We had just left a dress up party, and simply put this was the closest place nearby for a dance… a guestlist was sent a day earlier – here we go!
1AM - Taken from the DJ Podium
WOW @ Martin Place Bar , Sydney Continue reading »
Assessment Time: 12:10AM – 4:00AM
Opening Hours: Unknown (Probably 10:00PM) –
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 51 Martin Place
Venue Website: http://www.martinplacebar.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.urbanagent.com.au http://www.facebook.com/WOWSaturdays http://www.ohsnap.com.au
Occurrence: Every Saturday since Winter 2011. This replaced the previous “Bamboo” event running for the 6 years prior. It’s run under the same promoters though. At time of writing it appears the “Bamboo” event will make a return under a new venue.
Outside Line: It was quite the long line our late arrival after midnight. We ended up waiting about 25 minutes before we got inside the club. This is typical for a busy event. I would try to get here before 10:30 if you want to have shorter lines – but in return you’re going to get a dead club upon entry.
Dress Code / Door Policy: “Strict” no hat policy was advertised, but it was weakly enforced. I had my hectic punk hair on. Someone else was dressed as a Chef, complete with a Chef’s hat. Most guys and girls were dressed at minimum smart casual and dressy/chic/sexy.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full entry was paid. Discounted entry before 12:30AM if you sent in a guestlist prior.
Guestlist: [email protected] I sent a guestlist the day before but there was no confirmation – however it did turn up on the list while people before me entered. Sadly enough when I got to the cashier it was too late.
2AM. Phone rings from a girl – It can only mean.. Booty call!! “No” is the answer. Aww.
Even better though – it’s an invitation to go clubbing! Hooray!
At 2AM??
Haha, well I was already in the city, so might as well drop on by – here we go!
Upstairs 2AM general dancefloor shot
Volar @ Civic Hotel:
Assessment Time: 2:00AM – 2:45AM
Crowd: Asian – mixed Internationals and Local Asians. Mostly guys at this time.
Music: RnB
Atmosphere: Packed inside on the dancefloor. there were enough sofas around to sit down on, but nobody here was in a dancing mood.
Bar: The bar appeared to still be busy, but only with a row of people at the front instead of 4 or 5 rows deep.
Entry Fee: Full $25 forked out for this quick visit.
Video:
Continue reading »
Friends are at Pontoon Bar tonight, so this should be a good chance to see how it has progressed since opening night. Here we go!
12:40AM Upper Level Bar Line
Perfect @ Pontoon Bar (Ground Level and Upper Level: Wallaby Bar) Continue reading »
Assessment Time: 12:05AM – 2:45AM
Opening Hours: The bars are open throughout the day, but the event opens 9:30PM. Tonight it closes at 4:00AM
Lockout: Around 2:30AM, but definitely no re-entry after 3:00AM
Address: Cockle Bay Wharf (201 Sussex St from the other side)
Venue Website: http://www.pontoonbar.com
Promoter Website: http://www.facebook.com/perfectnights or http://www.theperfectnight.com.au
Occurrence: Every Friday since April 2011. Note that this is the event that succeeded Flow Fridays @ World Square Pub, after it closed.
Outside Line: Arriving just after midnight, there was a huge massive line outside the downstairs entrance. A good 70+ people waiting, which is ridiculous. So I went to the second, lesser known entrance upstairs. There was a pretty long line here too, but only about 30 people or so. It took 30 minutes to get in. This was including some folk who joined the line and got sick of waiting, and left. This was also the first week off for pretty much every tertiary school student in Sydney, so people were out clubbing in their droves.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Hats allowed. Most guys are casual in jackets jeans, pants due to the winter. It is encouraged by promoters to go ‘dressy’, but I did spot a friend dressed in sweatpants and a jumper, so there you go. Again due to winter, many girls have leggings on but most brave the cold and wear their clubbing dresses on. I actually paid attention to the dresses tonight and there were a number of questionable leopard print designs tonight. Tonight I wore a blazer, jeans, collared shirt, white sneakers and my ‘bad hair day’ cap.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full charge. $20 on guestlist before 11:30PM , $15 if it is a birthday guestlist.
