Always wanted to come here but I’ve always had something on Friday morning, until now..
Upstairs | Room 34B (12:15AM)
“Hot Damn!” at The Exchange Hotel [Q Bar (Upstairs)]
The Hot Damn! event is nestled within the complex that is The Exchange Hotel and is split over two areas of the Hotel – Q Bar and Spectrum. Spectrum hosts live bands up until midnight, while Q Bar, a few shops down, hosts DJs that play various styles of music, all night. Tonight’s review is solely based on Q Bar.
Opening Hours: Unknown – 5:00AM
Address: 44 Oxford St, Sydney. (Q Bar). It’s just a small doorway from the outside, can be easy to miss.
Parking: Easy to find closeby parking on a Thursday night. We found a small car spot on the street behind.
Venue Website: http://www.exchangehotel.biz
Event Website: http://www.fb.com/hotdamnsydney
Promoters: http://www.destroyalllines.com
Occurrence: Every Thursday since late 2006
Dress Code / Door Policy: there is no strict policy. People in costumes, singlets, shorts, hats.. anything that a classy club would ban is allowed here, even hairstyles that make you look like a member of One Direction. Tonight’s theme was End of Semester, so many collared shirts and ties were to be displayed.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $20, but if you know one of the promoters names or send a guestlist you get in for $15.
Guestlist: toby@destroyalllines.com
Cloak Room: $3 all items. So good.
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The premise was easy enough among some friends tonight – to have a few drinks and dance at their favourite local, which happens to be The Marlborough Hotel – let’s go!
Crowd shot Underground - 1AM
Fridays @ The Marlborough Hotel (aka The Marly) , Newtown Sydney
Assessment Time:12:50AM – 02:30AM
Opening Hours: 10:00AM throughout the day with the underground dancefloor closing at 2:30AM. I think the general ground floor closes at 3:00AM
Lockout: None
Address: 145 King St, Newtown
Venue Website: http://www.marlboroughhotel.com.au
Promoter Website: Appears to be a self promoted evening.
Occurrence: Every Friday and Saturday night
Outside Line: No line upon entry, just a few people catching up on their cigarette break.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Pretty much anything within reason was okay. Considering it was winter most people, both men and women, wore casual. T-shirts galore, while some girls wore singlets and jeans – some people even kept their warm casual jackets on tonight. I wore a t-shirt and jeans and casual jacket straight from university – very lazy of me ( there’s a picture of me later )
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night for both ground and underground.
Guestlist: N/A
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Saturday Nights @ The Mean Fiddler
Walkthrough video:
- How can you NOT let us into The Mean Fiddler??
Homebake: Standing outside the Main Arena
Homebake Sydney 2009 @ The Domain
Assessment Time: 15:30pm – 11:00pm
Opening Times: 12:00pm – 11:00pm
Website: http://www.homebake.com.au
Address: Royal Botanic Gardens, Mrs Macquaries Road, Sydney.
Dress Code: anything goes. I wore an orange jumpsuit. Everybody else was pretty casual, and being summer, it was lots of shirts, hats and skirts.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Tickets were $99
Inside: Four or five areas. Most of the big acts were in the two main areas – the Main Stage and the Big Top, which is just a huge tent kind of thing. Food stalls inside, and a merry go round swinging thing. In the middle is a huge grass area to sit down. Plenty of toilets.
Cloak Room: $5
Bar: $10 smirnoffs. Lines were extremely long today.
Food: Rip off. $5 bottles of water. $7 hot chips, $5 Hot Dogs, $12 Salt and Pepper Squid
Acts: Powderfinger, Jet, Hilltop Hoods, Eskimo Brojo, Sia, Daniel Merriweather, Midnight Juggernauts, Sarah Blasko, A Special Best Of Performance By Tim Finn, Closure In Moscow, Short Stack, Phrase, Decoder Ring, Bumblebeez, Tumbleweed (Original Line-Up), Eddy Current Suppression Ring, The Funkoars, The Middle East, The Aston Shuffle, Sugar Army, Record Producer, Shockone
Music: It’s all Australian music today.
