Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline
I had a quick dance, and even I was too tired to do much. We left quite soon after.

Thoughts
I wouldn’t mind seeing what it was like at capacity. I would imagine it to be pretty good if you are into hardstyle / contemporary trance.

After multiple times coming here after 3AM, it was time to give this place a fair go. Guestlist sorted out, so here we go!

Zaia @ Space Nightclub
Assessment Time: 10:30PM – 04:00AM 
Opening Hours: No idea on when doors actually open. Possibly 09:45PM – 04:00AM 
Lockout: None 
Address: Level 3, 127 Liverpool St, Sydney 
Venue Website: http://www.spacevenue.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.phatentertainment.com.au
Occurence: Every Friday. 
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual allowed. Hats allowed. My sneakers were allowed in. Basically anything goes here. Guys were a mix of casual and collared shirts/dress shoes. Girls were mostly in dresses. 
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: (On guestlist) – Free before 10PM, $20 between 10PM – 11:15PM, $25 afterwards. If you ain’t on the guestlist, it’s a $25 flat charge. There is no separate guestlist line. 
Guestlist / Birthday Package: Sent mine through musesydney@yahoo.com.au, the 3rd party promoters for Zaia. Reserved area was sorted out for M’s birthday, but no birthday free passes were given to us as promised, despite protests at the register. Package included bottle of champagne, which was given in the form of drink passes. However no cloak room pass was given, nor VIP table service. Admittedly there were 20-30 birthdays tonight, and I did not specifically ask for free entry, cloak room pass or VIP table service, but I did ask for the birthday party package which, I was told, would include these things. A birthday boy or girl DOES NOT have to go through the motions to ask for these birthday things. 
Inside: Please note Space has been renovated since early 2010. Walk up the stairs to the Shark Hotel level, where red carpet and cash register awaits your money. No longer are the elevators used to enter the venue. Walk up another flight of stairs to enter Space Nightclub into the Trance room. The wooden dancefloor has been largened to accommodate more people. A stereoscopic light has been installed which dishes out some funky light patterns. Dancefloor holds about 40 people capacity. Bar servicing this room on the right, and an internal smoking room at the rear to hold about 20 people, like you see at some airports. Enter the bigger room via either of the two doors to be presented with a large dancefloor for about 300-400 people. Tonight, the cage podiums have been rid of! Instead, a catwalk like setup has been created, right into the middle front of the dancefloor, for the bikini contest later on. Two single podiums reside next to each of the columns holding the ceiling up.
Cloak Room: $10 Large Items, $5 small items. $3 Recheck. Ridiculous pricing as usual from this promoter. 
Bar Prices: $8.50 for a Vodka Cranberry. There are two bars tonight, and the shorter lines were always on the Trance Room side. People at the RnB side waited about 20 minutes for a drink, while in the Trance Room I waited about 5-10 minutes. 
Music Style: Primarily RnB in the large room, with some hip hop later in the night and some house mashups thrown in the mix as well. Repeats of songs were experienced – Mixing was done well though
Crowd: Primarily local Asians. A handful of white people, but I would say no more than 10 or 20 in total. 
Entertainment: Bikini Party – Competition for a $5000 first prize. More details later. Also podiums to which only girls were allowed to dance on in the earlier part of the night.
Atmosphere: RnB: It wasn’t too busy at 11, but at around 11:30 it pretty much picked up and peaked until around 2AM – 2:30AM when the bikini contest concluded. Dancefloor was pretty busy throughout – you had room to dance around, and only about half the time you had to move around to let other people through. In the Trance Room, the trance music really only came on at around 11:30PM, and you always had enough room to bounce around and spin and do stuff, but it always managed to stay busy enough to not look too dead. In general the crowd vibe was friendly. The rest of the non dancers just stood around the edges of the dancefloor or lounges. 
Trance: Dark throughout the night, smoke machines, and flashy nights with loud noise. People are more reserved here as we are all about dancing. Pretty warm and stuffy in here as well as the night wore on.

Video: Walk-through – Trance room , RnB room, smoking room, back into the trance room.