Guestlist: Ends at 11:30PM. Email [email protected]
No reason for tonight’s festivities, except my friend wants to get hammered. That’s the spirit… so a guestlist was organised, I dragged pretty much as many friends as I could and we were set – here we go!
Boys shall be boys
Bounce @ Slide Bar
Assessment Time: 10:15PM – 03:00AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – 03:00AM, but doors only opened 10:15PM.
Lockout: Lockout at around 2:30AM as noted by security.
Address: 41 Oxford St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.slide.com.au
Promoter Website: The guys at Red and Blue events run off a Facebook profile page http://www.facebook.com/bounce.kpop.party
Occurrence: Typically once every month or two months, depending on how they feel.
Outside Line: Friends started lining up at 10:00PM and there were about 5 people in front of them. When the doors opened the line got to about 20 deep. Later in the night at around 11:00PM, the line was observed to be 30 deep. The wait didn’t seem to take long, as they freely allowed people in. The wait would have been around 10 to 15 minutes.
Dress Code / Door Policy: There is no suggested dress code by the promoters. Guys: Most guys wore collared shirts. Normal t-shirts were allowed inside as well. Sneakers are okay. Hats are allowed here. I wore a collared shirt with black pants. Some clever girls wore bunny ears! I’m so doing that next time…
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $20 full cover charge. $15 on guestlist. It’s $5-$10 cheaper compared to all the other Asian events held on Fridays.
Guestlist: [email protected] – I brought 10+ friends, and got a complimentary bottle of champagne to share around as a reward. Very cool 
Inside: Walk into an open floor to hold about two hundred people. The floor includes an elevated dance platform in which the floor tiles light up and change colours. Bar to the left for a length of about 20 people. DJ booth is in the far right corner. Overhanging the bar back on the left is a balcony for private functions and what not, to hold about 60 people in a squishy fashion. The upstairs balcony has its own separate bar as well. There is also a large projector screen behind the DJ where they are playing random clips from Asian television
Cloak Room: $5 per item. However I did get a little surprise that my large sports bag qualified for the special $10 offer as not advertised. Sweet! I didn’t ask why, but I suspect it was because it had other jackets and bags inside. (Cloak room girl asked me earlier what I had inside the bag)
Bar Prices / Line: Tonight’s specials were $6 Alize & Sprite, $6 Bourbon and Coke. I drank a glass of house red wine for $8; It was grossly bitter – never again. It was fun though feeding the wine to unsuspecting friends, and watching their faces twitch in disgust.
Eviction Count: One of my friends was kicked out for being too touchy feely with the girls around here, and creeping them out. Unfortunately I’m going to be a bad friend and say I can’t disagree. Guys.. girls don’t like it when you are grabbing a handful within 30 seconds of interaction.
Music Style: Primarily RnB and K-Pop (Korean pop). A handful of house, and hip hop songs are scattered throughout the night as well. So if you are a fan of K-Pop, you are going to like it tonight. Even if you haven’t heard of any K-Pop songs – they are pretty catchy to dance along to.
Crowd & Ratio: That said, pretty much everyone here is Asian, with the majority being that of Korean descent. Both Australian Koreans and Koreans from overseas are here tonight. The rest are a mix of whatever Asian races there are left. At around midnight the ratio was pretty good/even.. but of course as the night wears on, the girls leave and there are heaps more guys. However there were plenty of people, so there were still plenty of women around. Ages would vary here, but the general gist of the crowd is that of people in their early 20′s.
Entertainment: All that the promotional poster mentioned was that it was a ‘naughty’ event. They brought a female stripper in. This was followed by an equally entertaining guy strip show. More on these later in much more detail in the timeline.