Entertainment: The merry go round provided entertainment, as well as some of the small stores for tattoos or typical carnival like things. In between acts on the main stage, the TV screens would play some funny clips of people rendering their versions of popular songs.
Crowd: Dominantly White Australian. I probably spotted a total of 7 or 8 other asians the whole day.
Atmosphere: Throughout the day the good weather provided a very good atmosphere. This was a sold out event so there were just people everywhere, walking around, doing their thing. There was enough room to find your own spot in the grass and relax as well. The atmosphere at the two main stages was always pretty packed. I would say it was more intense in the Big Top than the main arena – it could have been because the Big Top had more acts which were ‘dance’ or crowd oriented. People in the Big Top were likely to dance and jump up and down. The Main Stage.. people just stood around singing along.
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Leadup
Moulin Rouge fail
It was all set out – a 21st birthday at Moulin Rouge. I waited in line for 30 minutes (it was massively long, and the bouncer cut off half the line because it was intruding on other premises). It was $15 on a guestlist she didn’t double check. It was pretty busy, but I wasn’t feeling it – I couldn’t find the girl. My phone rings… She’s changed venues!! NO WAY. The promoters had failed to submit her guestlist, and she didn’t want people lining up. A big fail, as the guestlist only served as a discount entry and not for a faster entry into the club. I was in Moulin Rouge for a grand total of .. 3 minutes @ $5 / minute. I could have called a phone sex line at that rate! One of the attendees offered to try to get us into Bungalow 8 as he had a guestlist going on as a backup. Good choice, since it was all the way on the other side of the city.
Bungalow 8/Cargo Bar fail
Big fail getting in. Two of the girls were dressed up goth like (without the make up), and one of the guys was just wearing a t-shirt. Bungalow 8 refused us entry, and so did Cargo, based on this.
Decision
The two girls were keen to go to Trash, their regular haunt. By this point, nobody cared anymore where we went, we were sick of walking around bring rejected, so off we went to the Agincourt Hotel…
I knew I was in for something different overhearing a girl give directions on the phone:
“Look for huge ‘TRASH’ banner. It’s got a picture of a skull, with burning flames underneath it”…
Agincourt Hotel
Address: Corner of Harris Street and Broadway
Website: http://www.agincourthotel.com.au
Inside: 3 Levels I was told, but only the bottom two levels were open tonight. On entering is a bar area, its quite small this total area – the music from upstairs eminates towards down here. Walk up the stairs and there is another bar, and a medium sized dancefloor eating up about 60% of space.
About Trash Saturdays (assessment time midnight)
Occurence: Every Saturday
Website: http://www.trashsaturdays.com, http://www.clubblink.net
Entry Fee/Cover Charge: $12 . $10 if you’re a member.
Door Policy / Dress Code: anybody was welcome. Hallowed. anything allowed, except chains and spikes.
Crowd: Mixed. Mostly aussies, euros and a handful of asians. Ages varied from 18 to late 20s.
Music:
I walk in to expect heavy metal playing, when I instead, hear RNB!! Like WTF! Tonight only the first two floors were open, and there was only one DJ, playing tracks from all different genres. It was mostly alternative rock, but the songs that you know. Songs like “chop suey” by SOAD, or “Rollin'” by Limp Bizkit. Just some good heavy rock. I was awaiting the heavy metal but it never came up. Later on the website I find out that the heavy metal nights were only on Fridays. Officially the types of music being played are “Punk, Rock, Indie, Emo, Heavy, Hardcore, Party Tunes”.
Song Requests: You could sms to request a song here! A big electronic banner above the DJ set scrolls the number. My friend requests the song “I’m On A Boat” by The Lonely Island. It never gets played. What a waste of an SMS! A complete list of types of songs can be found on the website.
