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]
Crowd at 1:30AM
Prelude – a massive conflict
A Korean event, named “Steam Partie” is on tonight! Whether the word “partie” was spelt like that on purpose, I do not know, but I had to get my dancing feet to this place. Marty was keen to try it out too.
However we realised it was being held at the same place as the “Babyface” event promoted by Infinity Productionz on Fridays. Both were promoting the hell out of their events, so either of these companies was going to have to pack up and leave, OR they could decide to run the event together and share profits… This was going to be interesting. Obviously based on the review title , “Steam Partie” had won – promoters from Infinity Productionz were nowhere to be seen.
I wonder how communication between the promoters at Infinity or between Infinity and the venue owners at Tao Ultra Lounge broke down so much as to result in such a disaster for the Infinity crew?? Can you imagine spending so much on promoting for an event, rocking up on the night and realising you’re not meant to be here? It’s sad, but hope they take this lesson learnt with measure to prevent something like this happening again.
So back to it – let’s check out the new event, here we go!
Steam Partie @ Tao Ultra Lounge Continue reading »
Assessment Time: 12:05AM – 2:05AM
Opening Hours: Unknown (Typical club opening times for this venue would be 10:30PM- 4:00AM)
Venue Address and Website: The promoters can’t decide on a venue. The first event was held at V Bar. Tonight is being held at Tao Lounge, while the June incarnation is being held at Civic Hotel Underground Level.
Venue Website: http://www.mrbshotel.com.au
Promoter Website: The guys at S-Team only have a Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/steam2010
Occurrence: Occurs every month or two months. It has started since late 2010.
Outside Line: Not much of a line outside at all.
Dress Code / Door Policy: It appears that there was no dress code for tonight. People are about 50/50 dressed smart casual or just casual with a t-shirt and jeans.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: I think it was $20. It included a voucher for a free drink before Midnight.
Guestlist: We didn’t submit one, but contact details should be on the Facebook page.
Inside: Walk downstairs underneath Mr B’s hotel to enter Tao Ultra Lounge. Situated beneath Mr B’s Hotel, Tao Ultra Lounge is setup as one room segregated by sofas and lounges,and fold away columnar wall-like arch things. As you walk downstairs into the club, you are on the right end of the club, where it is a standing and drinking area. Tonight the entry area has the huge banner for a professional photo with the promotional girls. The middle section is mostly the dancefloor area to hold 50-80 people . The latter third is again, standing room and lounge area, while the bar stretches along the farther two-thirds of the room.
Cloak Room: Didn’t utilise the cloak room tonight
Bar Prices / Line: You could usually get service right away.
DJs: DJ Snoop
Music Style: Primarily Trance and House. Considering the Korean audience I was expecting RNB but it never really surfaced, except in tiny sampling form. It was a pretty wierd type of Trance music that i really couldn’t get into. I think some of the other girls here looked pretty bewildered to why such music was being played here tonight. Was hoping later in the night more danceable or recognizable music would be played, but it was pretty much the same thumping beats throughout the night. I definitely did not picture this kind of music being played at a Korean oriented clubbing night. To be fair though, the style of Music to be played was not advertised on their banners and flyers.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly if not, all Korean . Definitely all Asian tonight. The ratio was quite even at one point but for most of the night there were heaps of guys. I would say 70:30 Men to women.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment for tonight.
Atmosphere: The whole place is pretty dark, with just the laser lights and minimal lighting going. Population wise it was pretty dead in the beginning, but only started to pick up at 12:30, with the dancefloor being filled but the other areas were pretty dead. Smoke machines helped give the illusion of having the place not being so dead.
Video: Music Montage
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
Fresh after ceasing the Flow Fridays @ World Square Event, the promoters have moved their Friday nights to Pontoon bar, resurrecting the old ‘Perfect’ tag as their event name, I suspect to continue with their love of alliterations. I wasn’t too big a fan of Pontoon Bar in the past, but tonight they had the upstairs open as well, which I hadn’t seen yet. It also coincidentally is my friend’s birthday here tonight.. so it’s the ‘perfect’ (ha!) reason to give it a visit – here we go!
Perfect @ Pontoon - Punking it out
(Event Name Resurrection) Grand Opening: Perfect @ Pontoon Bar (Level 2 only) Darling Harbour Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:30PM – 02:00AM
Opening Hours: Unknown. From past experiences at Pontoon it should close at 03:00AM. Opening time unknown.
Lockout: There was no lockout at 2:00AM, but it might have been put into place later.
