – 4am Miles Dyson (Main Act) / 4am – close Tone Def DJs

Timeline
It was pretty much dead early on.. the main room was open with about 20 people inside.. only a few are dancing.  This was the night… at about midnight it was still pretty dead. I spent $20 already so I wasn’t going to leave until I heard the main act.  The DJ wasnt that good either.

A lady walked around and datamined my details, and she gave me a Miles Dyson JJJ mixup CD.  Cool !

2am-4am:
Just before Miles Dyson comes on.. the place suddenly gets packed to the max. Then he starts his electro set.. wow it was gold. Loved it from start to end. Danced like crazy. The thing was, it felt like a concert. Everybody was here to see the main set and when he came on, they just danced facing towards him. Nobody dared to turn around and dance in another direction. I found that quite unusual .
Theres a photo of me somewhere on inthemix.. let me find it…. here it is! I’m not wearing any accessories, which is no wonder I barely interacted with anyone.

Right after Miles finished, most of the crowd left, and so did most of the girls.  One of the guys commented on my dancing, noting he saw me dance earlier and he liked it.

I buggered home, somewhat happy.