Atmosphere – Pretty good, vibrant. Despite first appearances, people were all pretty friendly.
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Leadup
an hour to kill – a mini 4-club dance spree:
Tonight I wore just jeans, a shirt and sneakers..
Pontoon – Crowd was half indian, half everyone else. Free entry. Casual door policy. RnB. Good venue for an RnB fix. Left after 30 minutes – another asian dancing guy was taking the girls. He was out there, just dancing with any girl he saw, and was doing quite well. I wondered where my energy was tonight.
Pavillion – Two girls in the front, 4 on the side, and indian guys for the rest of the people on here. DJ was playing west coast rap. My favourite anthems were being played (Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, etc). A crazy indian was dance-cracking onto the two girls in the front. He was out there, just shaking his body loose. I wondered where my energy was tonight. I think I get intimidated by other good dancers in a desolate setting.
Shark Bar/Hotel – I walked in and there was nobody on the floor. I was about to leave, but they started to play “Push it” by Salt N Pepa. I love this song so I *had* to get up there. So I jumped up and did a little boogie to the song, to the amusement of everybody staring at the elevated dancefloor in the middle. Everyone who looked at me I looked back, and they would stare away. A group of people at the very back took a photo of me and waved hi. The song ended and I ran off.
Spectrum – My usual friends had gone home, so I met up with the French backpackers for some dance. We checked out Spectrum first. Free entry. House. We went upstairs and it was *dead* as. A handful of people dancing, a handful of people sitting down, a small room, and that was it. I don’t think this was meant to be a place for clubbing. Reminded me like an oxford st version of Manning Bar at USYD. I can’t imagine that place being a place for clubbing. We left quite quickly.
We then stumbled upon Oxford Art Factory and settled in..
After Work Art Fridays @ The Oxford Art Factory (Art After Dark) (29th May 2009)
Note: This review is primarily for the ‘Art After Dark’ Room’, and not the ‘Live Art Space’ where a cover charge applied.
About Oxford Art Factory (assessment time 1.30am)
Address: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst
The Bar: Jugs of beers and cocktails offered for a reasonable price.
Website: http://www.oxfordartfactory.com
Inside: Walking downstairs, there are two rooms:
Live Art Space: Carpeted area with central wooden dancefloor, with DJ up on stage. At the back is an elevated area where more lounges exist. It was mostly dancefloor space.
Live Art Space - Oxford Art Factory (image oxfordartfactory.com)
Art After Dark: (where we were) A further flight of stairs down takes you to this room. It’s pretty small, holding about 100 people max. A bar as well here. The room has a high ceiling length, and a big TV on one end of the wall. It’s been painted white, which is different. Tonight there were only lounges along the wall, and not sticking out as in the picture.
Art After Dark Bar - Oxford Art Factory - This is where we hung out (image oxfordartfactory.com)
About After Work Art Fridays: (assessment time 1.30am)
Entry Fee/Cover Charge: Free for the Art After Dark Bar, $15 for the DJ in the Live Art Space Room tonight. After 3am it was free for all.
Crowd / Dress Code: Artsy types. People in their 20’s and 30’s. Lots of hats around. anything goes.
Atmosphere: I was expecting not many people to be here, so guess how surprised I was when I saw the whole room packed! Well, it was 1.30am, and it was a small area, but usually at an average to bad venue, 1.30am is when people start going home. So overall it was a good sign.
Music: Art After Dark Bar – Earlier in the evening there were live bands playing, but we missed that. So when we arrived, the band area was cleared and there was a DJ playing a mix of music across pop, rnb, retro and rock. Basically a bit of everything, and each upcoming song would be of a different genre. Somehow though the crowd was fully right into every song being played.
Live Art Space – DJ Sega (USA) was the main act playing tonight, (Indie). I didn’t get to check him out. Later another DJ was playing around 3am, with some dubstep beats, and another artist came up for some raps where I could practise some krumpin on the very open dance floor. The crowd here were all the hardcore types left, so everybody was into it.
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