Zaia @ Space Nightclub Sydney: Friday 3rd September 2010
by James on Sep.03, 2010, under Harder Styles, Hip Hop, RnB, Space, Trance
After multiple times coming here after 3AM, it was time to give this place a fair go. Guestlist sorted out, so here we go!
Trance room - Zaia @ Space Sydney
Zaia @ Space Nightclub
Assessment Time: 10:30PM – 04:00AM
Opening Hours: No idea on when doors actually open. Possibly 09:45PM – 04:00AM
Lockout: None
Address: Level 3, 127 Liverpool St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.spacevenue.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.phatentertainment.com.au
Occurence: Every Friday.
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual allowed. Hats allowed. My sneakers were allowed in. Basically anything goes here. Guys were a mix of casual and collared shirts/dress shoes. Girls were mostly in dresses.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: (On guestlist) – Free before 10PM, $20 between 10PM – 11:15PM, $25 afterwards. If you ain’t on the guestlist, it’s a $25 flat charge. There is no separate guestlist line.
Guestlist / Birthday Package: Sent mine through musesydney@yahoo.com.au, the 3rd party promoters for Zaia. Reserved area was sorted out for Marty’s birthday, but no birthday free passes were given to us as promised, despite protests at the register. Package included bottle of champagne, which was given in the form of drink passes. However no cloak room pass was given, nor VIP table service. Admittedly there were 20-30 birthdays tonight, and I did not specifically ask for free entry, cloak room pass or VIP table service, but I did ask for the birthday party package which, I was told, would include these things. A birthday boy or girl DOES NOT have to go through the motions to ask for these birthday things.
Inside: Please note Space has been renovated since early 2010. Walk up the stairs to the Shark Hotel level, where red carpet and cash register awaits your money. No longer are the elevators used to enter the venue. Walk up another flight of stairs to enter Space Nightclub into the Trance room. The wooden dancefloor has been largened to accommodate more people. A stereoscopic light has been installed which dishes out some funky light patterns. Dancefloor holds about 40 people capacity. Bar servicing this room on the right, and an internal smoking room at the rear to hold about 20 people, like you see at some airports. Enter the bigger room via either of the two doors to be presented with a large dancefloor for about 300-400 people. Tonight, the cage podiums have been rid of! Instead, a catwalk like setup has been created, right into the middle front of the dancefloor, for the bikini contest later on. Two single podiums reside next to each of the columns holding the ceiling up.
Cloak Room: $10 Large Items, $5 small items. $3 Recheck. Ridiculous pricing as usual from this promoter.
Bar Prices: $8.50 for a Vodka Cranberry. There are two bars tonight, and the shorter lines were always on the Trance Room side. People at the RnB side waited about 20 minutes for a drink, while in the Trance Room I waited about 5-10 minutes.
Music Style: Primarily RnB in the large room, with some hip hop later in the night and some house mashups thrown in the mix as well. Repeats of songs were experienced – Mixing was done well though
Crowd: Primarily local Asians. A handful of white people, but I would say no more than 10 or 20 in total.
Entertainment: Bikini Party – Competition for a $5000 first prize. More details later. Also podiums to which only girls were allowed to dance on in the earlier part of the night.
Atmosphere: RnB: It wasn’t too busy at 11, but at around 11:30 it pretty much picked up and peaked until around 2AM – 2:30AM when the bikini contest concluded. Dancefloor was pretty busy throughout – you had room to dance around, and only about half the time you had to move around to let other people through. In the Trance Room, the trance music really only came on at around 11:30PM, and you always had enough room to bounce around and spin and do stuff, but it always managed to stay busy enough to not look too dead. In general the crowd vibe was friendly. The rest of the non dancers just stood around the edges of the dancefloor or lounges.
Trance: Dark throughout the night, smoke machines, and flashy nights with loud noise. People are more reserved here as we are all about dancing. Pretty warm and stuffy in here as well as the night wore on.
Video: Walk-through – Trance room , RnB room, smoking room, back into the trance room. 
Video: Trance Room 360 
Video: RnB Room 720 
RnB room - Zaia @ Space Sydney
Related:
Fridays @ Scary Canary: 27th August 2010
by James on Aug.27, 2010, under House, Scary Canary
Just left Docks Hotel, on the way to find another place to dance, and there it was, ole’ Scary Canary – it’s reverted to a backpackers night tonight, so lets check it out!
