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:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here’s a picture of my friend with dancefloor behind.

Friend and the main dancefloor behind him. Nobody is behind him.

Yup.. that’s right.. there was NOTHING. NOBODY. Where on earth was everyone?? Did the promoters even bother to properly promote this ?? There were some people on the side seats, sitting down – too scared to even fathom to go on the dancefloor.  This place was as dead as a dick after coitus. Nobody wanted to dance, but not me. Not James Tran. I MARCHED RIGHT UP AND DANCED IN THE MIDDLE OF HOME NIGHTCLUB – THE LARGEST NIGHTCLUB IN AUSTRAILA. ALONE. AND I DANCED.

I danced for a few minutes, before this self amusement looked a bit weird in front of the other people. Evolution of dance crowd attempt failed. Nobody wanted to join James for a dance.

I asked the bargirl if it was always this busy.
“Sometimes, it depends” she replies. It wasn’t looking too hopeful.

“Maybe it’ll pick up later”, friends say. It didn’t.

We get kicked off the DJ stage, because we don’t have the hook ups.
Me and my friend see some girls up on stage just dancing, so we decide to join them. Here’s a video – look for me up on stage bopping around:

Click here to view the embedded video.

One of the girls comes up to my friend and asks her if she knew the DJ. No, my friend didn’t know the DJ. He obviously is a popular DJ.
The girl says to my friend “you can only come up here if you know the DJ”. We were then ceremoniously booted off the stage, not before they took photos with us.

Me, Friend, and two friends of the DJ who kicked us off the stage. lol there were just as many people on the dancefloor as up on stage.

So, the entire population of women were only here because the DJ invited them?? What is this place?? HAHAHA. What a joke! There was NOBODY on the floor to show off to. Well there was just this one Xzibit lookalike black guy sipping on his drink, but he wasn’t dancing. He did really looked like Xzibit though.

Entertaining ourselves in this wasteland called a nightclub
Some things to pass the time with. Feel free to use these ideas for your own when you find yourself in a similar dire situation:

1. I play choo choo train around the dead dance floor with a friend – the few people on the dancefloor looked at us with amusement, as I ‘CHOO CHOO’ chug around the floor with my friend behind me,  turning her wheels. A ‘transport’ version of the conga line.
2. We play some limbo – a great time killer. Just use two people to hold their arms out, and everybody else goes under!
3. Jumping around in group circles, while everybody stares at us.
4. I sleaze myself in front of 4 girls – These girls just came into the club. I went up to the prettiest girl and with my sleaziest voice said “Wanna dance?”. She gave me a bemused face, and I said it again but with an added line -  “Wanna dance .. with, THIS?” and I slowly point to myself, up and down. Another bemused look, and her friends are giggling. Meanwhile my friends out back are cracking themselves laughing. haha.. this wasn’t going anywhere. They left the club altogether after that encounter. I suppose I did them a favour.

I’m sorry.
My friends know I run this blog. They wanted me to pick a good club tonight. They put their trust in me. I failed them in the greatest way possible by making them come to a night worse than clubbing at that sole club in Katoomba – Yup, there *is* a club there – I was the only one there, with a 40 something year old DJ playing James Brown and other hip artists. I even tweeted a recommendation to come here tonight without doing my research. I suck, and I apologize.

I don’t apologize on the promoters though. Without them, they would not have made such a crap night possible. This was an epic fail.

Coda
After giving this place 2 hours to revive itself, we left to Pontoon Bar.

Recommendation:
Do not go to events which are not properly promoted. Whoever promoted this event, get professional help. PLEASE.

POST CODA: Pontoon Bar
I’m not going to write a separate post for this. Free Entry, 10 times more packed – which made it a billion times better. I highly recommend it if you have nowhere else to go for your RNB needs. H

We even saw some other people come in from Home Nightclub. I was too ashamed to acknowledge them, and they were probably too ashamed as well to recognize me. It’s one of those things you just don’t talk about with a fellow clubber.

There are a high concentration of Indians, so if you don’t like that crowd (I don’t mind but some others don’t), then don’t go here.Here’s a video in comparison.

Until next time.

Pontoon Bar Afterwards - 100x more people than Home Nightclub tonight

Pavillion – Two girls in the front, 4 on the side, and indian guys for the rest of the people on here. DJ was playing west coast rap. My favourite anthems were being played (Dr Dre,  Snoop Dogg, etc). A crazy indian was dance-cracking onto the two girls in the front. He was out there, just shaking his body loose. I wondered where my energy was tonight. I think I get intimidated by other good dancers in a desolate setting.

Shark Bar/Hotel – I walked in and there was nobody on the floor. I was about to leave, but they started to play “Push it” by Salt N Pepa. I love this song so I *had* to get up there. So I jumped up and did a little boogie to the song, to the amusement of everybody staring at the elevated dancefloor in the middle. Everyone who looked at me I looked back, and they would stare away. A group of people at the very back took a photo of me and waved hi. The song ended and I ran off.

