Tao Nightclub Sydney - Grand opening night : 2:30am / Bar Area

Just left a house party and I still want my dancing fix. Melly is at the Grand Opening of a new nightclub where the old Mandarin Club once stood. So here we go!

Satisfaction Saturdays @ Tao Nightclub

Assessment Time: 2:30am – 4:00am
Website: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=288588253950
Address: 396 Pitt St, CNR Goulburn St (Old Mandarin Club)
Dress Code / Door Policy: Advertised as “dress to impress”, but seemingly more relaxed about it at the door. Every guy inside though had a collared shirt, and the girls were all in dresses.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Free for ladies before 11, $10 on birthday guestlist before midnight. $20 for all others.
Guestlist:  See facebook page for details
Inside: Beneath the now Mr B’s Hotel, Tao Bar/Nightclub is a small area split into even smaller areas – A carpeted area where most dancing occurs. It holds 50-80 people. There are two lounge areas on either side of the dancefloor. A DJ is along the wall. The wooden floor area is the general ‘lets stand around and chat each other up’ area with bar and some tables and stools. This particular area has a green and red spotted light thing dotting the area. It’s trippy.
Cloak Room: $5 per item.
Bar: $19 for 2 carlton draughts and a pure blonde. $16 jugs of beer before midnight
DJs: Xcentrik, R*One, Normz, Edo, Day-Day
Music: RnB most of the night, with the occasional commercial house song thrown in. If you have never been to an RnB asian club.. usually the RNB songs each get about 30 to 60 seconds of airplay before being mixed to another song, so its an anthology of choruses.. its sad if you want to hear the whole song, but with this format, it keeps the crowd going.. and going.
Crowd: Asian, the clean classy types. Not many teeny boppers. If there were any, they were cleverly disguised.
Entertainment: No extra entertainment besdies the MC. There was air conditioning though
Atmosphere: Small atmosphere, but a classy crowd with a “clean” venue keeps it viable to stay inside. By clean, I mean they have air conditioning in the standing area. However on the dancefloor there isn’t much air con and it may get a little stuffy.. but only a little as its not too packed when we got inside.

Timeline

My clothes are so awesome, even guys want them
I bump into a friend, who is absolutely off his chops. First item on the agenda is the discussion of clothes. He wishes to swap shirts with me! No way, not if I had a buttoned shirt on. It would take too long! So of course, the easier solution was to switch to another item of clothing. He demands to swap his pants with mine! He proceeds by undoing his belt.. and undoing his fly… -____- oh no no no no no no no onononnonononononnoononononoo, this is not what I came to a club for! Had to stop him, but I’m sure if I were influenced enough I wouldve probably gone ahead with a swap.

I found the token white girl in the club.. well she found me
Imagine walking into a club full of asians. You are a blonde nordic girl. What do you do. Do what you do in every other club – let the guys chat you up and score some drinks. But then, suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you see ME. you shiver in fear of my awesomeness. You succumb and can only do one thing and that is dance with me.

So the girl has stepped up to me and robs me of my hat without warning and dances around with it. This only meant one thing. Dance mode ON! We dance near the bar area, and we are basically surrounded by entire vicinity of men checking her out and probably thinking ‘Who is this really cool dude?’ Well my fellow men, I’m James Tran, and I am right now uncomfortable having you guys stare at me dance.

A collision of maximus proportions
Swedish girl is walking backwards, ass bent out, towards me, ready for grinding. Suddenly Melly sees me dancing and jumps in to say hello again to me. The guys watching me have a look that they are amazed I know the two most beautiful girls in the club. Melly is now standing between myself and the ass of the swede girl. It’s over before I could warn her. They collide, and the Swede’s heel has stomped on Melly’s toes. Melly is in some sort of pain but, as we all know, being stomped on by a heel only hurts for a few seconds. I tell Melly sorry and continue to grind with the Swede. Some friend I am. Hahahha.

Anyway, we keep dancing, and it comes to the point where myself and Swedie are eye to eye, ready for the kiss. Slowly we get closer, and closer. Then, finally, HER GIRLFRIEND CAME ALONG AND TAKES HER AWAY. MY GOD!! Nooooooooooo! THIS IS SO NOT HAPPENING !!! FML!! ngahhhhh But, alas, reality hit – she was gone. The love of my night taken away. To rub salt into my emotional wound, the count of women in the club has dropped by 20% when they left. The men who were staring at us, are now staring at me. I wonder what they are thinking now. I feel like a neutered dog. Please, my dear humane reader, put me to sleep now.

Melly from Melbourne @ Tao Nightclub Sydney

My top hat
I bought a top hat yesterday, and tonight it worked wonders. Women love it. I recommend it. Though, it does get stolen often… even photographed a thief in action!

