Satsuma (Grand Opening Night) @ Mandarin Club
Assessent Time: 10:30pm – 11:15pm
Website: http://www.satsumanight.com;
Address: Mandarin Club, 1 Dixon Street, Sydney. TECHNICALLY, it is not Mandarin club, but at Satsuma’s Restaurant, which is above Mandarin club, but it is part of the same complex.
Dress Code: Casual ok. I had a t-shirt, jeans, blazer and black dress shoes.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free
Guestlist: Nil
Inside: During the day this place is a Japanese restaurant called “Satsuma”. A small room to hold about 100 people.. DJ area in the corner, and a single bar. Small smoking area on the balcony to hold about 7 people. There are still people finishing dinner in the other room.
Cloak Room: None
Bar: $12 yagerbombs
Music: RnB, House. DJ had premixed some songs and at one point in the night left the booth to let his premixed songs play.
Crowd: It was us and some friends of the DJ. Mixed thus far, but promoters were asian.
Atmosphere: Dead
Entertainment: N/A

On the dancefloor at Mandarin Club Sydney - Satsuma Nights

Timeline
Promotions -
I don’t think there was ANY promotion here tonight. We just walked in by chance for a drink. The other 4 people sitting in the room seemed to be friends of the DJ. The security guard was probably questioning why he was even here. Oh, that’s right, he gets PAID to go to shitty places to hang out. I don’t get paid, but it turns me on to go to a really shithouse place. Plus, I do these reviews for you, my dear reader, so you don’t have to have a bad night.

The poor guy who promoted this night needs to take some cues from the other promotion agencies out there.  The sad thing is that right now this blog post is probably the only promotion the event is receiving right now. Well, you gotta start somewhere.

It’s so bad even the DJ leaves his magical self mixing booth
This was probably the highlight of the 45 minutes we spent here. The DJ at one point left his booth for an unknown reason, and left the songs to play. Magically the song “mixed” into the next one! Mr DJ has been cheating!

So what do you do with an empty DJ booth, and the security guard stepping out of view? Sneak behind the booth and pretend to be a DJ of course!

DJ Hero James Tran rockin' it. Just put in my premixed CD and press play.

Cartwheels
There was so much room I tried to do a few cartwheels, but I’m hopeless at it

Coda
Left to head to our proper destination Home Nightclub

Recommendation

Avoid for now if you were thinking of dancing here.  Still a good place for a drink downstairs though.

Satsuma  Saturday@ Mandarin Club 3rd October 2009 – 0.5 out of 5 –

Closely avoiding a zero score for having free entry.  At this rate do not expect this event to last long.