I have literally finished with the Stereosonic Festival and ready to clunk out at home. On the way to my car, a friend calls me: “PARTY IN THE CITY TONIGHT JAMES!”. The problem is that I’m wearing this giant toothpaste costume, and its covered in dust, dried sweat, and spilled drinks from the hours prior. “Don’t know if your costume will get in, but try anyway!” is the reply to my question. Okay, good enough.
An hour later and I have arrived. Dress code here is Smart Casual, but I have a strong suspicion that they are very lenient tonight regarding dress code, due to Stereosonic removing pretty much more than half of the crowds from the city’s clubs tonight. Suspicion confirmed, as the security allows the giant toothpaste costume through without any questions. The toothpaste party continues! Here we go!
Sassy Saturdays @ World Square Pub (Formerly known as Equilibrium)
Assessment Time: 12:50AM – 3:00AM
Opening Hours: Unknown (Facebook page states 8PM, but I think 10PM?) – 3:00AM tonight.
Lockout: Unknown.
Address: 680 George St, Sydney. Google Map Link: http://g.co/maps/wvqjz
Venue Website: http://www.worldsquarepub.com.au
Promoter Website: Appears to be a multiple promoter event. Dynamic Entertainment (http://www.dynamicau.com) & SyndicateEvents.com.au and others.
Occurrence: Every Saturday since September 2011
Outside Line: A handful of people, but we got in within 5 minutes.
Dress Code / Door Policy: As mentioned before, usually a no daggy clothing policy applies, but due to Stereosonic being on, the dress code was pretty much open. Costumes and hats were freely allowed in. Though marty was asked to remove his wig when he was inside.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: You would have thought I remembered how much the charge was here. Last time I was here at this event (no review was written) it was $20, but from the depths of my memory it MAY have been $25, but I cannot remember. Either way, it is at least $20 for full entry. If you are on the guestlist, a discount probably applies before either midnight or 11PM. You will need to contact a promoter for exact details on this one.
Guestlist: If you can find a promoter, go through them, otherwise send an email to: Youngnsassy.saturdays@gmail.com
Inside: Previous weeks had the event held upstairs but tonight it appears that only downstairs was open. Perhaps they expected a low turnout tonight. Regardless, enter into the ground level to enter the “stand around” atrium like area, with dancefloor on the right to hold about 80-120 people. In front of you is the corner of the bar. It extends down the left side where there are lounges and tables. On the left is the outdoor smoking area. it’s a long space and enough for most people to get a lounge seat or a table.
Cloak Room: No cloak room facilities tonight.
Bar Prices / Line: Unknown, but you could get service pretty much right away.
Bathroom Facilities: Pretty clean and maintained well tonight.
Eviction Count: None spotted. There were not that many people here tonight anyway.
DJs: Dirty Dex for most of the night.
Music Style: Pop, House, RnB , and many “Songs dedicated to the people from Stereosonic” – mostly LMFAO songs or something house related lol. All from the same DJ so minimal song repeating, if any.
Crowd: Mostly Asian tonight. It’s a mix of local and international Asians. also as the night progressed on, the crowd became more and more comprised of people dropping in from Stereosonic. I would suspect that without the Stereosonic crowd, tonight would have been pretty dead, as are the clubs out there. Rest of the crowd were a handful of South Asians/ Indians, and some Caucasians.
Ratio: Despite low numbers, the ratio was fairly even throughout most of the night.
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I was at a friends farwell earlier in the night and it finished around 1:00AM at Hotel CBD (there was a DJ here and a small dancefloor, but not enough to warrant a write up), so I didn’t really have much time to go clubbing. So came the idea to try to sneak into Ivy and Establishment! After miserably failing and being stopped by security, we dropped by the closest place nearby that was free and would let us in – Jackson’s on George.
Atmosphere
Nothing much has changed except there were heaps of people on the dancefloor! Amazing. The epileptic strobe lighting was still here, giving patrons small headaches, the music was still loud as well. It was pretty dark in here as well. see the video:
Free grind!!
I stood there on the top podium doing a little dance, and suddenly I feel a girls breasts grind behind me. She’s pretty aggressive, and that can only mean one thing – a drunk girl!! Woohoo!! I turn around and with excitement face my suitor, who turned out to be drunk alright – but one knows when a short fat chick is grinding you.
