The Loft

I went back to The Loft, so I have an update.
–They threw my friend out of the bar, for being a little goofy. They thought he was drunk even though he was just being his usual cute, animated self. That was a big downer. I asked the staff member why they asked my friend to leave, and they said it was because the venue has been getting in trouble for having drunk people in it. SIGH.
TIP: If you go, don’t be especially silly or animated, because you might get thrown out.
–I went to an Atomic Bomb event and there were hardly any people! Where are the attendees?* This is the second time it’s been that small.
–Once some people actually showed up, there was just no dancing. All this dance space and only a couple people danced for a bit.
–Both drinks I consumed, I asked the bartender for «the most alcohol for my buck» and each drink was $ 9, and two of them was a enough for me. They didn’t taste so great, but they got me a fair buzz going.
–One of my friends got a vodka-​cranberry with no cranberry in it, and one got one with no vodka in it! These were ordered separately. How ridiculous.
–The smoking area smelled so strongly of dead fish, it was surprising.
*Note: I was bummed at the low attendance because fetish club themes appeal to me, and I want to see them continue. Though, if you’re looking for real BDSM, this is just a place to potentially meet people with a similar interest in it. As for the shows, they’re all just performances, and aren’t really real. The authentic play parties happen in private venues on island, which aren’t hard to find if you are a kinkster and know what kinky social networking site to look at. :)

ghett-​0
but we got in free…

Hmmm… where are all the people?
I came here to watch a friends’ dancing show, and while the venue itself was pretty neat and i could definitely see its potential, the place was just empty and the atmosphere was drab. If there was someone with enough willpower to revive this place, it could make a pretty awesome club with a huge dance floor.
That all being said, I ended up having a blast here that night because I was with about 10 people, and we MADE the party. My old roommate (who is tall, gangly, and very white) decided that he was going to reveal that he’s a decent breakdancer, so that was both surprising and a lot of fun. We mostly watched people dance battle, but I guess when you are drunk, that is quality entertainment.
From what I remember, the drinks were pretty cheap.

I came here on FIRST FRIDAY and there was suppose to be a Reggae Concert. I guess I was too early because it was very empty. To be brutally honest, I am not into partying in a crowded place. I had to leave anyway early.
There was a full bar in the room. The place reminded me of Urban underground. The kind of stuff I see here in Sacramento. It’s actually a pretty cool venue.
I saw some people with their laptops lounging on the sofa chairs logging into WIFI. It’s really not that bad.

I’ve never seen a lounge or club more pathetically drab… Or a restroom without locks.
I can definitely see it as a music venue with the space and the large stage, but when it is empty, it just looks sad.

Sticky floors, creepy crowd, subpar music… I made the mistake of coming on an 18+ night and was surrounded by a swarm of pregamed college freshmen who were quite obnoxious. In addition, parking in the Hotel St. area is just really bad. I’m willing to give it another chance, though, if I were to go to a 21+ event instead.

I’ve been here a couple times for some local hip-​hop shows and stuff and it’s just aight. Sometimes I think good artists deserve better venues to put on their shows but what can you do. The sounds are pretty good. It gets hecka hot and dank when the place is packed. Even when the place is not packed it’s still dankish. The staging looks kinda sketchy and unorganized but you can still do your thang up there. The whole place could use some renovating from the lounges, stage, bartending area, restrooms, etc. The venue is located right in the heart of Chinatown on infamous Hotel St. I think this is one of the more well known areas for shows and stuff next to next door and some others. The quality and atmosphere could use some major improvement.
Unilocal 365 Challenge #100/​365

Smells like vomit and appears at first like you’re entering an abandoned Chinese restaurant.
At least it was empty enough to get a seat… if that’s a good thing.
Slim pickins at the bar though, don’t even bother asking for anything fancy such as a lemon or lime to garnish your shitty drink, they don’t have it.

