Table reserved for James! Shanghai Nights @ Brooklyn Hotel

A friend has a birthday and has decided to hold it at Brooklyn Hotel for the Shanghai Nights event. . I don’t want to go, as last time was mediocre for me, but I must keep up appearances, plus it will give this place another chance for a review, so here we go!

First as you enter, and the inside room is dead. Walked out and all the languishers who entered Brooklyn before 9pm were still here, drinking and eating. About 20 or so people, including a group of friends. Small world!

I pretend to be “James”

Podium dancing

It’s squishy to dance on the floor, and so I hopped up for a bit of a short dance. I had to ask permission from the podium dancers before I got up. I did my thing, but I probably looked like a fool After 2 songs the podium dancer kicks me off and does her thing with the head spinning and fancy dancy stuff.

Arrivederci

Recommendation

View of Brooklyn's main room from the front.

Never in the history of my RnB clubbing career for 4 short years have I been bombarded with promotional material for the Grand Opening of this night. Facebook, email, posters, more facebook, more email, more posters. You would expect them to do door knocking as well. The previous event at V-Bar had finally closed and the promoters, Urban Agent, have had success on their 40/40 Saturday Nights at Brooklyn – “why not do a Friday one as well?” They think. It’s an ambitious launch, to replicate the experience of a Shanghai nightclub with waitresses and limo service to the venue from a pick up spot at world square. A friend wants to check it out, so a guestlist was organised, and I was keen to see how Brooklyn has changed since the new promoters took over. So here we go!

Shanghai Nights @ Brooklyn Hotel Sydney

Assessment Time: 10:30 – 3:00am
Website: http://www.urbanagent.com.au
Address: Cnr George and Grovenor Street, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Dress code applies. Collared shirt for guys. However casual would have gotten away with it tonight.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 Guestlist: Well well well.. this is a special point. One can usually send in a guestlist and get a $5 discount or more. Tonight, as we enter the club, the flat fee was $25, and ALL GUESTLISTS WERE CANCELLED. What the fuck! It was only 10:30. Well, apparently they were allowed to do it, because there were so many fucking people outside. They could have charged $30 or $40 and people would still have probably paid up. Total fucking rort.
Inside: A main bar dance area to hold 100 or so people with DJ elevated a metre or so above the floor. Central circular bar. Second bar at the back to primarily serve the back outdoor courtyard. The courtyard holds 2 or 300 people. A second DJ resides here as well.
Cloak Room: I can’t remember, but it was a reasonable price – $4 or something for an item.
Bar: I did not drink tonight, but they had $3.50 for shot based drinks until midnight. Much more reasonable than $17 vodka red bulls the last time I was here.
DJ: Unknown Music: RnB inside the main room. Mixed as a professional does – choruses only to keep the crowd going with the occasional commercial house song thrown in.
Crowd: Mostly if not all asian. The occasional white person and indian clubber were also represented tonight.
Entertainment: MC for the main room at night. Promoters giving out lanyards the entire night like hotcakes, I suspect it was because the lanyards had the old V-Bar “Amber” event printed on them, rendering these lanyards throwaway material. By the end of the night everybody including myself had two of these things. Head promoter is throwing out free T-shirts out to the crowd. Nice. There is also a free shuttle service from world square to Brooklyn, if you book ahead, but why World Square? My suspicion is partly to show all the people lining up ouside of Flow: “Hey, you guys going to Flow, do you get a stretch hummer? nope. we rule and you drool”. That is my conspiracy theory. (Promoters have since dropped the Stretch Hummer promotion). Later around midnight, a dancing chinese dragon came in, which had blinking lights and everything. That was pretty impressive, even though Chinese New Year was last month. Also being the grand opening night, confetti is sprayed everywhere amongst the crowd. It’s hard to not like and hate this place at the same time. To top it off, there’s also a BBQ out in the back. They’ve gone all out here.
Atmosphere: Packed like sardines inside, smokey in the back outside area. Inside the vibe was good, but still too packed for my liking. Keep reading for more details on my thoughts on this whole setup