Tao Nightclub Sydney - Just before a random steals my hat. Look at her hands! Why are people so unkind?

Arrivederci

Besides the Swede setback, we enjoyed dancing for the rest of the night. At departure time 4am, the place had about 20 guys and 2 girls left.

Recommendation
For a grand opening it was pretty good. Clean place, and reasonable entry price. Upstairs was also a kitchen if you were hungry. It’s a good all round venue for the asian rnb connoiseur. Music was good and crowd to match. Not too packed, but I was here at 2.30am, will have to see what it is like earlier in the night next time.

Satisfaction Saturdays @ Tao Nightclub (Mr B’s Hotel) – 8/10

3am in Havana Asian RnB night.

Katsuyaku Girls @ Havana Club de Luxe

Assessment Time: 2:30am – 4:00am
Website: http://www.havanaclub.com.au
Address: 169 Oxford St, Darlinghurst, Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Casual ok. I was wearing a top hat, collared shirt, jeans and dress shoes, which had no complaints upon entry. Entry Fee / Cover Charge: $25 full price after midnight. They’ve upped it and it hurts my wallet.
Guestlist: Check facebook page.
Inside: One main danceflor for about 200 or so people. Both sides are lounge and booth areas. DJ at the front, and a bar on each other side – Enough to keep one happy
Cloak Room: $4 Bar: Didn’t drink tonight Music: At point of arrival (2.30am) it was some rnb, hip hop and house all mixed up.
Crowd: Asian with a few euros and islanders as well. It’s a little mixed.
Entertainment: Two dancing poles. Earlier in the night the Katsujuku girls were dancing the poles to the amazement of the crowd. There is also an MC tonight to keep the night going.
Atmosphere: Enough people and barely enough women to keep wanting to dance. I was surprised at the number of people left at this time.

Video
(I caught it during the house segment. Look at the crowd go!)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline
I’m not alone
Marty invited me here, but he’s nowhere. He’s already left and dogged me. Bastard! But luckily for me, a girl is madly yelling out my name and waving at me as soon as I walk in. It’s a friend who I met in Melbourne for her birthday just two months ago. Insane. STRAIGHT INTO DANCE MODE. We hop up on the pole to dance and spin around the floor until she has to go.

with Melly @ Havana Club de Luxe Sydney

MC Loves me
The MC tonight mingles with the crowd and checks my footwork, and he likes it. But christ, when I realised he was looking at me, I got the nerves and I couldn’t keep dancing. I just sort of fucked up and felt like an idiot. I hate impromptu dancing for other people. They expect some awesome routine that I have in store. Well, I don’t really have one.

Later in the night MC calls me out for standing against the wall resting. He tells me to start dancing again. LOL oh my god, talk about demanding!

Arrivederci
Club seriously started to die around 4:000, with a fight breaking out and girls leaving. I finally left. The Chicken-Katsu girls left at the same time as me. I had to wait until security cleared the entire area for them to leave properly. Pffftttttttt.

Recommendation
Note: Next week new promoters are coming in, so dont judge this review or previous Havana reviews on future nights. That said, for tonight, from what I experienced, Havana tonight gets a 6.5/10.

I’m sure it was more awesome earlier in the night.

Good Vibrations Sydney 2010

I won two tickets to Good vibrations 2010 in a 25 words or less competition. ( I wrote a very clever line which I shall keep secret ). Matty made me enter the competition, so I gave the second ticket to him as reward. It was pretty hot midday so we bought some sombreros and awesome hologram sunnies at Market City and suddenly we were ready – so here we go!

Good Vibrations Festival @ Centennial Park

Assessment Time: 16:00 – 22:00 (closing time)
Website: http://www.gvf.com.au
Address: Centennial Park Sydney
Dress Code / Door Policy: Anything goes, no dress code.
Entry Fee / Cover Charge: Prepaid tickets were $145 each. I won tickets to the show today.
Inside: There were 5 official big areas for the acts to appear. There were also 2 smaller sponsored areas for dancing as well.
Cloak Room: $5 per item
Bar: $8 light beers, $10 smirnoffs. Thanks to the cool weather, there weren’t so many people lining up for a bar, and we had some booze in our hands within 3 minutes of lining up.
Bathroom Line: Appalling at about 20 minutes
Acts: Salt-N-Pepa, Armand Van Helden, DJ Crazee, Aston Shuffle were the main acts we visited today. Other acts included Busta Rhymes, Naughty by Nature. The Killers and Friendly Fires (I was dying to see Friendly Fires) had pulled out of the Sydney show.
Music: A mix of Indie Rock, Hip Hop, and House
Atmosphere: Despite the pullouts, the atmosphere was buzzing throughout the whole day. People are everywhere and its quite good. Later in the early evening it starts to rain but not too hard, but it rains enough for people to get out their ponchos. Instead of being a downer, people embrace the rain and keep dancing and singing along. The rain is also a huge welcome as earlier it was pretty stinking hot earlier in the afternoon.