This place has lost its glory days. Although it’s a really big space, there are a lot of flaws that kind of shut that benefit down.
I’ve been here a couple of times for hip-​hop shows so I’ve seen it when it was completely empty to crazy full.
Neither one is great.
First of all it smells really bad because the meat market is right downstairs. I swear I got a flashback of my mom drying longonisan in our kitchen, vomit status.
There is air-​con and two giant fans but when it’s full, it gets so hot to the point where I can’t breathe. I think they need to invest in a more powerful central AC or SOMETHING. MORE VENTILATION!
It is a pretty sketchy area, away from the usual spot where all the clubs are. There are a lot more bums, drunkards, and crazies in this area of Hotel St. which tends to scare away patrons.
I hope it shapes up soon because it has potential!
Unilocal 365 Challenge #49/​365

toilet water smell coming through the vents, ridiculously priced drinks, and unbearable heat. Good thing the concert was awesome.

I refuse to go here anymore. I’ve been here a handful of times, mainly to support Hawaii club events for various colleges. It’s disgusting. The last time I visited The Loft was for the Blue Scholars show (which, by the way, was probably the most frustrating concert I’ve ever been to. what band takes over 2.5 hrs to get on stage?!) and I was reminded, once again, why I never want to go back. Basically, if you’re 21, there are dozens of nicer, cleaner clubs with better air circulation and less sweat. If you’re not 21, there’s still other nice, cleaner, LESS SWEATY clubs to go to.
My main issue with this place is that they don’t have air conditioning. What kind of club doesn’t have air conditioning? People DANCE in clubs and when people dance, they SWEAT. And deoderant or not, when people sweat, they stink. They have all of two fans in the joint and they serve the purpose of circulating everyone’s sweaty air around.
Oh. And the bathrooms are downright dumps. Avoid. At all costs.

I have been to The Loft countless times for different occasions. The first occasion was an art show when I was in high school. Another was in high school again when my friends and I coordinated an art, music, fashion show there. The third time was for a First Friday, and the last one was when I helped with a Blue Scholars/​Bambu show.
I would like to point out that The Loft’s quality has dwindled down dramatically in the past years to the present day. The first three times I have been to The Loft were fine, not the best, of course. However, this past show that we had at this venue, I was completely appalled! The state of both the downstairs and upstairs has diminished, the smell is unbelievably rancid. I mean, I was the second person to arrive at the venue to set up, and believe me, reviewers, the smell was worse!
The ambience of the place was set from the entrance of the venue. So, if The Loft wants to remain a place active in Chinatown, I believe that the people who run the place need to completely re-​evaluate their presentation, and much much much more.

I don’t usually take the time to write about bars and nightclubs because I feel a lot of the experience depends on your company. With good company any bar can be decent. Unfortunately, the conditions at the Loft were so unbearable that our good company left us. We went last Saturday to see the Blue Scholars perform who were great, but the venue itself stunk – literally. I honestly would not return here unless it was for a performance that I REALLY REALLY wanted to see.
After paying at the door and walking up a grungy staircase we entered a large, dark room. As soon as we entered we were rushed by weird scents of air freshener and incense attempting to cover up foul smells. On top of that it was steaming hot. The air was thick and hot, making me not want to move at all. The bathrooms here are also a Joke. The women’s bathroom is very open and the stalls have doors that barely stay shut. All in all, this is a horrible venue with absolutely zero air ventilation and a horrible ambience. The bar also had no beer selection. For beer I believe they only had Heineken, Coors Light, and Coors Light tall boys. Ummm, no thanks. At least water was only $ 2 here, because you will probably need a lot of it.
I just wouldn’t ever come here unless they had a great performance scheduled. There are much cooler (literally and figuratively) bars located the next block over so I would save yourself the sweat and pass on this Loft.

Came here for the Blue Scholars show, so I can’t speak to how good it is when it’s just functioning as a bar. I guess if you’re 19 and want to go dancing in Chinatown, you don’t have a lot of choices. But as a music venue? It’s pretty awful.
First, the folks at the door work at the pace of molasses and didn’t open the doors at all until about an hour after the posted time. We showed up reasonably late (about 45 minutes) and still ended up waiting outside for close to an hour.
Once the crowd gets inside, there’s no circulation and that place heats up quickly. They put up two or three big fans that do next to nothing — my most epically sweaty nights at Pipeline Café pale in comparison. Even before the crowd came in, the place reeked; my friend suggested someone spilled a jar of olives, I thought a pack of dogs had relieved themselves. So you can imagine what it smelled like once there’s a few hundred people inside dripping from every pore.
And the acoustics are just abysmal. Between the randomly placed columns and the number of people packed in, you’ve got about as much chance of hearing scattered bits of conversation from halfway across the room as you do of hearing the performers you paid to see. I’ve had better sound quality at shows packed into someone’s basement.
Would have been a one star review, but the bartenders make a pretty decent and quite affordable gin and tonic. So kudos to them.

