Velvet Fridays @ The Vault
Assessment Time: 11:00PM – 02:15AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – 03:00AM
Lockout: Unsure. however there is an internal 2AM lockout to go downstairs again, unless you are getting your stuff from the cloakroom.
Address: 122 Pitt St Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.vaulthotel.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.velvetfridays.com
Occurrence: Every Friday
Outside Line: On arrival, there were probably 3 or 4 people ahead of us, so it was a very short wait to get inside.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Strict Dress code – Guys to wear collared shirts, clean sneakers ok – and ladies should wear something dressy, but can get away with casual. Most stuck to the dress code here.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free before 10:30PM if on guestlist. $15 before 11:30 on guestlist, and $20 thereafter.
Guestlist: Sent mine to velvetfridays@live.com.au . Fast response, all queries answered.
Inside: Have you ever been to Haymarket Hotel? It’s exactly the same. If you haven’t been … Walk inside the side alley entrance to enter the middle level main room. The Vault was formerly a bank years ago, so there is a high ceiling, and with it is an upper level DJ area which also doubles as a lounge for whoever is allowed up there. Back in the main floor, there is a bar, a ‘shots’ bar, podium for 2 or 3, and carpeted dancefloor for 100 or so people. Tucked away in the right corner is a set of stairs that lead you downstairs to the underground dancefloor area, which also has a bar, ‘shots’ bar and dancefloor for 100 or so patrons. There is also a dancepole here.
Cloak Room: $4 per item. Very reasonable.
Bar Prices / Line: $16 long island teas, $24 or something for three tequila shots? Basically there is the main bar for all your orders, but if you are only here for shots, there are specialised smaller “shots” bars on each floor, serving tequila, jagerbombs, and some other kind of shot. It’s a very clever concept. There wasn’t much of a selection but if this is what you were looking for, then you didn’t have to wait long. otherwise waiting at the bar may take some time – upto 5 to 10 minutes.
DJs: Peter Gunz, Flipsta, Hyper, Biggie, Stunna, Stib
Music Style: Primarily RnB, mostly American Black contemporary RnB. Mixing is done well, some repeated tracks due to the nature of multiple DJs. Bleh.
Crowd & Ratio: Pretty much almost everyone here is Asian Australian, there are some caucasian girls in corsets but they are here for tonight’s promotion, whatever it was.
Entertainment: Dancing pole, MC to keep things going.
Atmosphere: During the early hours of the night, most people are on the ground level as you walk in.. drinking, chatting, and what not. It’s quite noisy. Anyway as the night wore on and people danced more.. the upstairs got warmer and warmer – people could only hide downstairs, where the aircon was more efficient here in the smaller confined space. By 2AM, pretty much everybody is downstairs, and less than a handful of patrons can be found upstairs, either relaxing or dancing. You would think a large room such as this wouldn’t heat up, but it has. Kind of like St James Hotel’s main room when it got packed.
Video: 360 upstairs
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Quickie: The Market @ Haymarket Hotel Saturdays: 25th September 2010
(The following is a quick review of tonight – Refer to http://jamestran.net/?p=1277 for the last complete details and review, it hasn’t changed much)
Arrived around 12:15AM. There was no line. Apparently the line was uber-long earlier in the night. Paid $20 to get in. I was expecting to be charged $25 so it was a surprise.
Crowd is pretty much entirely Asian, mid 20’s or later. A mix of fobs and locals.
Main middle floor was pretty packed, and I didn’t even try to go inside the middle. Everyone was dancing like sardines.
Met lots of friends, including a website reader. Thanks for the drink Kev 🙂
Top level was also pretty busy, but people were more mulling around rather than dancing. Below ground level was pretty dead.
Closed at 2AM. Didn’t see any fights, so it possibly was a safe night tonight. Though the dancefloor area was littered in broken glass.
Recommendation
Not good for dancing freely, but its always packed.
The Market @ Haymarket Hotel – 6.0/10.
Miss Phoenix TV Cosmos Asia Pacific Dance Party @ Haymarket Hotel: Friday 30th July 2010
A friend has invited me 3 weeks in advance to go here. The selling point – 16 hot asian girls will be appearing for the modelling competition. Tempting. Same guys who did the old Havana events before it closed. I was free, alright, so here we go!