Scary Canary Sydney - 2AM
Friday @ Scary Canary Sydney
Assessment Time: 02:10AM – 03:00AM
Opening Hours: Early in the day – 03:00AM
Lockout: None
Address: 469 Kent St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.scarycanary.com
Promoter Website: Self Promoted tonight. On Saturdays – http://www.ozpartybus.com
Occurence: Every Friday, but almost every night here its backpacker night.
Dress Code / Door Policy: There is no dress code. Most people are dressed casually – t-shirts, no t-shirts, collared shirts, etc.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free all night
Guestlist: No guestlist.
Inside: Walk into to a two tiered room. Bottom tier the bar area with some stools and tables, and a pool table. Podium for two as well. Top Tier is the dancefloor, DJ area, large podiums for about 5 people and 10 people respectively, on both sides of the floor. Dancefloor holds about 20-30 people.
Cloak Room: No cloak room services.
Bar Prices: Didn’t drink tonight
DJs: Unknown
Music Style: Commercial House mixed with Top 40 and classic house / trance songs. The undertone of the whole night was trance and house.
Crowd: Backpackers from all over the place. Mostly they look European. There was about a ratio of 30/70 Girls to Guys.
Entertainment: MC’s mingle and dance with the crowd.
Atmosphere: Average. Tonight is a beach theme. The backpackers are dancing like hooligans. There’s a guy dancing on a speaker, there are red plastic cups strewn along the floor, there was a guy passed out on the sofa. There are beach balls being kicked around but at this point in time they have accumulated lots of brown crap, and they look like filth balls instead of beach balls. Its quite dirty when you think about it. People are wearing hats that were given away, and leis. If you embrace the backpacker vibe it was kind of ok. However there just weren’t enough people here at 2AM – if there were more, the atmosphere would be killer. I am sure earlier in the night there were more people.
MCs in orange and green dancing
Video: Walkthrough 
Video: 360 view 
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Related:
Rendezvous (Grand Opening) @ Docks Hotel: Friday 27th August 2010
by James on Aug.27, 2010, under Docks Hotel, Hip Hop, RnB
Dancefloor area of Docks Hotel Sydney
A birthday invite at Docks Hotel. It coincided with the grand opening of the new rnb club event here, so here we go!
Rendezvous @ Docks Hotel, Darling Harbout Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:30PM – 02:00AM
Opening Hours: Early in the night – 03:00AM
Lockout: Did not ask. It didn’t look like there was one.
Address: Shop 255 Harbourside Shopping Centre – Near the big South Steyne Boat at Darling Harbour.
Venue Website: http://www.dockshotel.com.au
Promoter Website: I couldn’t read the poster well enough to find out who was promoting, but here is the event page for one of the DJs who was performing tonight: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=120068251378791
Occurence: Every Friday
Dress Code / Door Policy: Most guys wore smart casual. There was no actual strict dress code and people can go in with hats, t-shirts, clean sneakers, etc. Girls all looked pretty good – pretty dressy.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge:$15 guestlist, $25 Full Entry
Guestlist: I have no idea. You would have to try your luck with the docks hotel management who would pass your details onto the promoters
Inside: Walk inside. To the left is an extended carpted lounge area for 50-70 people. To the right is the bar that runs for half the length of the place. On the far end is a curtained off area for private functions with a secondary bar. Later it was open access for all.
Cloak Room: $5 per item
Bar Prices: I can’t remember, but there was at maximum 1 person in front of you in line at the main bar. Most of the time you could get service right away. At the secondary bar, the line was 4-5 deep with only one bartender. Didn’t make sense why they didn’t just go to the main bar.
DJs: Moto, Edo, Biggie, Flipsta, Cbu, Mike Hyper
Music Style: Contemporary RnB and classic Hip Hop near the end of the night
Crowd: Mixed crowd tonight of local Asians and Euros, Probably 70/30 was the ethnic ratio. Gender ratio was 50/50. Age of the crowd was in their 20′s Birthday girl was 24 I think, and other Euro girls we met were 28, so its quite a range.
Entertainment: The promotional poster stated “Special Performances” and “Free Shirt Giveaways”. Throughout the time I was there, I didn’t see or hear any announcement of T-shirt giveaways. Plus, what was the “Special Performances” -????? It was as though they just threw some words together to make it sound good, hoping that people didn’t really notice that there was no actual Special Performance of any sort at all. Well actually, I did see the MC perform a dancemove where he rolled his hat down the length of his arm, behind his head, to the other end of his arm – I thought that was pretty special. Eventually nothing eventuated. There is also girls only podium on the dancefloor.
