Sunday night. I can’t sleep – I could read a book… or… I CAN GO OUT!! It wasn’t an easy decision to make, believe me. Anyway it wasn’t a long weekend, so I narrowed my choices to either Roxy’s at Parramatta or somewhere in the cross. The cross was easier – so I woke up an unlucky friend out of bed off we went – arriving at the cross Hugo’s seemed to be the only place open tonight, so here we go!

Crowd

 Sneaky Sundays @ Hugo’s Lounge
Assessment Time: 1:10AM – 2:30AM
Opening Hours: Open throughout early evening to late (closing time unknown)
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 33 Bayswater Road, Kings cross (Upstairs and opposite World Bar/Candy’s Apartment – Don’t confuse this with the entrance to TheClub, which is on street level and in front of Hugo’s Lounge)
Venue Website: http://www.hugos.com.au
Event Website: http://www.hugos.com.au/newsletter/whats%20on/
Occurrence: Every Sunday since 1999
Outside Line: No line at arrival
Dress Code / Door Policy: At least smart casual here, lest you be declined entry at the door. If you even wore casual and managed to get in, you would look out-of-place here tonight, so dress your best
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free at the time of arrival.
Guestlist: N/A

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I’ve always walked by this event and wondered how it was inside, and why there was always a line outside. Did the Establishment really hold an event this good? Tonight is the night to find out. Too lazy to submit a guestlist (there are no easy instructions to do so) so I just kept the night free, brought some friends and rocked up to see how it was like. Here we go!

Sienna @ Establishment - Dance area and seating area behind

Sienna @ Establishment - Dance area and seating area behind. Actual dancing area width spanned from the white pole on the right of the photo to the middle pole. Length was double this picture.

Sienna @ Establishment Hotel

Assessment Time: 11:30PM-01:30AM and 02:30AM-03:00AM. I spent one hour in between to visit Brooklyn Hotel and Jackson’s on George.
Opening Hours: 09:00PM – 03:00AM
Lockout: No lockout.
Address: 252 George St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.merivale.com/establishment/hotel
Promoter Website: http://www.rnbsuperclub.com , http://www.facebook.com/sydney-australia/sienna
Occurrence: Every Saturday
Outside Line: The line appeared to be pretty long. Maybe 20-30 deep. Then when you think about it, it wasn’t that long of a wait. We waited about 15 minutes before we were let in. The line moved faster than we are used to at the Asian events.
Dress Code / Door Policy: You pretty much have to dress nicely to get in, or at least fit in here. Pretty much all the guys here have collared shirts, and many have vests and ties to match. Girls equally are dressed immaculately.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: 2 for 1 entry before 10PM, if you printed out their flyer or had a promotional card for this month. Otherwise it was $15 for the entire night. I was expecting to pay at least $20 but was pleasantly surprised to see $15 for non-guestlist pricing. I wonder how much it was to be on the guestlist..
Guestlist: These need to be submitted via the promoter website, or you can contact on the facebook page.
Inside: The entrance of the venue is more of a chillout area where lounges to the left and right hold 30 each. The entire venue is a long, long room, with a long, long bar to match most of the length of it. The bar eats up about half the space here in the main room. People will need to stand around on the left hand side to mingle with some room to dance. The left side of the bar area could hold 100 people or so. On the far end of the bar, the DJ is located not on the right hand side, but on the left hand side near the window, which was surprising. The immediate dance area next to the DJ can hold another 100 or so people.
Cloak Room: The cloak room was available but surprisingly all I saw was an empty rack of coathangers – I don’t think not even one soul used the cloak room that night.
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight, but the line up for a drink was very short, and half the time the bartenders are looking around looking for someone to serve.
DJs: The entire time we were here, DJ Def Rok was playing, but other DJ’s listed on the site include G-Wizard, Lilo, Eko and Troy T – they could have been playing earlier. The obvious benefit of having one DJ for the majority of the night is that there are no repeated songs!
Music Style: As stated, no repeated songs. RnB is the primary choice tonight, and its a good selection, always keeping the crowd up and about. The style of RnB wasn’t all American African based RnB, there was a very strong latin fused theme going on tonight regarding the songs being played here tonight. Think of Daddy Yankee, Pitbull, Shakira… there was a lot more of this ‘summery’ style of RnB being played. There was also the occasional house mashup as well. DJ mixed well, no complaints.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Crowd & ratio: A good even mix of guys and girls here. Mostly young 18-low 20’s. Nothing to complain about .. there might have actually been more women here than men when i think about it. Dominantly a wog euro crowd from locally around here. The rest are Aussie, with a very small minority of Asians and what not. Also this is the first warm weekend after the previous washouts, and on top of this its the end of semester for uni students and the end of year 12 for all the others – its a big one.
Atmosphere: I’ll leave this in the words of M who was with me: ‘Although Establishment is quite a spacious bar, the impractical layout inside drastically inhibits mobility. The enormous bar in the centre of everything means all traffic is funneled into two streams moving around the bar. The problem with this is that people do not co-ordinate their movements collectively. So you have people who are trying to move to the back obstructing the people who are trying to access the main bar at the front and those who are trying to leave moving in the opposite direction; the people queued at the bar stretch perpendicularly across the walkway obstructing people moving in any direction; and the people dancing occupy every other remaining space. To make things worse, long tables and chairs are lined along the centre of the walkways, constricting the already negligible traffic flow even further, as the people seated at these tables do not move at all until their bottles are empty. After a frustrating crawl through the crowd at the bar, and another crowd at the DJ stand, we finally find some reasonably unoccupied space at the back in the outdoor lounge area. The music is perfect with fresh tracks and the DJ is mixing it together well. Most of the people around the DJ stand are dancing and having a good time and unafraid to enjoy themselves.’ I would agree with the thoroughfare issue – it’s a very busy area along the side; the majority of people were on the pretty packed dancefloor. Atmosphere is also very vibrant amongst the patrons while not overheating thanks to the high ceiling. I liked it.
Video: Walkthrough video of the entrance, walk along the length of the bar, through the busy dancefloor and into the back area where a second bar resides.
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Video: 360 of the dance area
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I just wanted to get trashed as it has been a while. Eventually ended up at Haymarket Hotel (It’s the final night of free entry before promoters take over on Fridays) and feeling pretty tipsy. There were DJs on the underground level playing some music!! Unfortunately its a private party, but not to be deterred, and full of dutch courage, M and I walked up to the door dude. He asks for my name. I said “James”. No surname given. I squint down at the list to try and lift another name for M, but my state of intoxication does not allow me to focus on the small words on the guestlist. Thank god, he found a “James”, and said James is crossed off the list. I was in, but what about M? After I was crossed off, he just danced his way in. Ludicrous. Me and the door guy gave each other a strange look, and I just shrugged my shoulders and we continued on in – so here we go!