Nom Nom BBQ

Review & Timeline
Superlong line but we get in.
As with massively promoted nights with a zillion birthdays being held, you should expect really long lines. Tonight was no exception, with the separate guestlist and normal line stretching out for ages. It was only 10:30 and we knew the general line, at least, was a 80 minute or so wait. This kind of waiting really turns people off. LUCKILY, a friend knows the promoter, and within about 5 minutes the entire group is let inside. Woot! But seriously, for the uninitated clubber, they do think being on the guestlist means getting express entry and not waiting outside for 30 minutes to get in. Well, that’s what I used to think. Where is the justice?

At around 1am, I look out and people are still lining up to get inside. They have no chance – the place is packed, and I feel a tinge of sadness for them, as I once was in their position. Then I laugh to myself and keep dancing.

The poor souls outside have a look inside to see how much fun we are having.

Overpromising on the “4 massive arenas”
Such is the description given for each of brooklyn’s areas in the promotional poster. Jesus I nearly choked reading the flyer. Brooklyn really only has 2 dance areas, a small table area and a even smaller bar second bar area. These are the 4 arenas?? To describe these as 4 massive arenas can give the unsuspecting clubber the impression .. of 4 massive arenas to dance in. How many first timers to Brooklyn would have been disappointed with the setup, if they managed to get into the club? If any place should be close to “arena like” it would be Home or Tank Nightclubs, not Brooklyn.

The outdoor area is a disappointment
Alas, the largest area of Brooklyn is the outdoor area, and that was pretty crap. It was just a smokers paradise there, and the DJ assigned here had the unfortunate destiny to have his speakers set to 1 out of 10. I could have placed my mobile phone on loudspeaker and it wouldve gotten more people dancing. The volume was seriously that low. At least people could talk out here, but I did not go to the outdoor area to talk. I WANTED DANCE!

I miss the old dead Brooklyn.
The place now is packed, which is good to see, but at what cost? Regulars driven out, and cover charge smacked on. No doubt the night was declared a success by the promoters, with photos to prove – it was a success for the promoters but what about the punter? I have been massively disappointed with tonight in terms of the atmosphere, which I believe is a big part of the whole clubbing experience.

Table service
In the real city of Shanghai, small groups can get a private booth and be served by a dedicated waitress/hostess the entire night to bring drinks, games etc. Tonight was an attempt to replicate this, and it has unfortunately failed muchly. By about midnight everybody is standing up, and the bar is right next to the tables. The waitresses are redundant, and speaking of them, I only saw a handful of them tonight. It was advertised as 50 (now its 30) of the waitresses hanging out and about, so where were they? Did I seriously miss them?

I found a VIP Waitress!

Bowtie!
Lately I’ve been donning a bowtie, its awesome. I saw another guy and took a photo, but he wasn’t as enthusiastic seeing another guy with a bow tie. Maybe if I was a chick he would have been more happy in this photo:

Dude doesn't look happy to be with me wearing a bowtie

Arrivederci
Friends ditched me and so I eventually left.

Recommendation
Utterly disappointed. It’s not worth it. I hope the promoters will readjust what they promise in this night as well as acknowledge the existence of guestlists. With reports of 2000 to 4000 people in attendance the following week, they can surely use the excess money to improve the place somehow.

Shanghai Nights @ Brooklyn Hotel – 4/10

11 Quick Club reviews as seen from outside the club aka Window Shopping – 19th December 2009. (Northern Sydney CBD)

Saturdays @ Star Bar on George St
- Packed. However we had overdosed lately on Star Bar and its amusing crowd of non-english speaking tourists. It was a no go tonight, no matter how tempting it was to go inside there.

PS. I no longer write reviews when I visit star bar, as I visit this place too much.

Saturdays @ Arthouse on Pitt St (1am)
- Tonight was not an ‘Asian’ night (Fame), but it was a white-crowd event. House music was playing outside, and there was no line outside – it looked pretty shit inside from the outside. There was a cover charge.