Atmosphere: Underwhelming for a grand opening. I really didn’t pick up much notice of the opening of this new event. The place was probabaly at one quarter to one third capacity.
Video: Walkthrough Video at 12:15AM
Related:
Vanity @ Verandah Bar: Saturday 21st August 2010
by James on Aug.21, 2010, under RnB, Verandah Bar
A friend has a welcome back party at Verandah. Yeah ok, lets give this place a second chance after the horrible last time I was here. I organised a VIP area and guestlist and we were set – here we go!
Podium area - Vanity @ Verandah
Vanity @ Verandah Bar, Martin Place, Sydney
Assessment Time: 10:30PM – 03:45AM
Opening Hours: 10:00PM – 04:00AM
Lockout: Again, I don’t remember, but it was later than last time. I think at least 2:30AM this time. It appears the more drunk people that are evicted, the earlier the lockout is.
Address: 60 Castlereagh St, Sydney
Venue Website: http://www.verandah.com.au
Promoter Website: http://www.eso.net.au , http://www.viplist.net.au,
Occurence: Every Saturday
Dress Code / Door Policy: Smart Casual. It was a mix of both tonight. An additional security measure was the photography of all forms of ID. Presumably put into place due to the massive fights 2 weeks prior, so offenders can be put into place. In general, places with security checks like this can be dangerous, or have had trouble in the past. Better than fingerprint machines, I hated that.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 Full Entry. $20 guestlist before midnight. Free before 10:30PM if you are on the guestlist.
Guestlist: See websites. I sent mine to wendy@1nitestand.com.au . So as opposed to my rant last time, its actually a better system employed, where guestlisters are ticked off while standing in line, and non-guestlisters sent to the non-guestlist line. It took about 30 minutes to get in. There are birthday packages which include 3 free entries and a $50 bar tab.
Inside: They’ve opened the gambling room, but this time its not used as a second dance room. Instead its the cloak room. Anyway, after paying entry the cloak room is on the left. Continue walking on the red carpet to the main room Dancing room and DJ with podiums on the right. Continue walking down the path to the bar area, where lounges are around and standing area for patrons to line up. At the very back is a small outdoor smoking area.
Cloak Room: $5 per item
Bar Prices: 5 Malibu + Lemonades and a Smirnoff double black can for $52. Lines sometimes got upto 4 people deep.
Music Style: Rnb Mashed with some hip hop, pop and house.
Crowd: Almost all Australian Asians here tonight.
Entertainment: Podiums are reconfigured yet again. This time they’re all in the middle configured in a podium winner 1/2/3 style.
Atmosphere: Pretty busy throughout the night in the dance area, from what I could tell anyway. The back wasn’t packed but it was busy enough.
Video: 360 from the podium 
Video: Fast Walkthrough 
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Related:
Club & Bar Crawl: Haymarket Hotel, Doctor Pong, Slide Bar, Puls8 @ Shark Hotel, The Oxford, Hi-Lo (Middle Bar), Courthouse Hotel, Zaia @ Space Sydney: 20th August 2010
by James on Aug.20, 2010, under Haymarket Hotel, Shark Hotel, Slide Bar, Space
A night out with friends who varied across the spectrum. I had Marty, Jungle Fever and bisexual girls who were into RnB and Hip Hop, other girls who were not into RnB and Hip Hop and preferred the bar scene, my cousin who only liked RnB, her Asian American relatives who were very conservative – and I had to find them all good place to go. You have to be kidding me…
Fridays @ Haymarket Hotel
I thought an event would have taken over Friday nights here, but it hasn’t. Downstairs was closed off, and it seems only regular patrons were here for a drink. On the TV screens SBS was on and, being SBS, a documentary was being played about the porno industry. Hilarious hearing the collective screams of girls as the more saucy were being played.
Off we went to Oxford Art Factory. Half of us went in first. The other half including myself tried a few minutes later but we were told that the venue was at capacity and we should try again in half an hour. I doubt a packed place would have suited some of the people here, so it was off to Doctor Pong, just a few shops down!
Fridays @ Doctor Pong (Bar)
Doctor Pong DJ area and dance floor
Assessment Time: 11:10PM – 11:30PM
Address: 1 Burton St, Darlinghurst
Venue Website: None
Dress Code / Door Policy: Anything goes, no security checks. Cousin’s sister-in-law, who was wearing pajamas, was let in.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free
Inside: Small place. Bar in the middle. Lounges on one side, table tennis ping-pong table on the other side (hence Doctor Pong), with a restaurant on the far left. DJ up next to the stairs upon entry.
