Chp 276. Velvet Lounge, Mumbai - Review.

Every now and then, as an active blogger, we like to give our feedback or review on a movie, restaurant, book, pub etc if our experience was really amazing, or dissatisfactory.

Sadly for me, last saturday’s party at Velvet Lounge, Powai, Mumbai, was one of utter disappointment.



Errr… ok the above is a completely different Velvet Lounge [source: mu design] I spent 3 hours online looking for their logo and couldn’t find it.

There were a lot of things I liked about the place, but the negatives clearly outweighed them. Let me start with the positive aspects first.

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Being a 5 star hotel (Renaissance), the ambience and surroundings were truly elegant and breathtaking. But being a 5 star hotel, that cannot be labeled as their USP - It’s a part of the whole “5 star status” package (except for, maybe, the beautiful Powai lake view).



The security was tight, and although it created some inconveniences for people getting in, it was quite reassuring for us Mumbaikars, if you know what I mean. And the sniffer dog was extremelyyy adorable. It licked me lovingly and I really really really wanted to dognap kidnap the cute little mongrel.

The service was great too. Before going to the discotheque, I searched online and people wrote about the bad service and how the bartenders didn’t live up to their expectations. As for me, I think the bartenders did pretty well. I had only beer but my friends tried out all sorts of concoctions and they were all made to perfection. They were very polite and courteous, and most important of all, remembered my drink when I went for a second or third amidst the blaring music.

Entry cost – 1200 for couples and 1500 for stags, which again was not bad since they were entirely cover-charge. (But definitely not worth it if you’re a teetotaler).

Drinks cost – Again for a discotheque of this class, the drinks were not ridiculously overpriced, unlike a few other places I know. 250 bucks for a pint of beer, and most of the “usual” hard liquor started from 350 for a small (30ml). Advice: If you aren’t the Sultan of Brunei, stick to beer. And do what the rest of us commoners do – Drink before reaching the venue.

The glow – I loved the glow all across the very lengthy bar. Very night-clubbish indeed.


[image source]

The smoking section – I went out to smoke quite a number of times, and not even once did I catch a whiff of marijuana in the air. Don’t you just hate it when people start smoking up right next to you at a pub or disc and run a risk of police raiding the place and throwing you in the police van for being present at the “scene of crime”? I have nothing against people who smoke up. I just hate spending the nights in jail.

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I think those are the positive points about the place.

Now onto the bad.

First of all, the loo was freaking dirty. Made me sick every time I went to pee (and pee many times I did as I was having only beer). There were no attendants in the restroom, something very hard to believe for a 5 star hotel stature. And hey, even if there weren’t anybody there, how about sending somebody every 30 minutes or so to clean the mess some idiots made? Every time I went to pee, there was a line of guys complaining about the dirt.

Next – the dance floor. Hah, dance floor my ass. There were 10 of us in our group that night, and we all went together to the main dance floor excitedly after a couple of drinks at “the other side” of the lengthy discotheque. How disappointed we all were! I think I counted just three disco bulbs meekly rotating around the place. One section was completely dark, as the lights weren’t working. Considering the great ambience outside the discotheque, that was a real bummer. An anti-climax. It’s like you paid for a Benz and they delivered a Nano.

What is a discotheque without proper lighting effects? Trust me, our college hostel parties were way better than the place! My friends complained that the dance floor was uneven too. I didn’t notice that but the smoke effect was really sad. Reminded me of those failed chemistry lab experiments with dry ice back in school.

Music – I thought the dance floor was the lamest thing I had ever seen, until I heard the music. No offence to the DJ, but the quality of Deejaying that night was in extreme poor taste. I used to hang out a lot with my DJ friends back in Hyderabad and B’lore, and believe me, they spun way better.

First of all – no we do not want to hear your voice every 1 minute. Sure you may want to make an announcement or there are indeed some important announcements to make. But every time you speak, the freaking music stops. And that screws up the entire rhythm for us. When you’re in the middle of a motion that you truly enjoy, you wanna keep going right? And if something disturbs you, it’s very hard to get back to that frame of mind and find your rhythm again… ok some of you naughty minds are thinking about “it”. Point made.

Sure, you may need to pump up the crowd with clichéd lines like “Party people, let’s make some noiiiise” or “this is for all the ladies in da houseeee” etc. But that should happen at the beginning of the track or in between tracks, not in the middle of it. And that too at such frequent intervals! Being disturbed frequently – Epic FAIL definitely.

Secondly, go easy on the remixes please… We have more than enough of remixes of popular club numbers. And it’s no rocket science remixing a song, what with the number of softwares “freely” available today. Of course the quality that people like us make will not be as good as a DJ’s remix. Hence I can understand if the DJ slips in a remix or two here and there among the other popular original tracks. But playing the remix of every song was not cool. And I could have sworn some were remixes of remixes.

Third point regarding the music – You’re not even scratching. At least get your sequences right. One time hiphop, suddenly followed by trance, and then bollywood, followed by club, then back to hiphop. Aaargh. Are we playing musical chair at a kid’s birthday party? I paid good money to unwind on the dance floor after such a tiring week in office. I love dancing regardless of the kind of music playing. But no DJ ever changes the genre abruptly. You gotta move gradually from one type to the other. There has to be a flow so that we don’t lose our rhythm.

Fourthly, I’d like to end my night at a discotheque with trance. Because, 1. You’re pretty tired towards the end and 2. You’re pretty drunk. And so you go on a “trance trip”. Don’t you just love trance trips? Sadly that night, it ended with bollywood music. We all left fuming and disappointed before the “last song”. If you are a bollywood remix lover, you can ignore this last point. Or maybe not, because my friend V loves bollywood and she said there are two types of bollywood remixes – good and bad. What was played that night were all bad bollywood apparently. I don’t know anything about bollywood remixes so no comments on that.

Valet parking – We waited a long time before our car finally came. Maybe it seemed longer because we were disappointed. But whatever be the case, the fact that I wrote half this review the moment I reached home clearly reflected the way I felt about the place. After all, how many of you actually switch on your PC and start blogging after returning from a disc at four in the morning?