Saturdays @ The Vault on Pitt St
- We walked by this bar and heard RNB music playing! Whoa, we have to try it out. We walk up to the entrance and there is a smallish dance floor with about 15 people dancing on it – it was almost dead, but better than Pavillion. However the bouncer refused us entry on the excuse of ‘a private function’. We were 4 guys so it was understandable, but the private function excuse didn’t seem congruent, as there was no second person to confirm a guestlist. Whatever, it was dead.

Saturdays @ Coolabar
- Music is pumping out, tape and escalators are in operation to the bar upstairs. There are two people outside. It was on! We know Coolabar is a shithole, but we want to wow the crowd inside, if there was one.

We run up but the two people inside tell us we can’t go inside, as the place is closed. What!?! You wonder why some places are even open at all if they are closing at 1.30am on a Saturday night.

Bamboo @ Martin Place Bar
- The line is shorter than usual, but there *is* a line, which is better than the other places so far. Entirely asian, and RNB playing outside, it is tempting to go inside, but all four of us were not big fans of paying $25 to go inside. People inside had santa hats on. We could see Jason the resident Korean bum dancer hogging the podium from the outside.

Security came up and spoke with us. We had a short fun chat and perved on some girls walking by, you know, typical man stuff. Security was called to kick out a drunk person. Moments later he is walking out with a drunk girl and 3 of her girlfriends supporting her. haha, it is not classy at all to see a drunk girl, let me tell you that. Security tells the girls it is all ok, and wraps his arms around the two girls beside him. LOL omg he is hitting on drunk girls outside of thd club – I want to be a bouncer now!!! haha, what a sneaky sleaze.

Funky Buddha @ Verandah Bar on Castlereagh St (Martin Place)
Here they recently opened the trance room again (after a 3 or 4 year absence). Cover is $20, crowd is asian, music is RNB and trance.

We ask some girls who left Funky Buddah if it was any good.
“Average” was the reply. It was in other words, shit. There was, though, a line outside, so it must be somewhat ok.

I do want to check it out as it’s been a while, and I have to see how the Trance room looks now.

Saturdays @ Red Room Hotel Chambers on Castlereagh St (Martin Place)
We were able to peek inside from the entrance – and even though it looked crowded, it didn’t seem like a fun atmosphere. Music was old school RNB, with a cover charge of $20 and an asian crowd.

Tank Nightclub (Bridge lane)
OneLove moved to the Bourbon about a month ago, and we did not know if there was any event, so we took a punt and walked here. It was, unfortunately, closed. (At the time writing, Onelove @ the Bourbon has also shut its doors)… I think I might start a new event here! ha.

20/20 @ Brooklyn Hotel (George St Circular Quay)
Ever since Privilege closed for renovations a few weeks ago, promoters Hypnotize moved their Saturday event to Brooklyn and joined with Urban Agent to help out. The result is that my favourite place to go for free drunk girls and $17 Vodka Red Bulls has turned into a cover charged event full of not so drunk people. I yearn for the former glory days of seediness.

I peek inside the main rnb room and it is pretty packed. I go around the back and look down in the outdoor courtyard area where they are playing house/trance. Back in the no-cover charge days, the place usually had 5-10 people dancing max, while the others sit and watch. Now with the help of the promoters, the entire back area as PACKED. Jesus fucking christ I could not believe what I was seeing – Brooklyn Hotel actually packed out! I could not see any concrete, it was just a sea of people standing up, dancing and cheering. It looked pretty awesome. The bartenders must be having a hard time adjusting to actually having to work non-stop.

However my friends, still don’t want to go inside. They are pretty adamant about not going inside here, considering the crappy times they had the last few times. haha.

Also, regular patrons here (i.e. the islanders) were lining up to get in, not knowing that they need to pay entry. There were some outside, thinking of other places to go. So the crowd inside was a mix of islanders, asians and aussies. Cover charge I am guessing is $20. Based on what I saw, it looks good.