Music Style: Whatever goes, but it was keeping the crowd going. Volume was at a loud house party level but not a club level. You could talk in here without shouting too much.
Crowd: Mostly Aussies.
Entertainment: The table tennis table was the star attraction. Four paddles so everyone can have a go.
Atmosphere: Pretty busy at this time when we entered. You could say it was relaxed and busy. Red plastic cups add to the american beer pong feel.
Video: Walkthrough
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Related:
Saturdays @ Chinese Laundry: 14th August 2010
by James on Aug.14, 2010, under Breaks, Chinese Laundry, House
As part of the non-rnb weekend, we head on down to Chinese Laundry – a safe place to go, so here we go!
Hanging with a statue depiction of someone probably related to me
Chinese Laundry Saturdays: 14th August 2010
Assessment Time: 09:00PM – 03:00AM
Opening Hours: 09:00PM – 04:00AM
Lockout: There was a lockout, but unsure what time it was. We were told leaving at 3:00AM that once we left we were not allowed back in. The lockout may probably have been 2:00AM
Address: 111 Sussex St, Sydney (above the Slip Inn)
Venue Website: http://www.merivale.com/
Promoter Website: https://www.jammusic.com.au/#/chinese-laundry
Occurence: Every Saturday. Promoters also do Friday nights.
Dress Code / Door Policy: There was no strict dress code tonight. Most of the guys wore casual – shirts and jackets with jeans. Girls were mostly dressed well here.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Standard Prices are $15 before 10PM, $25 After. Guestlists available for discounted prices from the promoter website
Guestlist: See promoter website for details
Inside: Nothing has changed since last time. Walk into the bottom level, where the Cave on the left to hold 100 people or so. Chinese Laundry room on the right where the main tiled floor holds 150 or so people. Secondary chillout room behind a wall where the only lounges reside for 50 or so people. TV in the chillout room is playing episodes of The Smurfs. Sand Bar on the top level with a large outdoor smoking courtyard for 200-300 people.
Cloak Room: No cloak room services tonight.
Bar Prices: $12 Smirnoff double blacks. Lines were 2-3 Deep at the Sand Bar and Cave most times. Courtyard and Chinese Laundry had much shorter lines and we bought from here instead.
DJs: Maseo (De La Soul), Act Yo Age, Kraymer, Samrai, Chris Fraser and more.
Music Style: House, Breaks and Rnb/House Mashup. All the commercial house songs were being played earlier as well as a lot of hip hop, old school rap songs too in the Sand Bar. Later on the night it was more of the DJs playing songs they liked, which were not necessarily well known to the crowd, but still danceable to, which was the key point here. Occasionally in the Cave, the beat got pretty repetitive and we needed a break, from the breaks. (pun unintentially intented)
Crowd: Mostly a white crowd, but tonight there was an unusual higher number of asians than usual. Find out later there was a few Asian birthdays tonight, which explained it.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment
Atmosphere: It was a good turnout, but it wasn’t as sardine packed as last time I was here. It may have been because of the lineup not being as strong – the lead DJ was delegatd to the Sand Bar. Either way this turned out better dancewise – there was enough room to dance around without it being too dead. however places like the chillout room in Chinese Laundry were empty most of the time. For me, it was a good balance on the floor, but for people who liked packed out venues, tonight would be a little disappointing. People in general here are having fun and of course are dancing. Any other non dancers just hang out at the outdoor courtyard.
Sand Bar Upstairs Dancefloor area
Video: Walkthrough all 3 rooms – Chinese Laundry, Cave, then Sand Bar, then the outdoor courtyard
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Purple Sneakers @ The Gladstone, Chippendale, Sydney: Friday 13th August 2010
by James on Aug.13, 2010, under Alternative, Indie, The Gladstone Chippendale
For years some of my friends have been attending Purple Sneakers but I was never into Indie music. Well my knowledge of Indie music was getting better from listening to Triple J the past few years, so tonight I think it was time to take the plunge to experience my first Indie club event, so here we go!
Masterchef: Purple Sneakers @ The Gladstone
Purple Sneakers @ The Gladstone, Chippendale, Sydney
Assessment Time: 11:45AM – 02:45AM
Opening Hours: 19:00PM – 03:00AM
Lockout: None
Address: 115 Regent St, Chippendale, Sydney. Theres no real visibility that its called The Gladstone – all you see on the Verandah is www.aussiebar.com.au, which doesn’t even link to the Gladstone website. Apparently it only came under new management after a short stint as a strip club.