Atmosphere: The first hour or so the music is blaring out the speakers, but people are only drinking and chatting. Nobody dares to go up onto the dancefloor. Eventually though, effects of alcohol and a crowd that is building up gets people going. Pretty much from that point on, the crowd was constantly on the dancefloor going hard at it. Even when we left at 3AM, it was still packed! This was a first for my times here, as usually it would be dead by 2:30AM. I could only attribute this to being the beginning of the 5 day long weekend, so everyone was going hard out at it. Needless to say the atmosphere on the dancefloor and immediate surrounding areas was pretty energetic, especially when they play a random K-Pop song and everyone sings along to it.
Video: Music Sampling of the night 
Bounce @ Slide Bar - Crowd
Underground Level: Dancefloor
This event had all the hype, and it pretty much drove my curiosity insane! Take my money you sneaky little promoters, its time to visit this event – here we go!
Volar @ Civic Hotel (All 3 levels)
Assessment Time:12:35AM – 03:30AM
Opening Hours: Unknown the exact time of opening for the club levels – probably 10:30PM. The club levels close at 04:00AM
Lockout: Unknown, but throughout the night it seemed to be okay to slip in and out of the venue, so long as there isn’t any trouble going on.
Address: 388 Pitt St (It is on the corner of Pitt St and Goulburn St between World Square and Mr B’s Hotel)
Venue Website: http://www.civichotel.com.au
Promoter Website:Primary Promoter: http://www.urbanagent.com.au alongside with ESO.net.au, 1nitestand.com.au , viplist.com.au, Z3nent.com, EpikEntertainment.com.au, G6
Occurrence: Every Friday since March 2011. (Tonight was the third week open)
Outside Line: The line was pretty short when I arrived (I did arrive a bit late), but earlier it was reported to be much longer.. to at least 50 deep. I waited about 5 minutes or so to get in.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Smart Casual is recommended, but it does appear that pretty much most attire is accepted tonight. A hat was spotted worn inside the club, so I assume hats are okay. I wore a black t-shirt, jeans and clean white sneakers and got in without a problem.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 is the full charge tonight….$20 on the guestlist. Guestlists closed at midnight.
Guestlist: Email [email protected] or submit via the website. The guestlist submitted was not recognized at the door when my friend Marty came up, which was unfortunate. Alternate addresses are [email protected] and [email protected]
Inside: It’s promoted as three levels of clubbing. Upper/Rooftop level, ground level, and Underground.
Inside Upper Level: Otherwise known as the Rooftop level, walk into enter an area with a bar to your left and lounges to your right. The bar has three sides to it, to line up maybe 15 people comfortably. A narrowish path leads you to the other side of the room, where the open space serves as the dancefloor. In the corner is the DJ area and 2-tiered podium for dancing. The podium holds about 10 people. The immediate clear area for dancing holds about 40-50 people, while people can still dance a bit further back near the entrance or on the other end near the VIP area. Tonight the VIP area was roped off. On the diagonally opposite corner of the room is the smoking area, where people sit around on marble/wooden seating arrangements and smoke and talk. The area is ‘roped’ off by a thin stream of water, similar to the Cool Zones at Town Hall station during afternoon peak hour.
Inside Ground Level: Enter the ground level from Pitt St and be presented with a bar to your left spanning half of the floor. Roughly the same size as the Rooftop level bar. DJ area in the corner with a small dancefloor for 20 or 30 people. Stools and lounges dot the walls. No podiums and minimal lighting exists here, but there is a disco ball.
Inside Underground Level: It kind of feels like you are walking to the bathroom going down the stairs. Then you realise, that there are actually toilets here. However, there is also an entrance to the Underground room. Walk in here to be faced immediately with the side of the bar, about the same or smaller size than the other two bars above. On the right are saloon like seating arrangements on the wall, with a mirror running along around shoulder height on the side. On the far left corner is the dance area. It is actually a sunken squareish area about 50cm below the floor level here. The area holds 50 comfortably upto 80-100 squishily in my estimation. Rails border the sunken dancefloor so that observers can watch on by. Right in front of the dancefloor is the stage area at floor height. The stage could hold 20-40 people. This room also holds one of the most well recommended sound systems in the Sydney club scene.