Videos:

Salt-N-Pepa : Let’s talka bout Sex + Man Dancing on Tent

Click here to view the embedded video.

Everyone is cheering for this guy more than Salt N Pepa – hilarious – The poor guy was most likely kicked out, but for immortal fame in the eyes of thousands? Sure, why not.

Salt-N-Pepa : Push It

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was disappointed with the Salt N Pepa set – didnt know they were doing a DJ set. They were playing house music for crying out loud!

DJ Crazee: Playing Daft Punk’s “Alive”

Click here to view the embedded video.

DJ Crazee’s set was aweseome.. very well mixed and kept everyone going. Not a dull beat. Was very happy with this set

Armand Van Helden Good Vibrations: Bonkers

Click here to view the embedded video.

Armand Van Helden (Duck sauce): aNYway

Click here to view the embedded video.

I enjoyed Armand’s set. The rain gave a bit more of a wet atmosphere, but really prevented me from doing some epic dancing – I was just standing around singing along to the songs like everybody else. It would have definitely been more epic if his set was originally set in the Laundry tent where the surface was dancable.

The Aston Shuffle: Play the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “heads will roll”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Timeline: So we got in without problems, cloak room no dramas – plenty of people on hand to help out, but when we went to Good Vibrations Stage.. we couldn’t even get close. There were just so many people!

Timeline

Big Sombrero Syndrome
We dig deep into the Good Vibrations crowd, but in every spot we stood, the people behind us would tell us to take off our Sombreros. HELL NO! We moved on and kept running into people who wanted us to “TAKE IT OFF!”. No. NO. nuuuuuuuuuuu!!! We finally found a little spot where there was a 1 metre gap behind us, an we happily stood there and watched the festivities.

Long toilet lines
These are a feature of every event for the people who purchased General tickets. Even so, there is only one VIP set of toilets – if you were at the back at the Star Bar area or the Roots tent, you would have to trek across to the other side of centennial park in order to get into the VIP tent and then there would probably be another line inside as well. Anyway we met a friend lining up for the toilets which was pretty funky dory!

We met them in the toilet line

Toilet competitions
Not sure if it was the sunnies, the sombreros or just our presence as men but we somehow are talking to all these girls in line! We made a challenge to see who would be quicker in the bathroom. I put down the gauntlet and declared I could be in an out in 1 minute. I barely scraped by – in and out of the toilet in 55 seconds. Oh yeahhh… Im the man! I can only thank god for giving me good muscular control over my bladder. I won the competition, but no prize to be had. Thats a relief.

Man with a suspicious backpack
There’s a man who has a backpack with a huge tube coming out of it and he’s sucking on it. How on earth did he sneak that in??!!

His girlfriend offers us a sip.. sure. It’s just water!! BOOO.

It's only water from the backpack

2 girls tonging each other like theres no tomorrow
We go inside the green room – its very relaxed here, but of course theres a DJ and we dance. The music is surprisingly easy to dance to and I enjoy it. I can’t remember exactly what type of house it was. There’s also a very high ratio of women in here, probably because this room was sponsored by SportsGirl. In a matter of moments I am dancing with a girl, woo! But then a friend of hers steps up behind her and grinds her bum. Ok fair enough, we keep on dancing, a sandwich of sorts. But this second girl.. she was totally grinding her friend really really rough, like dry humping. Suddenly a girl takes my sombrero and they start making out hardcore under my awesome hat!! Matty is laughing his ass off. I imagine myself under my hat, and I feel sad.

Last act (and women) of the night
So for the last act we went to The Aston Shuffle. I had already seen Basement Jaxx at Future Music Last year, so it was some proper dance time! I’m not familiar at all with the Aston Songs, but everyone under the tent here were dancing and cheering. I especially went all out with my socks being wet, and we get lots of awesome attention. We dance and a hot asian girl joins in our circle. I once again did something stupid and TALKED TO HER. She ran off.

But hey, another girl came along, gave me a random pash. I tried to talk to her but she, too, ran off. I REALLY HAVE AN UGLY VOICE!

Look! It's a girl in a punctured ball used as a poncho, lol.

Recommendation
It rained today and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Everybody else was going through the same experience and it became a kind of a comraderie. It just wasn’t fun walking out of the venue. Speaking of walking out, it was THE LONGEST walk out to the bus stop, and having wet socks really sucks. At least I wasn’t muddy like some of the others that were spotted.

Apparently the Naughty By Nature set was epic. I could see their entire tent was packed with no moving room. Anyhow, without the Killers, it was still an awesome day for us. Having free tickets really helped.

Good Vibrations Sydney – 8/10