Waiting for a friend in the city, so I am dropping by here for a bit.
Bad Party / Club Wings @ Cheers Nightclub, Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:50PM – 12:40AM
Opening Hours: 11:00PM – 4:00AM
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 561 George St. Cheers Nightclub is underground, separate from Cheers Bar on the ground floor.
Venue Website: http://www.cheersbar.com.au
Event Website: http://www.cheersbar.com.au/sydneycheers
Promoter Website: Unknown, but it is definitely one of the Korean promoters.
Occurrence: Every Thursday since 2011. It was called “Bad Party”, with the idea that “Bad” implied naughty-ness, but that has immensely backfired in a contextual sense, and because of this, the promoters have changed the event name to “Club wings” this year. You can tell the promoters are the same, when the club stamp on my arm says “Bad Party”. These promoters are living off a shoestring.
Outside Line: There was no line. Just 3 pretty girls in Angel Wings. Admittedly they swayed my decision to go inside here tonight. Damn me for having a mindset of a man.
Dress Code / Door Policy: No hats allowed in here. Other than that, you were allowed to pretty much wear casual clothing within reason. Most guys wore collared shirts. The girls were pretty casual as well tonight
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $5 entry. Previous weeks girls got free entry before 1AM but it is unknown if that was applied tonight.
Guestlist: N/A
Inside: Walk downstairs underground to enter the one room of the nightclub. On the left wall is the bar. On the right wall are TV screens playing the video clip to whatever song is being played at the moment. The other two walls are lined with lounges. The DJ booth is on the far right wall. Right smack in the middle is the wooden dancefloor, with the rest of the area being carpeted. The floor is approximately 7×7 metres.
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: I didn’t drink tonight. Water can be had separately.
Bathroom Facilities: On a weekend the bathroom usually reeks like urine and vomit. Thankfully tonight nobody has done such things, and they are acceptable for a Thursday night. That’s right folks, it doesn’t smell like piss tonight.
Eviction Count: None spotted
DJs: DJ Nick Kim all night
Music Style: Purely Top 40 and classic party hits. Full music songs are played, with the associated video clip played on TV screens around the walls. The DJ doesn’t really have much flexibility in this case in terms of mixing – being forced to really only be creative when transitioning between songs, which isn’t the hardest thing to do. Even my mother could do it. I felt sorry for the DJ, he looked like he was over these pop songs.
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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
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
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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: redandblueevents@hotmail.com – 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
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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 redandblueevents@hotmail.com
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:
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Friends I haven’t seen in a while have mid-semesters, and its a welcome back party tonight, so here we go!
Bounce @ Slide Bar
Assessment Time: 10:40PM – 02:50AM
Opening Hours: 10:30PM – Unknown (probably 03:00AM). The place earlier was raided by police for an unknown reason, so hence the later opening time.
Lockout: Lockout time unknown, but it only applied to people who did not have stamps. Probably 2AM.
Address: 41 Oxford St, Surry Hills, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.slide.com.au
Promoter Website: No promoter website at the time of writing. Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/bounce.kpop.party
Occurrence: Once a month or so, on a Friday. These guys just selectively pick a date where most people are free that weekend.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual ok. Sneakers are ok. It was a mix of this and smart casual. Girls wore mostly dresses.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Tonight is ladies night. Women get free entry all night. The men have to pay $15 before 11PM and $20 after 11PM. How do these guys make money?
Guestlist: redandblueevents@hotmail.com but I was told no guestlists due to the special guestlist pricing already inherent for tonight. However as I was lining up I was asked if I submitted a guestlist. Huh? Was there more than one promoter? I had my name down for VIP passes instead which was ok.
Inside: 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: Didn’t use the bar tonight. I think a glass of red Merlot was around $7.
DJs: Unknown
Music Style: The main theme tonight was RnB. Coming a close second was a whole heap of Korean-Pop songs as well during the peak hours of the night. Everyone seemed to know these songs.. except me. Also a handful of house songs throwing in for mashup.
Crowd: As you can probably guess, pretty much everyone here is of Asian descent, with the majority being Korean. You can tell when the MC is speaking in a mix of Korean and English what kind of crowd you’re in. Most are in their low 20’s
Entertainment: Male stripper in his twilight years and also an iceblock licking competition!!!! More on these later.
Atmosphere: Not so hot in the beginning. We sat around just drinking. At around 11:30 it heavily started to pick up as more people were let inside and by midnight it was pretty packed. People began to leave after 2AM and by 2:30AM it was noticably back to around 50 people left. From midnight onwards it was a pretty good atmosphere.
Video: Walkthrough – Main floor then upstairs VIP area and overview of the dancefloor downstairs
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Bounce @ Slide bar - The podium
Walked by here last month and it looked alright – Asians and RnB blasting out from the doors. Promoters said it was a monthly event, so I decided to check it out next time it was on – finally tonight the night has arrived! I got on the guestlist and brang some friends – so here we go!
Bounce @ Slide Bar
Assessment Time: 10:30PM – 02:30AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – unknown (probably 4:00AM)
Lockout: We left at 2:30 and were advised of lockout. Safe to assume that lockout is at 02:00AM
Website:
Occurence: Once a month. Check facebook for details.
Address: 41 Oxford St, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Standard collared shirt for guys, though it is ok to wear shirts. Stated that no hats were allowed to be worn, but I did see people wearing hats tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free before 11pm if on guestlist. $10 before midnight. $20 Otherwise.
Guestlist: I found the facebook event and added myself to the Facebook guestlist.
Inside: This reminds me of a similar layout to The Bank at Kings Cross. 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.
Cloak Room: Cloak room available but was not utilised tonight.
Bar: Did not use the bar tonight.
DJs: DJ Slim, Edo, Bonniez
Music: RnB, Korean Pop.
Crowd: A rare night where everybody is Asian. Dominantly Korean. A mix of locals and international students.
Entertainment: Runway modelling show, and a dance off on the elevated podium area. MC Jayddup to keep things going.
Atmosphere: Initially on entering there wasn’t anyone dancing on the podium. Around midnight it picked up quick and stayed pretty busy the rest of the night. It got very packed at around 1-1:30AM. Dark atmosphere adds to the mood and the crowd was pertty into most of the songs. It was pretty good.
The Korean crowd looks down to the dancefloor during the fashion parade segment
Video: 360 View Taken during peak time, and everyone chants along:
Video: Dancefloor and 360 – You can see me as well 🙂
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