[VIDEO REMOVED  on request by Phat Entertainment ]

Video: Trance Room 360
[VIDEO REMOVED on request by Phat Entertainment]

Video: RnB Room 720
[VIDEO REMOVED on request by Phat Entertainment]

Timeline
Surrounded by dudes

Hooray! We have a reserved area. Just the two of us, as friends decided to fall sick tonight, and some bailed out last minute because they didn’t want to pay entry, which was a shame. But look – ALREADY TWO RANDOM DUDES ARE SITTING ON THE COUCH. WDF??? Ok, so we just sit down on the other chairs, and we are facing them. They are facing us. No words are spoken, as we are seated right next to the DJ area, and hence the loud speakers. We turn around and MORE DUDES have seated themselves around us. We are the centre of Mecca, and our pilgrim followers are in the form of dudes dress in hip hop / b-boy gear. I wasn’t quite feeling very comfortable here. All the guys were also sitting entirely in “Sophie’s Birthday” area – obviously there was nobody there who looked like a Sophie.

Stuff is manhandled
I despise the cloak room prices here. The line was pretty long anyway – 20 people deep. So I left it on the couch where the reserved area was. M and I dance for a bit, and come back to find someone has moved my bag and jacket to the other side of the couch. FUCKING RANDOMS MANHANDLING MY BAG. I felt so violated. I cannot express how angry I was. Later in the night some dude is sitting on my jacket. Fucking asshole. Just don’t sit there. It’s not your reserved area. Took my stuff and placed it in a dark corner. But James, just put it in the cloak room! All you do is whinge, you say. No, I am a stubburn tight ass.

Really hot in the Trance room
There are less people in here, yet somehow the place became so much more hotter. Was it poor ventilation? Was it that the dancers sweated much more in here? Was it the carpeted area? Was it Shark Hotel downstairs? It was always cooler in the RnB room, but even that at times got a bit heated, especialy in the middle of the dancefloor squished with other people.

The bikini contest
So tonight if you wore a bikini and entered the contest tonight, you could win $5000. Ridicously so much money. All you do is walk around, get stickers from people who liked you. Stickers are given to you when you buy a drink at the bar. Well, here are some videos of some real models in bikinis:
[VIDEO REMOVED on request by Phat Entertainment]

Here are the contestants:
[VIDEO REMOVED on request by Phat Entertainment]

Pretty much in the end the top 3 or 4 girls had an equal amount of stickers, and the MC just chose whoever he thought deserved it. 5000 dollars. Freaking hell that’s a shitload of money for 90 minutes of walking around and getting stickers.

Can’t hide from the noise
It’s loud in here. Firstly, our reserved area was next to the huge speakers installed in the RnB room. Secondly, it was loud throughout the venue. Even in the back it was pretty loud. It wasn’t deafening, but there just wasn’t any quiet area to have a conversation. Well, there was the smoking room and Shark Hotel downstairs but do you really want to leave your other friends to go downstairs, or spend your time talking in a smoking room and leave all smelly?

Started to die at around 2:30AM
It was funny, after the bikini contest finished, half the club left. Promoters were smart in delaying the announcement of the winners as late as possible.

Arrivederci

Spent most of the last hour in the Trance Room until close. Nobody really was dancing in the RnB room, and I felt more free here.

Recommendation
I personally didn’t like it. It was just these little things I mentioned above that probably contributed to setting my not so good mood for the night.

[Edit 16th September 2010] I can no longer recommend this event.

Zaia @ Space Nightclub Sydney – 4.5/10

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline:
Found the birthday boy
Well, we quickly found the birthday boy. He seemed sad, or more likely tired, or possibly trying to recover from drinking. I couldn’t tell. Wished him a happy birthay. He didn’t seem like much of a talker. I wonder how much it cost him to rent out this floor and DJ all night?

We didn’t recognize each other the entire night
Struck up a conversation with random girl in the corner not doing much at all. She doesn’t dance. Not many do. I don’t know why, but I told her I was famous online, haha. She believed me, but I refused to mention what I did online. Chatted for maybe 15 minutes and that was it. anyway it was only after I woke up the next morning, I realised she’s one of my twitter followers! I spied her twitter photo and confirmed that it was, indeed her. Right now at the time of writing, she still doesn’t know who I am. You follow me on twitter! How can you not know who I am by now! anyway, I found it strange that, of all people to talk to, I picked one of my 92 twitter followers. However she didn’t recognize me at the time, so the recognition count still stands at 6 (The 5th recognition was at Shark Hotel on the 16th, which I did not blog about).

