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August 01, 2005
Home to become live music venue
Now this is big. Sad news for me but no doubt a good news for others. Ahhh Home ... a club that is dear for me. Although I'm getting old for Subbies (friday night at Home) and haven't been there for ages ... and I do mean ages like ... not even once this year, I'm still sadened by its demise. I've been to Home countless time during its heyday and many more after it's getting less and less popular. I had so much fun back then. I remembered the first few months when they first opened way back in 1999 the queue would have spilled all the way to the IMAX theatre and beyond.
But first some rumour about Home's demise as Australia's one and only "superclub". From the grapevine I heard that like they're not going to phase out dance music altogether, but more to cater both type of music. Some people said it'll be more like Metro and some said that live music will be from 7 - 11 and then the night club open. Regardless what's they're going to do it's still a big change from a "night club".
Home's fall from grace is a long time coming and everyone who's in the clubbing scene have expected it for a while. The clubbing scene in Sydney is not big enough to support a club as big as Home. First a big chunk of the main floor was cut out to become Home Bar, a semi pretentious half restaurant/half bar, I think this happened a few years ago. Then they moved the DJ to the north corner to make even the dance floor smaller.
The rumour had it when they first moved Sublime from the old venue at Pitt St. to Home the new owner bought the right of name for $5 million, this is totally unfounded rumour and I seriously doubt anyone would shell that much money for Sublime. Anyway after the first year of success, I noticed the gradual decrease in crowd. It was still a premiere club then, if one had a friend visiting from out of town and wanted to go clubbing Home would be the "safe" option. As the years gone the crowd at Home become younger (think of 17 - 18 years old) and less people are going there and they were hit with the first bankruptcy. The owner declared bankruptcy and it was bought by other company. I think this was the time they decided to make the club smaller by creating Home Bar.
Home had a bit of resurrection around 2001 - 2002, they changed the saturday night theme and Cargo upstairs had a loyal following (me!), and here Kate Monroe stamped her right to be the "First Lady of the House" in Sydney, but by this time it has been associated with "newbie" club :) That means people who don't go clubbing go to Home, but really who cares about those clubbing snob anyway :) I kept going to Home and had a lot of fun there up in Cargo room. Of course I went to hell lot of other places in Sydney but strangely I also kept coming back to Home. Some people were totally anti-Home, they think it was a bad example of clubbing in Sydney, it's true in a way but that's because we don't have any other "superclub" and such Home doesn't represent the real clubbing scene in Sydney.
Attendance kept dwindling and by late 2003 the only night Home can pull a big crowd are the free InTheMix parties (proof that most Sydneysiders are cheap!), big parties that still staged at Home (ie: Transmission) or when a big DJ had a gig. At this time I wondered how on earth Home was going to survive, obviously it couldn't.
Last Friday was Sublime's 9th birthday, Sublime so synonymous with Home and its fate is forever linked together Sublime is the Friday night at Home, the promoter of a night in a club and the club owner usually are different people, this is mostly true in any club in Sydney except the small ones. Bev, Sublime's promoter for 5 years finally call it quit and people have been saying that it won't be the same without her, well now it seems that there are more about her quitting here. I wonder what will happen to Sublime? Will it continue on? Will it move to another venue? Or become once a fortnight/month event?
Also the article mentioned about the "diminishing clubbing scene in Sydney". Hmm ... interesting, having been out from the scene for a while I couldn't really say this. However a quick check on what's on Sydney this Friday night still show a long list of "regular events". Although having said that, there's a lot of dubious places on the list like "Civic Hotel", "City Hotel", "Hotel Metropolis", 3 years ago none of those places would ever appear on InTheMix what's on list :)
Big events are still strong as always, Field Day for example are always sold out months in advance. Sound on Sunday occasional events are also big. Hordern pav have some big events happening once every couple of months. And of course there's always Transmission or Park Life. Maybe we're experiencing a bit dip in the dance music scene but I doubt that it will diminish, there will always be 17 - 19 years old gurners in a need for a venue :)
Well this has been a long post, a bit of a tribute to Home and Sublime. If indeed it will be closed down as a night club, I think I need to pay a homage one last time to Home. Time to round up the old gang :)
Posted by vhadiant at August 1, 2005 12:10 AM
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