I was at Shark Hotel and I heard music coming from the club upstairs! I had to check it out..
Back view of the floor at 12:30AM
Naked (Thursday nights) @ Space Nightclub (Shark Hotel), Sydney
Essentials:
Opening Hours:
9:00PM – 4:00AM
Address:
127 Liverpool St.
You need to enter Shark Hotel first on the 1st floor, and from there take another flight of stairs to the 2nd floor, where Space is.
Venue Website:
http://www.spacevenue.com.au
Event Website:
http://www.facebook.com/nkdthrsdys/
Promoters:
http://www.tarantulamusic.com.au/
Occurrence:
Every Thursday night since October (was at another venue prior to this)
Dress Code / Door Policy:
Anything goes. Casual is okay, everyone (almost everyone) is wearing t-shirts or whatever is comfortable. Singlets everywhere. Saw a guy in a bear costume as well as a backpacker wearing a pair of thongs. I had sneakers/jeans/shirt/jacket.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge:
Free entry all night.
Guestlist:
See facebook page for info
Cloak Room:
None
From the ashes of Cave nightclub of 10+ years ago, The Star has opened a new nightclub – Marquee Sydney, sister club of the original Marquee in Las Vegas. I have heard stories of many people being turned away from the door for various excuses – Bad shoes, bad attire, too many guys, not enough people, too many people and the unspoken one of too many ethnics. Tonight seemed like the best bet to try to get in. Dressed our best, so here we go!
Crowd Shot
Saturdays @ Marquee Nightclub Sydney (at The Star (City) Casino Complex)
Assessment Time: 11:15AM – 4:00AM
Opening Hours: 9:00PM – 4:00AM
Lockout: Unknown, but there are no pass-outs / re-entry once you leave.
Address: 80 Pyrmont St, Pyrmont. It’s within the Star (Casino) Entertainment Complex. Walk in through the main entrance on the Eastern side, and the entrance to Marquee is immediately to your right.
Venue Website: http://www.star.com.au
Event Website: http://www.marqueesydney.com , http://www.fb.com/marqueesydney
Occurrence: Every Saturday (and Friday)
Outside Line: Arrived at 11:15PM with about 60 people in the general line. The line has people regularly going through, but just not fast enough. The guestlist line is a separate line altogether, and people are actually legitimately being expressed through to the club without wait, as it should be. It took just over 30 minutes lining up here, quite long. Keep in mind though that tonight is a resident DJ night. If you wanted to come where when a huge DJ/band/act was playing, expect to queue up for 2 hours plus.
Dress Code / Door Policy The door policy is probably the strictest or, if not, one of the strictest that I’ve been to ever. Dress Code: Guys – You really need to have at least dress leather shoes with collared shirts to have a chance of getting in. Avoid sneakers or simple shoes . Girls need to dress up pretty well. Smart casual you can probably get away with for both sexes on a normal night. Now that you have clothing sorted, the ratio is the next thing – you need pretty much an even ratio of guys to girls with your group. A group of 3 Caucasian guys and 1 girl were rejected (I couldn’t guess what the reason was) . We were let in with 5 Asian guys, 4 Asian girls and 1 attractive Caucasian girl. Door Policy: No bottles, sharps or whatever. They even checked my keychain, and I had to throw away my compact swiss army knife into the bin, which was understandable, but sad for me. After being patted down you get a photo taken and your ID scanned into their computer system in case you cause trouble. It felt like walking into a well dressed prison.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $30 is the standard cover charge on a regular resident DJ night. If you are lucky/unlucky enough to hit a night where there is an International DJ or Popular local act playing, the entry fee will easily jump higher. E.g. The weekend Avicii played, entry was $60, Above and Beyond were $50. In the future they will have a pre-purchasing system for tickets.
Guestlist: See the website. I did send an enquiry but as of a month later didn’t get a reply. Try to send them a few emails to make sure they read it. Or just mention you have a few grand to spare.