Soon after we left to go home.
Never in the history of my RnB clubbing career for 4 short years have I been bombarded with promotional material for the Grand Opening of this night. Facebook, email, posters, more facebook, more email, more posters. You would expect them to do door knocking as well. The previous event at V-Bar had finally closed and the promoters, Urban Agent, have had success on their 40/40 Saturday Nights at Brooklyn – “why not do a Friday one as well?” They think. It’s an ambitious launch, to replicate the experience of a Shanghai nightclub with waitresses and limo service to the venue from a pick up spot at world square. A friend wants to check it out, so a guestlist was organised, and I was keen to see how Brooklyn has changed since the new promoters took over. So here we go!
Shanghai Nights @ Brooklyn Hotel Sydney
Assessment Time: 10:30 – 3:00am
Website: http://www.urbanagent.com.au
Address: Cnr George and Grovenor Street, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Dress code applies. Collared shirt for guys. However casual would have gotten away with it tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 Guestlist: Well well well.. this is a special point. One can usually send in a guestlist and get a $5 discount or more. Tonight, as we enter the club, the flat fee was $25, and ALL GUESTLISTS WERE CANCELLED. What the fuck! It was only 10:30. Well, apparently they were allowed to do it, because there were so many fucking people outside. They could have charged $30 or $40 and people would still have probably paid up. Total fucking rort.
Inside: A main bar dance area to hold 100 or so people with DJ elevated a metre or so above the floor. Central circular bar. Second bar at the back to primarily serve the back outdoor courtyard. The courtyard holds 2 or 300 people. A second DJ resides here as well.
Cloak Room: I can’t remember, but it was a reasonable price – $4 or something for an item.
Bar: I did not drink tonight, but they had $3.50 for shot based drinks until midnight. Much more reasonable than $17 vodka red bulls the last time I was here.
DJ: Unknown Music: RnB inside the main room. Mixed as a professional does – choruses only to keep the crowd going with the occasional commercial house song thrown in.
Crowd: Mostly if not all asian. The occasional white person and indian clubber were also represented tonight.
Entertainment: MC for the main room at night. Promoters giving out lanyards the entire night like hotcakes, I suspect it was because the lanyards had the old V-Bar “Amber” event printed on them, rendering these lanyards throwaway material. By the end of the night everybody including myself had two of these things. Head promoter is throwing out free T-shirts out to the crowd. Nice. There is also a free shuttle service from world square to Brooklyn, if you book ahead, but why World Square? My suspicion is partly to show all the people lining up ouside of Flow: “Hey, you guys going to Flow, do you get a stretch hummer? nope. we rule and you drool”. That is my conspiracy theory. (Promoters have since dropped the Stretch Hummer promotion). Later around midnight, a dancing chinese dragon came in, which had blinking lights and everything. That was pretty impressive, even though Chinese New Year was last month. Also being the grand opening night, confetti is sprayed everywhere amongst the crowd. It’s hard to not like and hate this place at the same time. To top it off, there’s also a BBQ out in the back. They’ve gone all out here.
Atmosphere: Packed like sardines inside, smokey in the back outside area. Inside the vibe was good, but still too packed for my liking. Keep reading for more details on my thoughts on this whole setup
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Funky Buddha @ World Square Pub (Equilibrium): Saturday 26th December 2009
Assessment Time: 23:45 – 1:30am??
Website: http://www.funkybuddha.com.au
Address: Address: 680 George St Sydney (Formerly Equilibrium)
Dress Code: Casual ok. Guys wore smart casual, girls wore dresses.
Door Policy: You will be rejected if you are a group of guys. You will be told to leave if there are not enough girls. This is apparently WSP policy. At least they’re honest.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: I forget. $20 I think.
Guestlist: See Website
Inside: Upstairs room to hold a small group of 200, dark. Also downstairs open area for Trance to hold 50 or so people. Well lit.
Cloak Room: None
Bar: $5 Gin and Tonics
Music: RnB upstairs, typical contemporary and classic songs. Downstairs area was the trance area, which was a welcome surprise.
Crowd: Almost entirely Asian
Entertainment: MC Upstairs
Atmosphere: Pretty packed. Pretty, pretty packed. The whole city was pretty packed – it always happens that Boxing Day never disappoints in terms of crowd attendance.
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