The final stop, after visiting Northies and Sting Bar. This is where all the action is supposed to be in the Shire – so here we go!
Central dance area (2:30AM)
Easter Saturday @ Fusion Nite/Night Spot, Cronulla
Assessment Time: 12:15AM – 02:45AM
Opening Hours: Unknown – 03:00AM
Lockout: Unsure, but likely to be enforced due to the attentiveness of RSA staff here
Address: 84 Cronulla St, Cronulla
Venue Website: No official website that I could find (I am sure I found it). FB: http://www.facebook.com/pages/FUSION-NITE-SPOT-Cronulla/234586068300
Promoter Website: Self Promoted Event
Occurrence: Every Saturday. Fridays are also open under a different event name.
Outside Line: About 20 people in front of us with a waiting time of about 10 minutes.
Dress Code: No hats are allowed in side. Anything goes here, and most are locals dressed up in casual gear – shirts, jeans etc. I met a guy inside with long dreadlocks so there you go. Girls wear whatever makes them feel sexy. I particularly very overdressed just wearing collared shirts, let alone with ties, dress shoes and blazers to match, but better than underdressed, right? 
Door Policy: “How many drinks have you had?” – The standard sobriety question. At this place, the guy asking is very particular – if you look even slightly drunk then you’re denied entry. Speaking to another patron of the club, she did say it was a 50/50 chance of getting in, whether you had been drinking or not. It’s a massive clamp down here, as there probably were some incidents in the past.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $10 for the entire night. Let it be noted that there are no stamps given on your way in – That’s fine, but guess this – there are no stamps on your way out either! Huh? Yes.. why would they do such a thing? I was wondering the same thing – it turns out that every time you exit and want to re-enter the club, you need to pay an additional $10. Shameful! Does it keep the patrons inside though? Sure does.
Guestlist: None can be submitted. These guys don’t have a contactable email address that I could find.
Inside: The Fusion Nite Spot is situated on the upper level of its residence. Walk up the stairs and enter via the Southern side to face the middle of the room. On the SW corner to your left is a small bar to service the small lounge area to hold a small party of 20-30 people. Smoking area to hold about a handful of people along here as well. During busy times, there is actually a queue to go to the outside smoking area – it’s that small – and since people are not encouraged to leave.. you have to wait it out. On the NW corner is a second bar, to line up for 5 or 6 people. On the North wall is the DJ area, which is defined by the platform the DJ set stands on. On either side are lounges. To the NE corner are two pool tables and more tables and stools. This general area is a standing / drinking area. The SE/E corners is where the main bar and bathrooms area. There are also lockers and lounges. Right smack in the middle of it all is the dance floor – In the middle of this is a very thick mirrored column about 2×2 metres in the middle. Around the column is a tier of elevated podium dance area about 1 person wide, surrounded by the main dance area about 6×6 metres. This area is bordered by tables and metal poles, so the areas are pretty well defined, but there is nothing stopping you from dancing in other places around this central dance area. No drinks are allowed on the dance floor here, similar to Sting Bar’s policy. Cronulla must be the only place that I have seen purposely created signs that disallow patron to bring beverages to the dance floor.
Cloak Room: None, but I did spot some women using the lockers. I didn’t ask staff about the lockers so I am not sure if they are open to the public, but I would be guessing so, but I have no idea how the mechanism works.
Bar Prices / Line: The bar on the Eastern side is most busy, wich people constantly there placing orders. You would wait about 5 minutes for your order, which isn’t bad. If even that is too long, just hop on to the other side where the two other bars are usually less crowded and you will hopefully get an order faster here. Throughout the night there are also time-outs of 5-10 minutes, where alcohol is not allowed to be served to patrons.
Eviction Count: I saw someone nearly got kicked out, but after lots of negotiation managed to stay inside I believe.
DJs: Anthony K / Louise Love (sax)
Music Style: In the main proceedings of the night mostly a mix of Contemporary Commercial RnB and known commercial House track mash ups was being played here. Later nearing the end of the night it was more of a Hip Hop style of music, typical of a closing night of an RnB club – they even played Sexual Healing! It’s been a while since I’ve heard the clubs play that near the end of the night. This was definitely a club that fostered romance.
Crowd & Ratio: Like the other places around here, the entire crowd is pretty much local. Local Caucasian Australians are dominant here but there are also a tiny handful of islanders and Asians. Most of the guys are beefcakes though. Women are generally pretty well dressed, and looking pretty fine. Everyone here is pretty young - ages range from teenagers to 20s… with a few late 20s early 30s too. Also some of the crowd that we saw at Sting Bar also made the trip down here later in the night. The ratio was quite okay here. It was probably on par or just slightly more guys for most of the night. Also there were plenty of people here so your options weren’t that limited.