Sienna @ Establishment on George St
We are just walking by. They’re playing house music, though I had thought Sienna was an RNB event. The crowd is dominantly Euro, and cover charge is $20. I do need to check this place out too. It looked pretty busy from what we could see

Saturdays @ Ivy on George St
Loud, and looking quite busy. We can’t see inside from the street but we can hear people cheering from the inside. Sounds like fun. Am definitely going to spend a night here one day next year.

Saturdays @ Bar 333 on George St (2am)
Bottom level was closed and upstairs looked pretty dead.

Arrivederci
By this time we have given up, and we have managed to end up back where we started – standing outside Star Bar. I was dying to do any form of dance, but friends were puffed out from walking up and down the CBD for 2 hours. Fair enough, but I wish they were keen for a dance!! So we called it a night.

Recommendation
If I had to pick a club tonight, it would be 20/20 @ Brooklyn Hotel.

Brooklyn Hotel Timeline
Music: Rnb, tribal house
Atmosphere: mixed natios.

It was Saturday, an as far as I remember it was packed when I got in. A good mix of guys and girls at the moment, but also a few blimps. Nothing wrong with that either.I had a wig on, and that pretty much got me grinding with 2 random girls within half a minute, which is pretty crazy.

Groping that worked -.-
The Frenchies look at me in amazement as I struggle to think about how on earth do I handle two attractive women in their 30′s grinding on each of my legs. LOL. So while I have these two women on my legs, I felt like I’d try something out – I reached out and just groped their butts at the same time – and I met no resistance!! LOL again. I was absolutely expecting some reaction from at least one of the girls – but nothing! That was when I was in trouble. Must be a cougar thing. I didn’t know what to do next. Do I keep groping? No. Should I go for the boobs? no, that’s inappropriate. I wanted a mentor right now! I realised one of them was married (she had the ring on) and so I really was just dance fodder. That’s a shame.

Dance chasing a girl around
Two hot girls come to proximity with Liberty and I. What do two guys do? We just went up.. and tried to freak them out with a bit of GRINDING!!! But you know what – they just stood there looking at each other smiling – this was NOT how its supposed to be. They were suppoesd to look at each other – the “omg lets get out of here” look and walk away. They stand there .. and compliment my wig -.- Damn wigs.

Second time round it worked, I tip toed towards the other girl who complimented the wig, and she would step away for every step I came close – it got to the point where I was following her around in a big circle.. it was obvious she was avoiding any form of grinding that night, but I thought it was funny following her around. Does this form of action make me a creep? What if creeps were good looking? Would they still be treated like creeps?

Slutting around with everyone, except I get rejected by big girls
Libert and I by the end of the night, were on a natural high – we were slutting around with anybody and just generally dancing with any girl around, and surprisingly only the big Samoan girls refused a bit of grinding. I don’t even know why.

We save some Irish folk
We slut-danced with some irish girls, and they happily danced back – later they told us there were two real creeps trying to pick them up, and when we came along, they were more than happy to dance with us instead of trying to fend off these guys.  We on the other hand seemed to be having fun and enjoying the night in general.

Coda

We left at closing time 4.30am – very happy with our night of dance antics.

Don’t go here if you don’t want to be groped or slut danced with by me.  Oh wait, that applies to *any* club. Otherwise a good place to go if the crowd is right.

We checked out Jackson’s on George first, but geez we didn’t even last one minute there. The amount of strobing that they lay on your poor eyes is probably close to illegal levels (if there were such levels in place):

Click here to view the embedded video.

Brooklyn Hotel
Address: Cnr George and Grovenor Streets | http://www.brooklynhotel.com.au
Music: RNB in the main room, tribal house / funky dance in the back courtyard.
Crowd: Mixed ages, mixed nationalities
Cover Charge / Entry fee: Free
Dress Code: Casual, hats allowed out back. Depending on the bouncer on watch, inside as well. SK was waring thongs!
Drinks: Special mention goes to the price of drinks which have gone up due to the recent alcopop tax I think $15 for a bottle of Smirnoff double black!! WTF! that’ s up from a typical $8 or $9 -.- At least the bar staff were nice enough to tell us about the price hikes. Well not that I drink that much but I suppose the $900 government stimulus would help some alcoholics out there. Between 8pm and 11pm though its $4 drinks for some house selections.