Venue Website: None
Promoter Website: http://www.boundarysounds.com
Occurence: Every Friday
Dress Code / Door Policy: Anything goes, but everyone here is dressed in a very relaxed casual manner. I kind of almost felt overdressed with my collared shirt.
There’s even a 10 point rule list on entry which included things such as:
- No douchebags,
– No trashing of the toilets (The toilets became trashed anyway at the end of the night when a door was ripped off its handles, lol), and
- No pretentious behaviour.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $12 Full Entry.
Guestlist: There is a guestlist but I have no idea how to get on it or what it entails you to. You can try info@boundarysounds.com
Inside: The entrance to the venue is via the back. So, you first are presented with the back room of the Hotel/Bar, which resembles the rear of a typical small townhouse. Its like a tiny courtyard, with a brick shed to the right. The shed has wooden benches and plastic seats around the walls. Bricks lay around, and electricy and wiring is held down by gaff tape. BBQ in the corner. It really feels like you have walked into someone’s backyard, but they weren’t prepared for it. Continue walking inside to a hall where the cloak room is. Continue to the front where the bar is on the right, the DJs are in the left corner, and the dancefloor is in the middle. The dancefloor being a lightly carpeted area. Very danceable.
Cloak Room: $4 for all items
Bar Prices: I didn’t drink tonight, but the line was 1 or 2 people deep throughout the night
DJs: (In order of appearance per hour from 8PM) Retox, Erectro, PhDJ, SVU (Farewell Set), Joyride, Surecut Kids, The Holidays (DJ Set)
Music Style: Indie, Alternative Rock. Marty had no idea what any of these songs were, hailing from an RnB/pop background and he didn’t enjoy it. I usually listen to Triple J, so I had a fair idea what about half these songs were. Basically it was a complete mess of all these indie and alternative rock songs from the past 20 years, with no proper mixing. Most songs were played in full, and the crowd moment was often lost as a result. Songs that were heard were from R Kelly, Regurgitator, System of a Down, Art Vs Science, Friendly Fires, Yeah yeah yeahs, etc. These were the ones I recognized – but some songs played you just couldnt dance to at all.
Crowd: Mostly local Aussies. Surprisingly a few Asian fans were spotted. Most seem to be aged in their teens to early 20s, but I couldn’t tell.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment.
Atmosphere: Inside was as hot as an oven. There was definitely a huge build up of humidity in the room, and your body would have to change to an amphibian state to stay in there for long periods of time. It was pretty bad. The single fan and measly solo air conditioner did squat all with the situation. On the floor, empty cups and bottles lie strewn everywhere. The inside is pretty small, but its packed, and there is basically no room to dance properly – you could really only move or jerk your body around. There are no cleaners here apparently. Out the back is where you relax from the intense humidity of the inside, but you face another downer – cigarette smoke. The entire back courtyard and shed reeks of cigarettes. You can’t escape it. To top it off, there are also cups and bottles strewn on the concrete floor. It’s a filthy house party in the guise of a dance event. I am certainly not used to it, but a friend whom I met that night, certainly was. We were told that the monthly Purple Sneakers event in Canberra was much more cleaner, and that even the old venue at Abercrombie Hotel (which looked pretty dirty) was cleaner than this.
Entrance to the makeshift brickshed aka the chillout room
Video: Walkthrough Video
Video: 180 of the back courtyard: 
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Hello! I'm James. This subjective blog serves to post every dance event I attend to. I go out clubbing once or twice a week. I may include some stories as well. Feel free to join the discussion by leaving comments - Thanks for dropping by!
James' twitter
- I uploaded a video! MVI 4780: http://bit.ly/95M9l2
- Too much stomping in trance room last night.. knee hurts -.-
- I uploaded a video! Zaia @ Space Nightclub - 360 Trance room: http://www.jamestran.net - Trance room at zaia - Sp... http://bit.ly/bUJJCi
- I uploaded a video! Zaia @ Space Nightclub Sydney - 360 RnB room: http://www.jamestran.net - view of the rnb room ... http://bit.ly/9QgcTU
- zaia tonight!
- There are good days, and bad days. This is a bad week
- cbd smells so bad
- won cheap headphones on ebay for 26 cents including postage. Probably crap quality. I threw out that $1 mouse pad after 30 seconds.
- Review: Fridays @ Scary Canary: 27th August 2010 http://cli.gs/W3uGg #city #House
- FB stalking : Someone has an album called "private cocktail function"... lol so much for that