Entertainment: No MCs or extra entertainment
Atmosphere: Pretty much all the crowded dancing action was here. Most of the people making out in the club were in the middle as well. Throughout the night it was constantly packed, so it was a bitch trying to dance well here – one can only manage to secure their own little spot and bob up and down. You actually had better luck going up on the central podium area as at least you only had two people next to you on either side, instead of being surrounded by people. Outside the immediate dance floor there was generally space for which daring people could dance here at the observation of the drinking crowd. The eastern side was quite busy with an extreme abundance of men particularly in the pool table corners. The other side was more balanced, but there were fewer people than that of the side with the main bar.
The general mood in the middle is party party with the darker lit atmosphere, lights and smoke machines helping out with the club feel tonight. The crowd seemingly are enjoying most of the songs being played tonight. Generally here the crowd is either quite friendly or tolerant, thought there were some aggravated blokes towards Marty at one time. I can’t blame them after he pretty much danced nearby near their little private space, right next to the dance floor. Besides that people were nice here. Some of the ladies were 50/50 friendly and cold.
Video: Walkthrough and Music Montage Continue reading »
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
Just walking back from watching the Mardi Gras.. and out of the corner of my eye I spotted – flashing lights!! It’s a dancefloor just above the pub/bar named Strattons Hotel, so against the will of my friends I dragged them over here .. here we go!
Crowd - Strattons Hotel
Dropping by: Mardi Gras Saturday @ Strattons Hotel Continue reading »
Assessment Time: 11:35PM – 11:50PM
Opening Hours: Unknown
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 249 Castlereagh St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.strattonshotel.com.au
Promoter Website: This was self promoted
Occurrence: Unsure, it may be either a weekly or a monthly event.
Outside Line: No line outside.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Anything goes. People were coming from Mardi Gras dressed up and were allowed to the downstairs pub area. It is assumed that they were also allowed to go upstairs to the dance level
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night
Guestlist: None required
Inside: The Hotel is a two level affair where downstairs is a normal regular pub. Upstairs is where you want your dance fix – the flight of stairs to the right of the bar lead you to a carpeted room which is probably a dining area during the day. On the left corner is the DJ, the dancefloor area in front of the DJ to hold 20-30 people. There rest of the room is dotted with chairs, stools and tables. It’s like the dance party at the end of the wedding, but its instead very dark.
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink here tonight.
Music Style: Commercial House during the time I was here.
Crowd & Ratio: Besides us, it was an entirely young and caucasian crowd. this reflected in the patronage in the pub downstairs, where everyone was also Caucasian but of mixed ages.. About 50/50 but it varied wildly due to the small number of people upstairs. Probably at most 10 people were up here at the same timme.
Entertainment: None
Atmosphere: Pretty empty most of the time. It was dark as well, so it was okay to go up and dance without being judged too much. Otherwise… wasn’t feeling it. The DJ set was on a set of foldable tables – it was very low key here tonight.
Video: 360 of the dancefloor
Greenwood Hotel Thursdays Dance area. DJ on the right. (12:50AM)
Finally, I have a Friday off work. I have decided to spend Thursday night visiting Greenwood Hotel, which apparently gets pretty busy. C was free as well, so off we went to check it out .. here we go!
Lining up: Thursdays @ Greenwood Hotel Continue reading »
Assessment Time: Midnight- 00:45AM
Address: 36 Blue St, North Sydney, NSW.
Venue Website: http://www.greenwoodhotel.com
Promoter Website: Appears to be self promoted.
Occurrence: Every Thursday
Outside Line: We waited for 45 minutes before giving up. For the poor souls who arrived here at around the midnight or just before midnight (i.e. Me and C), we are hoarded like cows to the line. The lining up area is a down sloping ramp which begins wide at about 8 people and narrows down to about 4 people wide. Being a special type of lining area that it is, without rope or restrictions on how the people flow, it kind of became a moshpit, where little pushy bitches of girls push in and the guys silently complain. More details below.
Dress Code / Door Policy:
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night.
Guestlist: No guestlists are taken here. It’s one shared line, and free entry all night.
Inside: I didn’t get to go inside tonight, but based on previous encounters during the day and from what C told me tonight: Walk straight into the front courtyard where a DJ stand is setup in the middle, with people. The building itself is in a C shape formation, with 3 bars inside. The dance area is enclosed by the three sides of the hotel. DJ is inside as well. Out back is the courtyard for smoking, relaxing, chatting, whatever.
Music Style: Dominantly Commercial / Contemporary House. There are some RnB mashups as well, but are ony short samples taken. There is also a second DJ inside the chapel playing RnB, according to the website.
Crowd & Ratio: “I’m getting my L plates next week”… “You need 86 UAI to get into commerce, I hope I get in” … these were the lines overheard while lining up. Its become clear that you are amongst a dominantly young teenage crowd. For tonight, most are local Aussie teenagers. I saw one young Asian guy lining up but that was it really, in terms of the ethnic make up in line.