Review

Music RNB: No complaints. Just a normal Dj paying tracks. I wasn’t paying much attention. He did interact with the crowd though, which was pleasing.

Music House: Same as above.

Atmosphere
We got in around midnight, and it wasn’t that spectacular. Probably around 20 or 30 people. Around 1-2am, it reached its peak, where lots of people were coming in and were going out back as well. Atmosphere during these times were very good – everyone was having a bit of a dance or a snog.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An Eastern European perspective on girls.
SK was amazed by how all the girls wore dresses – at the club, especially at a general normal club such as this! She was wearing casual jeans and a baggy t-shirt with flats. Very.. hot. She comments that at home the Czechoslovakian girls don’t really wear anything sexy or fancy at all. Sounds like a place to avoid for clubbing if I ever take that European trip.

Dancing
Most of the time was just spent dancing around. We joined up to dance with another two girls and we all danced away in the main room til close. We went out back for a break but SK wasn’t really into the house music that was playing. I was going at it on the floor like a rabbit about to die from the latest virus going around. The crowd out back isn’t that large (about 5 to 10 people at any given time) and its because of this, that its quite friendly actually. It’s bizarre, but it gives a better experience.

Coda
We left our friends at 3.30am, happily danced out.

Music: house with DJ and separate drummer.
Crowd: People in their 20s. Smart Casual.
Cover: None
Atmosphere: Crowded, Friendly
Attire: Casuals not allowed. Smart casual. Hats allowed.

Review
Got in around 11pm and soon started to dance. The small floor space was packed, but only noticed something – it was well lit – you could see everyone’s. This perhaps made it less of a typical club.

Music was similar to Cargo where they have a bongo player – here they had a drummer, but it was more jazzy.

Hat blues Tonight decided to wear my white hat. As expected, random drunk people were stealing it all the time.

Cockblock gets angry at me
A  drunk girl puts my hat on a second girl. Lets call her Drunko. Drunko starts dancing with her new found hat. Two girls next to me say “I think you have to dance with her to get your hat back” – oh the things I do.  So I walked up and smiled at her, and danced for a few seconds. Then her cockblock of a girlfriend comes up and takes her away and gives me a death stare that could boil water, and says “She’s not interested”. They walk away with my hat. I follow her and Drunko. Drunko is still playing with my hat. Drunko’s friend turns and tells me yet again in a more pissed off and angry voice.

“NO, She’s not interested, OK???”. “I’m just getting my hat” , as I finally get it back.
She looks at me and realises, but can’t admit to a quick apology. She was right though -  I was going to crack onto Drunko if she wasn’t there.

I’m not tall enough
Met another girl who stole my hat, lets call her Peru. Peru and I get along. Peru and I dance, Puru and i swap number. Peru and I hold hands. Peru and I dance more. However, Peru is taller than me, and Peru sees another man taller than her and can’t keep her eyes off him. It was totally obvious. Game over.

Coda
My friends had left so I call trusty Claire togo somewhere else..

<Dancing outside of Cargo Bar>
I was inside Cargo for a bit waiting for Claire. Packed as usual, I couldn’t find a nice spot for myself to dance. It’s still a nice place to go to.

Met Claire outside and we wait for her friends. It takes 30 minutes, so during this time I forced her to dance on the pier walkway while the music blares out of Cargo bar. Amused passersby take photos, and drunk guys come up and dance with us and crack onto Claire.

Embarrasingly a client of mine from Work walked on by, and we recognized each other. She hurried along laughing – she probably thinks now I’m a dancing lunatic who pops pills.

Brooklyn hotel
I convinced Claire we should go to Brooklyn. It was the only other free place nearby which played RNB.
Music: RNB in the front, House in the back.
Crowd: Mixed. Casual.
Cover: None
Atmosphere: Friendly
Dress: Casual, No hats.