Random Birthday @ Haymarket Hotel

Assessment Time: 01:00AM – 2:00AM
Opening Hours: Unknown – 02:00AM
Address: 661-663 George St, Chinatown Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual was ok tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free tonight.
Guestlist: See intro above
Inside: The entire basement level was reserved for this party. Lounges about, a small dancefloor at the front to hold 10-15 people. DJ in the corner.
Cloak Room: None
Bar: I didn’t drink anything here tonight
Music: Hardstyle and Hard Trance was being played tonight. I just remember lots of thumping around. Is this what 19 year olds listen to? Oh wait I should know – my 19 year old brother blasts this kind of stuff out of his room all the time.
Crowd: Birthday boy is 19, and so the crowd around is of similar age.
Entertainment: Just the DJs
Video: 360 of the bottom level
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A friend has asked us to accompany her tonight to a 28th birthday at Manhattan. Time to check it out!

We arrive, and the register clearly has a $20 sign. However they just stamp us and let us in. Strange…

Manhattan Lounge (Fridays)
Website: http://www.themanhattan.com.au/
Music: RNB
Crowd: Asian
Entry: $20 stated. $10 was also reported, but we got in for free
Location: 50 Elizabeth St, Martin Place (Right next door to Hotel Chambers, Across the road from Verandah Bar)
Space: Walk downstairs and its about the same dance area as Bamboo/Hotel Chambers, without the outside bits. It’s long, pretty narrow small, and provides a cosy atmosphere somewhat. Again, no photos, I’m sorry.

NB: This was the last of the in-house Fridays. A new organised event is now in place for Friday’s at Manhattan, called FunkInk. www.funkinkonline.com

Timeline
Bumping into people
1/ Bumped into my uncle’s best friend. He’s almost 30 but still looks early 20’s. We have a bit of a chat. I ask if he cleanses, tones an moisturises. He confirmed it, and even had the time to exfoliate every week. I can’t wait to be 30.

2/ Bumped into a girl I met at Crystal Bar last year. We had kept in contact, but she has a very stuck up attitude. She demands I give her attention. Her view on things make me laugh and I brush her off. Later as we dance, she comes right into our circle and grinds with me. It’s hard to ignore someone when they throw themselves at you. Her friends were normal, and I actually wanted to go for them instead.

Atmosphere / Music
Given the small area, people were all cosied up near each other. So whenever you were in the dance area, it was always seemingly ‘not dead’, when it probably was. However the place and vibe wasn’t too bad at all. Music was typical RNB to keep people happy.

Family Run Bar = slow.
Took about 15 minutes to get served glasses of water. Even then, we only got half a cup full, as they were so busy. The bar looked to be run by a family, as they all looked very similar.

Coda
Friends left 1.30. I left to go onto Side Bar

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