Address: Listed as 201 Sussex St, but access to the place is more or less via The Promenade at Darling Harbour’s Cockle Bay Wharf. The main level is not ground, but the upper level. It is accessed externally via a set escalators in the courtyard area of Pontoon Bar. (It almost is like the old World Square Pub venue, isn’t it). Ground level doesn’t receive so much attention here.
Venue Website: http://www.pontoonbar.com
Promoter Website: Run by Syndicate Events in conjunction with Colab Entertainment, and Intouch events- specialised webpage at http://www.theperfectnight.com.au
Occurrence: Tonight was Grand opening night, and is set for a weekly Friday occurrence.
Outside Line: A line of approximately 20 people were outside. Luckily some friends of mine had lined up prior and were close to the front. We waited about 5 minutes before getting in.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Hats allowed. Theme is to dress to impress. Guys: Smart Casual recommended. It was strongly advised that all men must wear collared shirts or entry would be denied. I did see some guys inside with t-shirts on, so I am not sure how strict the policy is. I had a t-shirt but with a blazer which got me in, but I took off the blazer once inside. Girls: Recommended to dress sexy/chic, and so happy to report overall almost everyone dressed well tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full price. Kills me every time, but appears to be standard for the Asian oriented nightclubs. $15 on guestlist before 11:30PM. No midnight love tonight. I think ground level was free entry for the public to dance their socks off, and that only upstairs was charging. Do correct me if I am mistaken.
Guestlist: Expires 11:30PM. Send guestlists to [email protected] or [email protected] – tell ‘em I sent ya!
Inside: The event covers two levels, but the focus is of the upper level, with the ground level not getting much love.
Downstairs: Walk into the back of the dance area for about 100 or so people. it is just a roundish room with DJ in the far back wall. To the left is the open bar area for all users with tables, lounges and what not taking up half of the ground floor area.
Upper Level: Outside pontoon is a courtyard area to which patrons can sit down and relax. Escalators from here take you upstairs to the upper level. Walk inside to see a view of Darling Harbour to your left. This immediate area is of lounges and chairs, for people to mingle but not dance. Probably for 40-50 people. Move in to the right where there are a zone of 2-3 small lounge areas for birthdays or what not, then followed by the main areas – dancefloor on the left to hold 80-120 people, and a single bar to the right to hold about 15 people along its length. At the furthest end is the cloak room and bathrooms.
Cloak Room: I did use it but I don’t remember the price. It was reasonable, so I would say it would be $5 or less.
Bar Prices / Line: I didn’t drink, so pricing was unknown. However to get water, there was no simple jugs of water to be around, so I had to line up. After about 10 minutes I gave up, because the line did not move one bit! People were coming in left right and centre to get a piece of the bar action. I could have had better luck going downstairs to use the bar there, but I was too lazy to go outside in the rain. A friend of mine stayed in line for a drink, and she reported it took her 30 minutes for a glass of water. That is really messed up. I secretly hope that future events will have easy jugs of water at the bar, or even better – someone running around with buckets of bottled water giving it away. Oh wait, that did happen! A man came by with a bucket of bottles of water, handing it out for FREE. He was definitely the most popular person of the night. Seriously free – usually bars charge $2 or something for a bottle of water. Am sorry that we didn’t get to see the bottle guy for the rest of the night.
View of the bar and the crowd line (11:50PM)
DJs: Edo, Moto, Bonniez, Flipsta, et al.
Music Style: Mostly contemporary commercial RnB tonight.
Crowd & Ratio: Upper Level: Pretty much mostly Asian Australian here. There are some Caucasians and Indians in the mix, from either downstairs or here for birthdays. There were a slight more number of guys than girls, but that said, a lot of the guys were lined up at the bar, presumably buying drinks for themselves or for some girls – so that left the rest of the venue in a kind of even-ratio.
Entertainment: Just the MC to keep things going. Also CD giveaways were had, and a friend won a copy. Awesome
Atmosphere: Upon entry it was pretty busy, it took a while to cut through the crowd to get to the other side. This included the dancefloor, where people are dancing their hearts away. On the dancefloor itself, there is not much room to dance, but it isn’t sardine packed, it is what a typical busy dancefloor is – enough room to have your own little circle, some simple dancing and that’s about it. Throughout the night it was indeed at least busy on the floor – but somehow , I had the feeling the lounge areas weren’t so alive – people were sitting around being .. people. At the time of departure the place was still indeed busy. Throughout the night even though there were a sizable amount of people, it never got heated up and sticky as in the previous venue, so props to the promoters for that. The vibe was pretty good throughout the night.