We dance a bit in the RNB. Claire blindly hit the other girls as usual. They didn’t look too happy. Other girls loved her dancing nd we all do a bit of a dance.

We went out back and one of my favoruite songs “This is where the party’s at” by Tonite Only starts to play. I jump out from inside and start to dance. I didn’t realise I jumped right into a dance circle!  I am surrounded by about 10 people and everyone immediately starts pumping their legs off. Loving it. The circle was just a bunch of different people, and someone would always jump in and dance. It was unusally friendly – might have been because it was outdoors in the back, and we could see everything. It was really fun. Even Claire, who doesnt like House music that much, got caught up in the spirit.

We dance more in the RNB room and get to know some our new dance buddies. They’re asian, but they’re from France. How bizarre. Swapped details and they were very eager to hang out once more another night.

Left around 4am due to pure exhaustion. Nice place to meet people.

About Saturdays’ at Brooklyn Hotel
Music: RNB, reggae, house
Crowd: Mixed
Dress Code: Casual
Cover Charge / Entry Fee: None
Occurrence: Every Fridays and Saturdays
Atmosphere: Party-like, or desolate depending on your mood.
Brooklyn Hotel: As you enter, main dance area and bar to hold about 40 people comfortably. Another area out in the back for smoking and the house beats, but you wouldn’t really dance out there.

Timeline
Enter around 1am, and the place is quite busy, and drunk people aplenty dancing with bottles in hand.

Offered a drink
I put on the sunnies and go to the bar. Get a water and turn around. Two drunk girls with two guys hitting on them. The brunette takes my sunnies and puts them on. What am I supposed to do. Can’t cut grass, so I take photos. Forget their names, but brunette offers me her drink. “I have never offered any guy a drink!” she says. “.. so take it!”

A few minutes later she’s regurgitating the contents of her dinner in the back room, while an unlucky glass collector asks her to leave while holding her convulsing body. Her friend convinces him that she’ll be alright and surprisingly both are not kicked out. That’s classy.

Londoners
Blondie leads me to some other people. They turn out to be Londoners. Me and Jamal strike conversation and talk about the scene in England, and how much more better it is than here in Sydney. Well, most clubs in Africa could probably outdo Brooklyn. He admitted though, that the girls in Sydney were waaay hotter. Score. Girl on the right was absolutely trashed, and couldn’t even keep her eyes open during conversation, very funny.

Music
Music was questionable. Some songs I knew, some I didn’t and were more leaning towards the rap side. Then around 2am there was a string of reggae songs. Most didn’t like, but I did, since I knew the words.

Sisters
Two sisters of the older variety celebrating a birthday here. Great choice. I had a little chat and got along well, so decided to dance with them the rest of the night. Sadly went nowhere.. what a waste of time. It was too difficult to separate the two, even though both were pretty friendly and openly grinded…. *shivers*

Would’ve been better to cut some grass and try to steal drunk brunette. Funnily enough, she did get stolen off the guy around 3.30am, and he walked off furious.

Random photo (for your amusement)

Guys dancing with me to steal the girl
I was dancing with the sisters, and enter a huge group of about 8 men. There weren’t that many girls left, and about 2 or 3 guys directly cut into our circle to talk to the younger blonde sister. Geez that pretty much pissed me off. I stuck my finger at him, he looked at me and I just pretended to be sticking my fingers over his shoulder.

That wasn’t the end of it. The younger guy comes right up to me and starts to GRIND ON ME!! UGH!! It was obviously for entertainment for blonde sister, and so I serve it right back at him and grind him back. I felt so sick doing it, but it worked. He didnt last 10 seconds crotch-crotch with me. I didn’t get another man dance after that.

Coda
After the sisters left, it was 4am. There weren’t that many people left but they were all dancing. Decided to leave. This is only a good place to go after 1am for a seedy drunk time with no entry fee. Quality of girls was surprisingly okay, but some were off. Oh yes, and the music was tolerable but I wouldn’t recommend this place as a proper dance joint.