There are actually djs in here on the bottom level
I am pretty surprised there is DJ in here on the Friday, but I guess it was hired for the birthday tonight. Tempting to request some house or rnb, but that would have majorly pissed off some of the crowd in here, as well as the DJ. anyway, I am surprised that there was a DJ in the bottom level, and none upstairs.

Arrivederci
Well we were only here for a short time, and we left at closing time.

Recommendation
This can be a good place for a birthday. It’s dark, one end you have a DJ and the other end there lounges far enough to be able to talk.

Additional Info: 5th August 2010
The birthday boy himself has stumbled upon my blog and of course, found this particular entry – he had some things to clarify:
-  Hardstyle was only later in the night. RnB / Pop was earlier in the night. 
-  Hiring of the floor + DJ cost $1300. Cloak room would have cost even more.
- He was wasted when I met him.

Pirate and Indian

Visiting a random who we only met last week. We reached the door and I don’t really want to go in. Random begs us to come in for an hour or so because its her birthday. Well, we were already here, and we were in our costumes from the party before, so let’s make the most of this – here we go!

Impulse @ Hunter Bar
Assessment Time: 02:00AM – 03:15AM
Opening Hours: – 11:00PM  - 10:00AM
Lockout: None
Website: http://www.myspace.com/impulsefridays
Address: 50 Hunter St, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: anything goes. Hats allowed, costumes allowed.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $20. Unsure on guestlist but there probably was one
Guestlist: impulse_chamber@hotmail.com
Occurence: Every Friday.
Inside: Under street level, the place is quite dark. It is just one room – low ceiling height – a bar to the right, a dancefloor at the front to hold about 100 people tightly and the DJ at the far end. Lounges are located as you walk in. 
Cloak Room: Free for umbrellas. $3 or $4 for other items
Bar: Did not drink tonight.
DJs: Main DJ was Amber savage. See this pic for the set list. Aren’t they so nice to supply one?
Music: Hard Trance, Hard Style
Crowd: Older, mostly asians. Older meaning being on the wrong side of 30. There are also a handful of younger people, but no less than 25. These people were the last remnants of the classic trance generation of the 90s, still partying until the end, and you know what, I applaud them for it.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: Dark, loud and kind of seedy, in a bad way. Most were standing around in the dark, and avoiding the dancefloor. Everyone kept to themselves in here.
Video: Walkthrough / 360

Click here to view the embedded video.

Set List - Impulse @ Hunter Bar

Timeline:
No talk in here
It’s way too difficult to even strike a conversation inside here. It’s so damn loud. My attempt to talk to someone remotely my age was met with fierce resistance by her friends after half a second. I talked to an older, non-attractive asian woman and she was all over me. We almost kissed after some boogie, but I couldn’t do it – the light unfortonately landed on her face, and I saw her true age – thank god I was sober.. Thank god.

Crowd - Impulse @ Hunter Bar Sydney Friday

The outfits that didn’t work
Usually Captain Jack Sparrow gets the adulation and love from the entire place but for some reason tonight, only one person came up to take a photo with me and M (who was dressed as an American Indian). What is with this crowd? It was this place – it was designed to make everyone on equal footing by making it really dark as well as blaringly loud. Not even a hardcore shuffling Jack Sparrow could excite people up.

Arrivederci
We left after an hour of shuffling. Just exhausting stuff, and the place never really picked up.

Recommendation
Only come here if you really want to continue your dancing fix from 4am onwards. It’s not very good as a place to go to unless you are into your hard style. Probably HSU would be better (apparently, I haven’t been).  As a venue itself it isn’t so good either. It’s dark and not many lounges to sit down on… but that is standard. I don’t know of any other place in the CBD that has a day club going on, so Hunter has kind of a monopoly in the day club scene. $20 entry is dear for a club that did not have many people either.

Hunter Bar Fridays (Hardstyle) : 2.5/10