Clubbing with James Tran

No real occasion but to just have our fix of clubbing this week.. friends choice – Home Nightclub. Wasn’t too keen as the last time proved only to be very mediocre.. hoping tonight is better  – here we go! Homemade Saturdays @ Home Nightclub Sydney Assessment Time: 11:30pm – 1:45am Website: http://www.homesydney.com Address: Cockle Bay Wharf Dress Code: Casual ok. I wore a t-shirt, jeans and dress shoes. Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Something ridiculous like $25 I think. No thumbprint scanners tonight. Guestlist: Did not submit one, but visit the website to submit a guestlist. Inside: See video. Basically one big room, 3 other dance rooms and a chill out room. Chill out room is not featured in the walkthrough video. Cloak Room: $3 or $4 I think. Memory bad.  Cloak room is not advertised, but is it at the end of the main room bar, right next to the speakers. DJ: Same DJ as last time here on a Satuday. Don’t know his name but he’s bald, and hates guys dancing up on the front podium. Music: Electro/Commercial house in main room, old school rnb upstairs. See video. Crowd: Mixed. Even mix of asian, caucasian, black, white, whatever. Atmosphere: Very good and vibing tonight. Packed for a change. It was pissing down raining outside, so there might be a correlation there. Entertainment: Front podium dancers and MC to keep it going. (continue reading…)

We finished a wedding out west. I am in my tuxedo and I feel awesome. I was also smashed. The city was 1 hour away. I didn’t care. I was in a tux – We were going clubbing!! Luckily I had some friends at Home Nightclub… About Home Nightclub: Location: Cockle Bay wharf, Darling Habour Website: http://www.homesydney.com Inside: All rooms except the mid-wall room was open. Main room on the floor, with upstairs balcony area and 2nd bar. Outdoor smoking area connected to this. A 2nd smaller room on the 2nd level. 3rd level are 2 extra rooms. This place is a maze of rooms. About Homemade Saturdays: Assessment Time: 1.30am-3.30am Dress Code: Casual ok. I was wearing my tuxedo from the wedding. You also get fingerprinted and photo scanned on the way in. Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 Guestlist: See website Cloakroom: Yes, at the bar near at the DJ eng. Bar: $12 yaberbombs. Music: House in the main room. Can’t complain, all the commercial house tunes were being played. Actually it was executed quite well here. There was also a saxophone player to add another dimension to the music – much like the Bongo players at Bungalow  and Cargo Bar. RNB room – RNB of course – but I wasn’t there long enough. Party tunes and retro at the top level. They seemed to have combined all the rooms into one major huge event. Crowd: Mixed – Asians, Euros Atmosphere: Party and vibing in the main room. However the other rooms seemed pretty dead. Especially the RNB room as nobody was there – it was the most dead room of them all. There were a hundred other places where you could have your proper rnb fix – and Home Nightclub doesn’t seem to be popular right now as the place to be for it. 360 from the main podium Timeline: Kicked off the podium by the sexist DJ There are girls up at the front dancing. Drunk old me wants a dance too! I went up and danced for a good 50 seconds. Then I hear a: DJ: “OI!” James: (turns around) DJ: “GET OFF THE STAGE – NOW!!!” James: (jumps off stage) Man.. what a cold DJ. Given, he probably has a lot of drunk guys coming up onto his stage, but fuck you anyway Mr DJ, even if you played really good beats. A minute later I have my female friend go up and dance, and there was no objections. Total sexism!!! (continue reading…)