Spectrum – My usual friends had gone home, so I met up with the French backpackers for some dance. We checked out Spectrum first. Free entry. House. We went upstairs and it was *dead* as. A handful of people dancing, a handful of people sitting down, a small room, and that was it. I don’t think this was meant to be a place for clubbing. Reminded me like an oxford st version of Manning Bar at USYD. I can’t imagine that place being a place for clubbing. We left quite quickly.

We then stumbled upon Oxford Art Factory and settled in..

After Work Art Fridays @ The Oxford Art Factory (Art After Dark) (29th May 2009)

Note: This review is primarily for the ‘Art After Dark’ Room’, and not the ‘Live Art Space’ where a cover charge applied.

About Oxford Art Factory (assessment time 1.30am)
Address: 38-46 Oxford St, Darlinghurst
The Bar: Jugs of beers and cocktails offered for a reasonable price.
Website: http://www.oxfordartfactory.com
Inside: Walking downstairs, there are two rooms:

Live Art Space: Carpeted area with central wooden dancefloor, with DJ up on stage. At the back is an elevated area where more lounges exist. It was mostly dancefloor space.

Live Art Space - Oxford Art Factory (image oxfordartfactory.com)

Art After Dark: (where we were) A further flight of stairs down takes you to this room. It’s pretty small, holding about 100 people max. A bar as well here. The room has a high ceiling length, and a big TV on one end of the wall. It’s been painted white, which is different. Tonight there were only lounges along the wall, and not sticking out as in the picture.

Art After Dark Bar - Oxford Art Factory - This is where we hung out (image oxfordartfactory.com)

About After Work Art Fridays: (assessment time 1.30am)
Entry Fee/Cover Charge: Free for the Art After Dark Bar, $15 for the DJ in the Live Art Space Room tonight. After 3am it was free for all.
Crowd / Dress Code: Artsy types. People in their 20′s and 30′s. Lots of hats around. Anything goes.
Atmosphere: I was expecting not many people to be here, so guess how surprised I was when I saw the whole room packed! Well, it was 1.30am, and it was a small area, but usually at an average to bad venue, 1.30am is when people start going home. So overall it was a good sign.
Music: Art After Dark Bar – Earlier in the evening there were live bands playing, but we missed that. So when we arrived, the band area was cleared and there was a DJ playing a mix of music across pop, rnb, retro and rock. Basically a bit of everything, and each upcoming song would be of a different genre. Somehow though the crowd was fully right into every song being played.

Live Art Space – DJ Sega (USA) was the main act playing tonight, (Indie). I didn’t get to check him out. Later another DJ was playing around 3am, with some dubstep beats, and another artist came up for some raps where I could practise some krumpin on the very open dance floor. The crowd here were all the hardcore types left, so everybody was into it.

Timeline

Not much dance room
Because of the TINY amount of room and the way in which the room was designed, our group of 8 people basically took up the middle section of the floor area. This meant every person walking in and out to the toilets or the bar had to go through our circle or around us. So basically the entire time our circle would be interrupted and I was, at least, constantly shuffling back and forth, with people hitting into us and spilling some beer onto each of us. Also because of the room, there weren’t many other large circles.. usually a max of 4 people would be per circle. Also I couldn’t pull off any crazy antic dance moves!! It was really cramped, but not shoulder to shoulder, I had about 20cm of room around me.

Boobs! (So your loyalty to this blog has paid off)
The screen in this room was playing some movie from the 80′s (You could tell by the hairstyles – it could have been the 70s). When we got in, there was a zoom in of a woman’s boobs, and someone was fondling them, just to test out to see how bouncy they were. A minute later, a couple are having a cigarette on the sofa, while the woman, still topless,  starts dancing behind them!!  It was the most bizarre film clip, but she was a pretty good dancer with her arm movements. Her boobs stayed bouncy throughout the dance routine.

I look up a few moments later and I see a naked man lying on bed, his bum crack towards the camera. gross. Back to dancing. Look up again after another few minutes, and there’s a young man and her partner – and guess what she’s doing – SHE’S TYING A CLOTH AROUND HIS DICK LIKE A BOWTIE!! What the hell! What kinda stuff is this??? He then stands up , with this cloth dangling from his dick, and he stands behind the bedpost. That was all. So bizarre!

It wasn’t surprising that there were couples making out everywhere in the room.

I wore casual. I am rewarded with solo dancing.
We mostly stayed within our circle through the night. A friend dances around with his bald head and basically gets all the attention! Damn. I had nothing. No wig, no hat, just my shirt, jeans and dodgy sneakers – I was very casual and  quite content just dancing it out on my own. Everyone else was dressed their own style. Crazy hairdos, different fashion styles.. half the crowd wearing hats – it would have been quite difficult to attract attention. Only later in the night near closing time, the music became..  I don’t know.. I wasn’t too into it anymore and wanted to just dance it out in the other room.

Coda
We all get kicked out of the Live Art room around 4am. Music was still going in the Art After Dark Bar but nobody was dancing. We were all buggered and left, quite happy with this  place. I liked this place and would recommend it if you like all sorts of music, don’t mind crowded packed small  bars, and mingling it up with the artsy types. You know who you are.