Friends I haven’t seen in a while have mid-semesters, and its a welcome back party tonight, so here we go!

Generally female crowd at 11:30PM
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
YouTube Preview Image
Timeline
A very wrong male stripper act
It’s ladies night tonight, and so they’ve hired a male stripper. All the girls come up to the front and want to see a piece of the man action. This is the part of the night where nothing else in the world matters to any of the girls here.

Stripper shirt on....

Stripper shirt on....

So here he is fully clothed, and the girls go wild as he takes off his clothing bit by bit, until.. He takes off his shirt, and the girls scream!

Stripper, shirt off!

Stripper, shirt off!

The girls are not screaming because he’s shown his abs/flat tummy, they’re squealing in disgust! Look at bit closer. Horrendous I tells you, HORRENDOUS. How did they pick tonight’s stripper? I admit I am certainly no Adonis, but I am certainly not a stripper. Strippers need responsibility to maintain and keep shape! I thought this certainly was a prank and that he would rip off his flab to reveal washboard abs or that the REAL stripper would come down, but I was wrong, so so wrong.

Stripper ABS!!!

Here it is if you missed it first time around.

In fact, this whole act was really really wrong. Right after his flab was revealed, the girls directly in front of him quickly evacuated to hide. Like literally they walked out midway of a stripper session. You can only laugh at the superficiality of these girls because I am sure he had a great personality or something. Where previously there was 20 or so girls in front of me, there was now nobody. I seriously had uninterrupted views to the show, albeit 2 metres away from the stage. Nobody dared walk forward, lest they be picked by the male stripper to perform acts with him. The stripper plowed on regardless this minor setback, and I cheered him on too. Still, eww.

Are you James Tran?
Dancing. I catch the glance of a girl.

James: “Hello!”
Girl: “Hey! Are you James? James Tran?”
James: “Yup!”
Oh my god, another reader has recognized me! This is awesome! Why didn’t she just come up and say hi? Anyway..
Girl: “I know you!”
James: “Yup!” I am sure you do.
Girl: “… we met at a friends birthday a few months ago”
James: “… oh.” (my hopes of adding another notch to the website recognition count fade quickly)
I didn’t recognize her AT ALL. Fail.

Iceblock Licking Competition
Well this was the testament to the progression feminism in the 21st century – an iceblock licking competition for the girls. I love it. Girls are randomly picked out from a bag of ticket numbers, and the lucky contestants, one by one go up on stage to lick the same piece of iceblock in front of the crowd. Some do a dance, some just lick, and the last contestant was a bit full on with her iceblock. The winner was determined by cheering, and this time around, the loudest cheered did win it. She got a cash prize. During the competition someone threw their drink into the crowd from the upstairs VIP area. Geez.

I missed a big fight
After the licking competition, I returned upstairs to the VIP area. It was strangely half empty, and on the floor lay the remnants of a fight. numerous petals and pieces of a vase lay strewn all over the stained carpet; I had missed out on quite possibly a huge fight. A vase was used for crying out loud! This was one epic fight I missed, and nobody downstairs knew about it. The girls looked all shaken and worried, cuddling with each other for comfort. Someone who had got caught up in the fight spilled his drink over the edge into the crowd below at the time as well. Oh, that explains it.

Arrivederci
Left at 2:45AM. The place was pretty much left with my friends and a few other stragglers by this time.

Recommendation
An entertaining night. Blojo, who is an RnB fan, was raving about it at his work a few days later and wanted to know when the next one was (Nov 27 19 2010). I enjoyed it again. I had my expectations high so I was satisfied with what was offered here. Little to fault except walking into the remnants of the fight upstairs, which would have ruined some people’s nights.

This place is the place to be on Friday nights whenever it is on.

Bounce @ Slide Bar – 8.0/10

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2 Responses to Bounce @ Slide Bar Sydney, 24th September 2010

  1. David says:

    Hey james! Have you ever considered reviewing some of Sydney’s ‘gay’ nightclubs such as Nevermind at Oxford Street?

    • James says:

      The only places I’ve been were Midnight Shift and Stonewall. I’ve always considered Arq for years now, and Nevermind since the renovations, but just haven’t found the right time to do it. It’ll happen soon enough. 🙂

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