Cloak Room: Located in the Underground level room. Pricing is unknown. Marty got inside at midnight and discovered that the cloak room in the Underground level was at capacity! That’s crazy! It’s not a very big cloak room though. It would be hard enough to cater for one full level full of people, let alone 2 full levels of people. Keep this in mind and put stuff in the cloak room ASAP for this event.
Bar Prices / Line: Upstairs is a nightmare to get drinks. Just like the Taboo event on Saturdays here, you still have to wait at least 20-30 minutes to get served, if you don’t push in. Ground level, there generally isn’t a line or a very sparsely populated line – the sole bartender here was a testament to that. In the Underground level, the line wasn’t as bad as rooftop – the line was 2-3 people deep with about a 10-15 minute wait during peak times. Pricing unknown – I didn’t drink tonight.
Music Style: The poster at the time was that the Upper level was dedicated to RnB, which was true. The poster mentioned the bottom underground level was dedicated to House music. This was kind of true. Some house was played, but easily the majority of music played was that of RnB/House mashup. The promoters had to cater for the crowd here tonight. Every time a house song came up (even if it was commercial house) which did not even have a hint of RnB in it, the dancefloor would pretty much clear out, and people would head upstairs to the other room. It’s quite the sad story for the Asian House music lovers. Then, when an RnB song or a pop song came on.. the TB’s would come RUNNING back to the floor to have their little dance. The music sounded pretty freaking awesome though with the sound system. very crisp even though it was pretty loud. I guess i didn’t appreciate it as much last time I was here due to me not appreciating the type of music they were playing that night. The Ground level was a designated ‘chillout’ area by the promoters, but there is some Retro music playing here with matching dancefloor. Typical Retro from the 70s and 80s would be played here, from my time in this floor.
Crowd & Ratio: (Upstairs and undergound levels) The majority .. maybe 85% were of Asian descent. It would be a mix of Asian Australian and Overseas based Asians. The rest of the populace consisted of Caucasians, some Europeans/Middle Easterns and Indians. Upper level had the distinct advantage/disadvantage to have a prominently more dominant male crowd, for whatever reason I dont know why – maybe they didn’t like the house/rnb mashup music in the underground. Either way, I personally didn’t stay up here too long. The Underground level also had heaps of guys at peak, but as the night went on.. the ratio started to become more balanced – Quality was good on both sexes, so nothing to complain about here. Ground level, it was pretty much mostly Caucasians of mixed ages, who were appreciating the music.. and the odd handful of Asian folk who came here for a bit of a rest. Nothing special here. Overall, I am guessing tonight is a mix of young crowd and old… I would hazard to say there weren’t too many TB’s to be honest, but the crowd in general is young.
Entertainment: MC’s on upper and underground levels. A bottle water dump competition (aka cleverly disguised wet t-shirt contest) was on the cards followed by a booty shake competition. Oh wait, what’s that you hear? Oh yes, its me dropping the V-BOMB – The VIDEO BOMB of BOTH competitions for your viewing! Booyah!! Go on and watch it… you perverted scumbags 
Atmosphere: Underground Level Was pretty packed in the dance area, since most of the happenings and going ons were here. The sound system impressed me well enough to stay here the majority of the night. People are pretty much constantly dancing here the entire night. Only about after 1AM then did some space free up for us other people to have a chance to dance, but it still kept busy. I mean, there were less and less people, but it didn’t feel dead as people were still dancing and enjoying themselves.
Atmosphere: Upstairs/Rooftop Level It was extremely packed as well, but the amount of guys there compared to Underground Level didn’t encourage me to try to slice through the crowd. I’m sure girls with thick skin and a propensity to enjoy the act of rejecting the advancements of men would love it here. Later on in the night the population does decrease significantly after 1:30AM, as people realise downstairs is much more better.
Video Montage