Table / Bottle Service: Table (or Bottle) service is quite a new thing to Australia, but is common in the larger clubs overseas. There are some other places that have attempted to do it but here this is the true implementation of table service. Basically its a small table for you and some friends to drink at and signal to everyone else in the club that you have, or have had, a lot of money. You get a big bottle of wine/champagne/vodka/whatever on your table ready to go. You also get very quick waitress service. It comes at the exorbitant prices from $3,000 $10,000, though I have heard more people say that it is $10,000 to get a table. Despite the prices, tonight all the tables were booked. Amazed.
Inside: After paying the cover, head up the escalators to enter the atrium / foyer where there is a cloak room and behind, a small open room to which there is a girl dancing with nothing but flowers and leaves on her. Ok, I’m impressed. On the left is a room (the “boom box”) which was unfortunately for a private party tonight, but on the right is the open main room of the club. Here the room is roughly divided into two areas – The bar at the rear and the main dancefloor down at the front. We enter through the rear to the main bar, which is a circular bar in the middle of this half of the room. Lounges line the walls here. It’s a medium sized bar and could probably hold 60 people around its circumference.
Stagger down to the next level (and the second half of the room) where there is a row of private tables with bottle service. Four tables on each the left and right hand side. It’s smaller than I expected. These tables are the only seats next to and on the same level as the dancefloor. The dancefloor itself is a medium sized floor approximately enough to fit 200 people or so in a packed situation. On the right there is a door to the outside smoking area, where there is a mini bar and some tables. On the left is a small passage that leads to an impressive bathroom. (more later). At the front is the DJ booth spanning the width of the floor. Podiums on the left and right. Above are concentric blinking led lights. The biggest thing you probably would notice though is the LED screen behind the DJ, spanning again the width of the room. It blurts out colours and shapes and what nots.
A venue I’ve always wanted to visit. I made plans, cleared the night, and tonight was the night. Here we go!
Dance podium area
Saturdays @ “The Club” Nightclub, Kings Cross, Sydney
Assessment Time: 12:30AM – 2:00AM
Opening Hours: 21:00PM – 05:00AM
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 33 Bayswater Road, Potts Point, Sydney.
Venue Website: http://theclubsydney.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/theclubsydney
Event / Promoter Website: Self promoted
Occurrence: Every weekend.
Outside Line: There’s two lines, one for re-entry and one for ‘first time’ entries. Our ‘first time’ line took about 5 minutes, while re-entry was only a few seconds. Security were pretty lenient on scanning.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Being situated below Hugo’s, one would believe the dress code would be strict, but it suprisingly isn’t. T-shirts and hats were allowed for guys and so were singlets allowed for the ladies. There is a simple explanation for this later on.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Tonight was $25.
Guestlist: you may enquire within at [email protected] but we are not sure if you are guaranteed a response.
Inside: Walk past the counter to enter the common pre-club hangout area where you can either move onto the main room, a side room, the bathroom or the outdoor smoking courtyard area. The side room is quite small and has a small DJ set on a table, with lounges and a small bar staffed by 1 person. Bathroom to the left and main room on the right. The first set of steps takes you to the main bar area, which is basically: big long bar on the left, with lounges around the whole floor. There is even a darker corner of lounges on the far left. Continue walking and approach the second flight of stairs, which leads you to the main dancefloor. The area can hold about 200-300 people easily and if you watched the video, our first reaction was “wow”, just seeing this big space snugly hidden underground from the outside view. Big giant disco ball overhangs while there is a large podium/stage area with not 1, not 2, but three dancing poles. That is pretty impressive. It is no surprise to learn that this place was a former strip club.
This place has been on my to-do list for quite some time now.. let’s check it out!
Me2 @ Home Nightclub (The Terrace Level Only Upstairs) Continue reading »
Assessment Time: 11:20PM – 3:15AM
Opening Hours: Unknown (10:00PM?? – 4:00AM ??)
Lockout: I asked security at 2:30AM if there was a lockout. “What would you like it to be?” is the sly response. Definitely not a lockout.