Atmosphere: Didn’t go inside, but from what I could see from outside, people were dancing away in the courtyard, but not too vigorously. They look like they are just swaying their arms and bodies around. Ok, so they can’t dance so well, but we clubbers all were once like that. C (who went inside) reports that the bars on the inside were not that packed at all, and that everyone could have been easily let in without problem. It was just the outside courtyard dance area at the front and drinking areas at the back that were busy. It is possible the venue isn’t licensed to hold more patrons, but I’ve seen other regular drinking nights where it has been packed out.
Video: 180 of the DJ area. Taken from the back of the crowd: 
Taken from the front: 
Took a break from Primary venue Sienna @ Establishment tonight to visit Brooklyn Hotel. It was dead, so I decided to came here.
Shameful, that I keep returning to this place. I can’t help it – its free. I am surprised though, that the upstairs club floor is actually packed! It really must be schoolies.. the poor kids.
Here’s a video of upstairs:
Intent on going to Empire Hotel tonight but it was dead as – there were already cleaners cleaning the place up! Strange for only midnight. Random promoters for Ladylux give us free entry passes on the street, so the matter of ‘what venue do we go to next?’ was pretty much sorted out – here we go!
Robin Hood with M's Russian Commisar hat
Fridays @ Ladylux Nightclub, Kings Cross Sydney
Assessment Time: 12:10PM – 01:45AM
Opening Hours: 9:00PM or earlier ~ 03:00AM (facebook page states 06:00AM, but Dj set list lasted until 2AM.. so I wouldn’t know to be sure)
Lockout: No lockout.
Address: 2 Roslyn St, Potts Point (Kings Cross), Sydney.
Venue Website: http://www.ladylux.com.au
Promoter Website: Appears to be self promoted
Occurrence: Every Friday and Saturday is open. Saturday are the more heavily promoted nights while Fridays rarely get a mention.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual ok. Half the guys wore casual t-shirts while the other half wore collared shirts. Girls were mostly in dresses. Hats were allowed. I was dressed up as Robin Hood with feather hat.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $10 is the full cover charge. We were given promoter cards on the street to get free entry all night. A very fair deal here.
Guestlist: Submitted via the website. The existing link at time of writing is at http://www.myguestlist.com.au/mgl/ccp/ladylux/index.html
Inside: There’s not much of a giveaway that the entrance is of Ladylux. It’s just a doorway in the side of a building with 2 security guards outside. As you walk inside, there is a private VIP room to the immediate right. I didn’t go in there, but I would be making an educated guess based from the outside walls that it would only hold about 10 people. Continue walking past a small lounge area on the left – as you look around note the wallpapers – white with fuschia-coloured flowering patters on the walls. Continue to the next small area which is the bar. Once you reach the bar you are now at the edge of the dancefloor, which takes up probably two fifths of the entire floor area of the venue. DJ corner in the far right. The dancefloor area is about 5-6 people width by 15-20 people long. There are sofas along both sides of the dancefloor as well. At the far end wall are a set of lights that flash around looking pretty. The video below will walk you through the setup.
Cloak Room: No cloak room. Well I didn’t ask, but I didn’t see any signs indicating presence of a cloak room.
Bar Prices / Line: I didn’t drink tonight, but lining up would set you behind 2 or 3 other orders.
Music Style: Primarily Commercial House and Electro. The occasional RnB mashup song thrown in as well. I quite liked it as I knew the songs and people were singing along to it. Songs were mixed well without complaints.
Crowd: Almost entirely Caucasians, all young 20′s or teens. From the people we spoke with, backgrounds were a mix of locals and backpackers who mysteriously ended up in here. The ratio was about 35% women 65% guys. By the time we left at 2:00AM, it was almost all guys.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: It’s pretty dark in here. The entire first half of the place (lounge areas) have been decorated with various Halloween things hanging from the ceiling and what not. Pretty cool. However, even before you notice the decorations, the first thing that hits you is the pungent smell of the whole place. It kind of smells like a mix of dried up alcohol spilled on the floor combined with the results of a very poor urinal flushing system, or someone peeing all over the entire place. It wasn’t powerful enough to scare you out of the club, but at various points throughout the night your nose would be wondering… ‘What on earth is that smell?’. Kind of like when I was in India – the yucky smell was always there in the main cities, but you tolerated it. People wise, the dancefloor itself always had people on it, so there was no need to feel lonely. Most kept to their own, there were also a few drunk guys as well.
Video: Walkthrough: Starting at the cash register – walk through the lounge area, bar area and dancefloor. (12:11AM)
Continue reading »
Video: 360: Dancefloor from the corner where the DJ is (12:30AM) 