Another birthday, and the birthday girl has been convinced by a promoter into going to Soho. My honest opinion was to not go here (she was an rnb lover), but I didn’t press the issue – didn’t want a bad venue choice be blamed on me – so lets go!
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The Usual Suspects @ Soho
Assessment Time: 11:15PM – 2:45AM
Opening Hours: Unknown (I think it opens pretty early at 9PM and closes at 4 or 5AM??)
Lockout: Unknown
Address: 171 Victoria Street, Potts Point (It’s a few places down from the rear Kings Cross Station exit.
Venue Website: http://www.sohobar.com.au
Promoter Website: Self Promoted – http://www.usualsuspectsblog.net/
Occurrence: Every Saturday
Outside Line: There was no line when we approached.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Hats allowed, casual is okay and is the norm here. So much so, singlets are okay as well inside. That’s for the guys. Girls are all usually in their nice one piece dresses hey.
Guestlist: info@sohobar.com.au
Inside: Walk through the hallway to enter the main bar on the ground level, where lounges are on the left and right. Keep walking through to the main dancefloor to hold about 100-200 people. Elevated dance podium at the back of the room. DJ at the front, some lounges along the far end walls and behind the DJ. Go back and upstairs to the second main dancefloor with a smaller floor for about 30-40 people and bar in the same area. In surrounding rooms are other reserved rooms for parties and various lounges to chill out. Also a smoking area upstairs.
Cloak Room: None
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. An attempt to get water upstairs was aborted after waiting about 10 minutes upstairs. It was much easier to get drinks downstairs as downstairs there were two bars.
Eviction Count: None seen
Music Style: Primarily House / Electro downstairs. Upstairs is also dominantly house but also some RnB and Party tunes mashup. Someone off the street would probably like upstairs better. Some good party tunes were being played upstairs later in the night.
Crowd & Ratio: Dominantly young Caucasian crowd. Ratio is pretty even during peak, or seems like it anyway. I don’t remember thinking at all that tonight was a sausage fest. The guys and girls are pretty friendly here if you talk to them nicely. Girls are pretty good-looking I dare say.
Entertainment: None
Atmosphere: Downstairs downstairs is pretty club-like: Dark, lights, loud and crowded, but there is enough room for everyone. People kept within their own circles or to themselves. Upstairs there are perhaps a few more lights (LED lights that is!) and combined with the mirrors around, makes more for the atmosphere. The crowd here was also more jubilant and into it – singing along to songs and what not. Unlike downstairs though, there is much less room to move around, and the floor is sticky most of the time. Yick. Mind you, the dancefloor areas are roughly one third to one half of the floor area – the rest are made from rooms scattered with lounges and chairs.
Video: 
crowd upstairs
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Major fail tonight as I was wearing no collared shirt and just sneakers. Got some promoter cards to go to Soho for the new event tonight, alright so here we go!
The Usual Suspects (Opening Night) @ Soho Bar Sydney
Assessment Time: 01:00AM – 03:00AM
Address: 171 Victoria St, Potts Point (Kings Cross) Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.sohobar.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.usualsuspectsblog.net/ Hard to tell if this was self promoted but it probably was.
Occurrence: Every Saturday
Dress Code / Door Policy: Clean sneakers and t-shirts are ok. At the door it was 3 of us guys and 1 girl. The door bitch told us straight out we needed more girls in our group at this time, which was fair, but the way in which she said it was with such attitude, it didn’t make me happy or sympathetic to the cause. We got in anyways after her question of ‘So do you want to go in or not??’. Oh such attitude (!!), but that’s a door bitch for you. I’m surprised we were not given the guestlist treatment excuse. They do try to encourage more women to come here.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $20 for all persons all night. Promoters on a nearby corner are giving out discount cards which gave guys $15 entry and women free entry. These promoters specifically were only giving out the cards to women on the street and we had to interrupt one of the guys chatting up a girl to ask for cards.
Guestlist: Guestlists can be sorted out through the websites listed above.
Inside: Walk through the hallway to enter the main bar on the ground level, where lounges are on the left and right. Keep walking through to the main dancefloor to hold about 100-200 people. Elevated dance podium at the back of the room. DJ at the front, some lounges along the far end walls and behind the DJ. Go back and upstairs to the second main dancefloor with a smaller floor for about 30-40 people and bar in the same area. In surrounding rooms are other reserved rooms for parties and various lounges to chill out. Also a smoking area upstairs.
Cloak Room: I couldn’t find one. Assumed non-existent.
Bar Prices / Line: Didn’t drink tonight. The lines were very short – you could order right away or at max wait for 1 or 2 orders.
DJs: Main Ground Level Room: Bingo Players (Netherlands), Jaxx da Fishworks (Japan), Allep Oop, Oakes n Lennox, Fat Cue DJs. Upper Level Room: Rogers Room, Here’s Trouble, Bangers n Mash, Kristiano
Music Style: Main Room appeared to be house, electro while I was there. I had Jaxx da Fishworks on set here playing down here, and he mixed songs well and keep the beat going. I was really able to shuffle and dance around like a mad man here. Upstairs was more top 40 and pop. Lady Gaga and things like that were being played. Difficult to dance to, and not only that, the DJ during this time often slowed down or increased the tempo of the song currently being played for about 5 or 10 seconds before going in to match the tempo of the next song. This was absolutely a show stopper everytime this happened. Even though I am not a DJ, I am sure there are better ways for a DJ to transition into the next song being played without killing the rhythm. This was pretty much why I was downstairs most of the night.
Crowd: Dominantly caucasian. Younger crowd of teenagers and low 20’s. There are a handful of Asians as well – appeared to be a mix of local and international students. Crowd can be friendly, but certainly not cold I suppose. There were more guys than girls in here tonight. Probably 65:35 ratio
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: Both rooms on the dancefloor everyone is dancing happily away, and was always busy until around 2AM when people started to leave. Upstairs, the dancefloor was very sticky due to spilled drinks / lack of cleaning up, so difficult to dance well to. Also both rooms had a dark atmosphere with minimal lighting. In the chillout rooms/areas there were plenty of seats to go around – so the club wasn’t at capacity.. but these were just chillout rooms – we shouldn’t go clubbing just for the opportunity to relax all night.
Video: 360 of the main room
Video: 360 of the upstairs room
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