Address: 101 Wheat Road Darling Harbour, Sydney. Home Nightclub is next to IMAX theatre. BE CAREFUL about entry! Entry to the Terrace is on to the RIGHT of the main entrance. It is NOT the main entrance. I am sure a handful of people have stumbled into the main entrance to find themselves amongst the Sublime crowd. RnB lovers in a trance room. That is an experience I’d like to see.
Venue Website: http://www.homesydney.com
Event Website: http://www.facebook.com/me2sydney
Promoter Website: Dynamic Entertainment http://www.dynamicau.com , Mizuya Entertainment http://www.MizuyaEntertainment.com.au
Occurrence: Every Friday since July 2011
Outside Line: No line outside, just the promoters. After 5 minutes of the door girl desperately trying to find our names, she gave up and let us in anyway after I showed her our confirmation email. It was quite interesting as she had at least 10 pages full of names of 100 names each page, and yet my name wasn’t on there.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Smart casual is encouraged, but there were people (guys AND girls) who came in casual t-shirts / singlets without any issue. Hats, I didn’t see anybody wear, as everyone here had some blown up Asian hairstyle, and when you have a crazy hair style, you don’t want to ruin it by putting on a hat. Nobody likes hat hair.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full charge. $20 on guestlist.
Guestlist: I sent a guestlist the evening prior, and got confirmation pretty quickly from two different promoters the same night. It was a shame that when we rocked up tonight, our names were NOT on the guestlist. What a shock. Luckily I had my brand new spanking smart phone (which was NOT an iPhone, haha) and showed her the two confirmation emails. She let us in with discounted entry. But seriously, if I didn’t have those emails, I would be pretty upset at this point knowing I’d have to pay $25.
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]
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 »
Just dropping by here for a quick dance as I was in the area.
Continue reading »
Thursdays @ Albion Hotel Parramatta, Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:45PM – 12:45PM
Address: 135 George St, Parramatta
Venue Website: http://www.albionhotel.com.au
Promoter Website: Self Promoted
Occurrence: Every Thursday
Outside Line: Very short outside, did not take long to get in. You could also freely enter via the beer garden entrance tonight. Normal weekend nights you would only be allowed initial entry via the outside carpark entrance.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual is ok tonight. Tonight was a mix of casual and smart casual.. a lot of the guys just came up with their casual shirts and girls wearing casual one pieces.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night.
Guestlist: None
Inside: Enter via the carpark into the ‘gasworks’ nightclub room, a square-ish floor to hold 200-300 people. Stage area where bands would play during other events is converted to a dance area as well with the installation of 2 dancing poles. DJ area is up in the middle here as well. Bar on the opposite side of the room. Head outside to the beer garden about twice the size of the nightclub area, with an extra bar outside and inside the gambling area.
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. The line wasn’t that long. A probable 4-8 minute wait.
DJs: (From the website) DJ Tiklez, Anthum, G-Wizard, Tommy Funk
Music Style: Everything is covered here. Modern and retro pop, contemporary rnb, with some house tracks as well. Mostly tunes people could dance to. On the website it is listed as RnB, 80′s Funk, NRG.
Crowd & Ratio: Mostly local people from around the area – Dominantly Anglo-Saxon, mostly from a European background with the rest being Aussie. There are also Middle Eastern and Indians here. Hard pressed to find an Asian here. It was also a noticeably large proportion of men to women. About 7 to 1 on initial count. A guy told us how shit he thought tonight was. I looked around, and there were people everywhere. It was just the dominance of guys that we was probably referring to. Ages varied from teenagers to people in their 30′s.
Entertainment: No extras.
Atmosphere: Pretty dark inside here, so it does feel more of a nightclub, especially at the front. Near the back it feels more like a bar as people aren’t dancing so much up the back. Most groups of people kept to themselves here. There was this one drunk kiwi or samoan looking guy dancing, and yelling with everyone. You can tell he is drunk as he has a beer in his hand.
Video: 2x 360 views. One from the back and one from the front