View of the general dancefloor area (12:30AM)
Video: Walkthrough the main area and music sampling from the night: Continue reading »
As I write this review, news has come through that Tank Nightclub, after 10 years, will be shutdown after April 2011 and converted to a non-clubbing venue by the owners. It is sad to see one of the great club venues of Sydney go out like this, as it was definitely underutilised in recent years… Continue reading »
Here for a friend of a friend’s birthday tonight – simple enough.. here we go!
RnB Superclub / Not Myself @ Tank Nightclub
Assessment Time: 11:30PM – 01:15AM
Opening Hours: 10:30PM – 04:00AM ?
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 3 Bridge Lane, Sydney CBD, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.merivale.com/establishment/tank
Promoter Website: http://www.rnbsuperclub.com
Occurrence: Every Friday until April 2011.
Outside Line: About 4 people in front of us, but the line is held up FOREVER, so as to not have an empty appearance. Okay, it was more like a 15 minute wait – but when you’re out at the front it does feel like forever – you would access within 5 minutes.
Dress Code / Door Policy: You need to be pretty much at least smart casual. Casual won’t cut it, unless you are with company of hot girls.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: I don’t recall. Either $25 or $20 full charge.
Guestlist: See promoter website to submit guestlist details. Various forms and what not would need to be filled out
Cloak Room: None tonight. Strange as it usually is available.
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. Oh wait, I did, but my friend bought drinks. He’s awesome.
DJs: Unknown
Music Style: Rnb in Main room (which only opened after midnight). Meanwhile some house tracks were being played in the upstairs small room and downstairs den area.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly Caucasian crowd of Euros and Aussies with some other minor nationalities here represented. Mixed crowds of prior where Indians/Asians used to be a good part of the population are no longer tonight. Likely to blame is door policy. The age of the crowd isn’t teeny bopper but still looked young, but a little more grown up. I would hazard a guess to be a 21-25 year old crowd.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: Kind of empty at first, and it only truly picked up the pace after midnight when downstairs opened up and people flocked down here.
Bounce @ Slide Bar
Assessment Time: 12:15AM – 2:00AM
Opening Hours: Opening Hours: 10:30PM – Unknown (probably 03:00AM)
Lockout: Just after 2:00AM – 2:30AM – the actual time is decided by the security personnel.
Address: 41 Oxford St, Surry Hills, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.slide.com.au
Promoter Website: Again, it appears the authoritative source of all things ‘Bounce’-y is http://www.facebook.com/bounce.kpop.party
Occurrence: Once every month or every two months depending how the promoters feel. always on a Friday night. Running since 2009/2010?
Outside Line: There was no line as we approached, but there were people outside. Typically a bad sign, but the place was pretty busy tonight.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual ok. Sneakers are ok. More people more are smart casual tonight. Girls wore mostly nice little dresses. Tonight was Valentines Day weekend, so yeah, most were dressed their casual best.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: I paid full price of $20 tonight
Guestlist: I didn’t send one in, but the email is [email protected]
Inside: Same as last time – Walk into an open floor to hold about two hundred people. The floor includes an elevated dance platform in which the tiles light up and change colours. Bar to the left. DJ in the far right corner. Overhanging the bar is a balcony for private functions and what not, to hold about 60 people squishily.
Cloak Room: $5 for all items
Bar Prices / Line: I didn’t drink tonight. A reader of this blog did come up and ask me tonight to ask why I usually dont drink – I actually go clubbing for the music and dance, not to really drink and pick up girls… *cough* Bullshit *cough* you may think, ok ok ok … but its true. To be fair though, there is nothing wrong with making the most of your time at a club and meeting new people, it enhances the experience when you’re out. In any case, I am satisfied either way so long as I get my dance fix. Plus nowadays I drive, so double the reason not to drink.
DJs: Unknown
Music Style: The main theme tonight was RnB with many Korean Pop songs thrown in as well during the peak hours of the night. Still nowdays, the only Korean song I know is the Nobody song.
Crowd & Ratio: Pretty much entirely all Asian. The majority being Korean or fans of K-Pop. A friend I brang along was a huge fan of K-Pop, and had no idea about these Korean Pop nights. Conveeeerted! Ratio wise was pretty even throughout the night.
Entertainment: MC to keep things going, but tonight there were not “half time” breaks for some entertainment as of the previous incarnations. Kind of strange, but I don’t think anyone minded. I thought it added a bit of chill down time and something to talk about, but that’s me. Either that, or I missed it altogether by coming in after midnight.
Atmosphere: Pretty busy throughout the time we were here. It’s hard to find a spot in the middle of the flashy dancefloor, but at around 1:30 it started to cool down people wise, as well as female-wise.
Video: Walkthrough of the club, followed by a Music Sample throughout the night: