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Sunday, January 21, 2007

-- Opened --

#-St James Power Station, not churning enough power

I forgot to mention that I visited St James Power Station yesterday night. Went to Bellini Room with the Swingers, to dance and listen to the 8-piece band, which actually was 7-piece last nite. It was crowded beyond anything vaguely comfortable, but the dance floor (or the "small space to dance" rather) was empty, so we could dance. Took Debra there too, but too bad she couldn't stay beyond the 1st set, because the 1st set was lousy and the real party actually only started during the 2nd set. The band warmed-up and played much better then, and the atmosphere started getting more happening. And then when Sing and ChanMeng came, they just burnt the floor! With aerials and cool moves, in such a confined space. It was awesome, all the dancers in the front and the whole crowd watching us. Well at least they were watching me when I was dancing, which kinda put me off slightly, realizing how they were all looking at me. Moreover, I had a tad too much to drink, causing my head to really spin and I got dizzy when I was dancing. Fortunately, I could still control my body and didn't crash into anything. Even when the band stopped playing and the CD started, Sing and ChanMeng started doing Charleston Stroll and Shim Sham! It was cool, but too bad after the 2nd set the CD they spun was hiphop and RnB stuff, which was really quite annoying.

During the night, I also when to the Gallery Bar too take a look at the other clubs. The layout is quite cool. Bellini's is on the 2nd floor, connected to the Gallery Bar. From the Gallery Bar, I could get a bird's eye view of Dragonfly, Movido and even Powerhouse. The windows were floor to ceiling, double-glazed so that the music won't get in. In this way Gallery Bar could spin chill-out music without having any noise from Dragonfly's canto-pop and Movido's up-tempo tunes, nor Powerhouse's thumping numbers.

Dragonfly looked quite cheesy, although I have to say that the scale of the performances was impressive. They had several bands and dancers come up on stage to hold performances, complete with gothic costumes and poser guitarists. And it really looked cool to have all the dancers prancing around on stage while singing, ala Pussycat Dolls, but the thing was that the crowd was really stone. Be it due to lousy music or just a stoned crowd generally I do not know, but from the Gallery, it looked as if the audience weren't having much fun at all, even though I couldn't hear the music.

Movido, which I was told was a Salsa bar, didn't look at all like one. I don't know what music they played last night, but seeing noone dance Salsa, but rather jumping and moshing around looking like, I quote Dale, "tubiflex worms", I concluded that they must've played some heavy music. It was hilarious how he described them; tubiflex worms. It was the funniest thing I heard all evening. So that was a no show and I decided not to even try to look for Salseros or Salsaras there.

Powerhouse was the most sad out of all the bars. It had the most seizure-inducing lights I have ever encountered. The lights were all over the place, moving at speeds barely even legal, shooting out in directions akin to a blind man shooting a GPMG. Moreover, there was NOONE dancing. Well there were 5 people vaguely attempting to dance, which just came across as lame.

So, after seeing all the rooms, I concluded that only Bellini Room is worth the $20 cover. Even then, the vibe of the place is nothing compared to Union Square, but once again, Swing people are so much more fun than Salsa people, which makes their company more enjoyable there in Bellini's as compared to the Salsa people in Union.

But of course, I had wonderful company, which made the night fabulous for me as well, not to mention dinner. As always, it was a pleasure to bring you out.

-- Closed --

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