Friday RNB Special @ Home Nightclub A small mention on the radio of an RNB night on Friday at Home Nightclub. The last time I went to a RNB event at Home bar, it went off! Sounds good, so I dragged my friends along. Here we go! Assessment Time: 10:30pm – 12:30pm Address: Cockle Bay Wharf Door Policy / Dress Code: Casual ok Cover Charge / Entry Fee: $20. $10 on guestlist. Guestlist: Unknown, but one was available Inside: Only the main room was open for tonight’s one-off RNB special. Main floor could hold a few hundred people. Bar: $12 Yagerbombs Music: RNB. Typical RNB tunes playing. Regulars to sublime trance event only had the upstairs rooms tonight. Crowd: There was nobody here, but the crowd that was here, was Mixed. Indian, Asian, Black, Aussie, Euro. Our group represented the only asians. Atmosphere: Dead. Timeline Home nightclub – an empty shell There was no line for our RNB event. Bad sign, but it was early. We walked into the main floor and this is what we saw: (continue reading…)

It’s my unofficial birthday out, and this time I get to choose the club! Homemade Saturdays @ HOME Sydney Website: http://www.homemadesaturdays.com/ Cover Charge / Entry Fee: Free entry before 9.30pm for all on guest list and $10 after till 10.30pm and after that $15 till 11pm, VIP CLOSES 11pm and then general admission applies which is $25 Guestlist: Submitted through guestlistsydney.com, but you can also send to party@promotersinc.com or party@homesydney.com Music: Main arena consists of House, Dance, Electro, Rnb mashups/remixes. This was enough to keep everybody around happy. Highlight of the night was “Im on a boat” near closing time. The smaller room is the specialized RNB room tonight. I wasn’t in here too long, as my friends hung out in the main arena most of the time. Dress Code: Casual allowed. Dress up allowed. My hat was allowed. Crowd: Mixed. Locals, backpackers, and different nationalities everywhere. Atmosphere: Main Arena big party mood. Rnb room, was the same, but because of the smaller size it was more isolated for each group of people there. It was pretty packed in here. It was pretty good. Entertainment: MC to keep things running in main arena. Random people (ie pretty girls) picked to get up and dance. Cloak Room: Yes Timeline It’s my birthday! and someone else’s too! Everybody I saw, I would absolutely announce to them that “It’s my birthday!”. Either people said “happy birthday!” back or they wouldn’t believe me, and they would stand there ignoring the drunk old James.  Then suddenly some guy replied back and said it was his birthdate as well. We compared licenses and OMG we had the same birthday!!. It was his 21st birthday. Pretty cool to meet someone else with the same birthday! (continue reading…)

What an acronym!! The University of New South Wales  Business Society ‘Be Sexy’ dance!!! Try saying that 10 times. My boss has been encouraging me to use my annual leave, so I took a Friday off and went with a friend on Thursday night! About Home Bar Address: 101 Cockle Bay Wharf, Darling Harbour (opposite the IMAX theatre) Website: http://www.homesydney.com Inside: Entry is via their side door. It is not accessible via the front bar entrance. When you enter, there is a little foyer with two openings. On the right opening is entry to the main room. The other is a set of stairs that lead up. The main room is quite large both in terms of dimensions and height. You enter from the back where the bar resides. At the back is a technician (yes, a light and possibly sound technician) The DJ is at the front. The huge Shiny sublime logo hangs as a modern day chandelier. Overlooking the main room on 3 sides is a balcony setup where people are peering down Upstairs is another bar and the balcony peering over downstairs. On Level 2 there is a small room playing trance music. Another set of stairs around the bar leads you to level 3 -  set of stairs and a tiny room resides where slow house plays. It’s not crowded and it’s quite good music, but it was dead as throughout the night. About BSXC A once off event, possibly once a year for the UNSW BSOC. Entry: $10 (1st round), $15 (2nd round), $20 (3rd round). $25 at the door. A relative bargain. Crowd: Dominantly Asian. It was UNSW, after all. Atmosphere: Main room – very good. Use of MC had the crowd continually going. Trance room – Small, but there was no pretentiousness when dancing here. House room upstairs – Dead most of the night, but for me, seemed to be the best room, I liked the beats, and I loved the freedom to dance, compared to downstairs were it was packed to the rafters. Entertainment: I caught a glimpse of some dancers at the front. Don’t know if there were any other forms of entertainment. It was a good way to break things up. No podium dancers at this place, nor podiums to speak of. (continue reading…)