I went to the Blue Scholars/​Bambu show here last night and it was my first time at this place, and it’s definitely a good spot for a show… at least the size sort of. Well it smelled like dried squid, and it was definitely super packed. The drink specials were so-​so ($ 7/​24oz coors and like $ 5 heinekeins) but the crown and coke was definitely super strong so I was having a good time :) The place needed better ventilation for sure. there were some fans going but I didnt even feel if they were running… I’m not even sure if you could hear the bands if the fans were running?
Well, either way… better ventilation please. Then the place won’t stank.
But dude, the show was pretty awesome ;)

The Loft reminds me of an episode of «The Simpsons» where Bart crosses over to the wrong side of the tracks. One second he’s in the right part of town, he crosses the tracks and everything goes to hell. Hobos, grifters, crazy cat lady, they’re all there in the ghetto. But that’s Hotel Street for you… let’s just call it local flavor
With that being said, if you are a girl and for some reason you decide to go to the Loft after dark, I highly recommend taking a bodyguard of some sort. The neighborhood is very sketchy. So what would bring me, a girl who adamantly refuses to go camping, out to the Loft? Meko. Yes, I was lured by Meko and the chance to see her in a small venue. Was it worth it? Hell yeah. She’s completely amazing live, despite the bad sound and odd layout of the space. She played guitar, sang, all while swigging a beer. Now that’s talent.
Not sure if I’d ever return to the Loft because I’m now in my thirties and the scene there is made for tweens and hipsters kids. But you never know who they’ll bring into town one of these days that may call for a trip to the wrong side of the tracks.

This place sucks, not my kind of place. If you like to do nothing but listen to garage bands and watch a weird artist show in action, then this is the place. Oh yeah if you also like hanging out with 95% guys then you got it bro.
It might be better on a first Friday, I heard.
The worst part about it was that they wanted $ 10 cover. Luckily we go in for $ 1. Shoot for 10 bucks, I’d rather super size my meal then waste it there.

Great band when we went… awesome crowd too. It seemed like really interesting people frequent here. The clientele are, generally, not 100% hotties, but they love to dance and just have fun.
The band we saw had this UH student (Japanese-​American) rapping… it was a REALLY good band. One of the best I’ve seen, actually. Very, very cool. The drinks were pricey ($ 6 for a Corona, $ 7 if you include tip) which is ridiculous considering the location. It’s such a large place, I guess they can afford to annoy some of us more cost-​sensitive consumers (it’s not that I can’t afford the drink, it’s that I can’t justify a drink at that price in a bar of this quality).
Ultimately, lots of space, run down/​shotty design, but great music at semi-​unreasonable prices… the band bumps this one to a 3.5…

It was my first night ever in a Chinatown, and after a great meal at Little Village Noodle House, I was fat, sassy and ready to get down. But I was sorely disappointed in The Loft. I was expecting Jeannie, Mike and Christine’s reviews to be spot on, but they definitely weren’t.
Honolulus Hottest «Underground» Spot? Uhhhh, really? Maybe it was having to walk through a lobby area (baked goods and yummies nowhere to be seen) with two transvestite looking women taking our money, and trudging up some g-​h-​e-​t-​t-​o stairs that made it different and secretly underground??? Hmm. ⁰⁄₅ stars on the ambience walking in and up. No to mention, trudging through dirty Chinatown only to be let down is kinda crummy.
Cool, hipster crowd? There WERE some decent looking and dressed people here but NO one was being cool or dancing… maybe it was because the DJ sucked and played nothing anyone could dance to. Even guys that looked all twitchy and ready to jump out of their skin weren’t dancing… no fun! We left after having one drink.
And speaking of drinks, the male bartender literally did not know what to do with himself when I ordered a vodka/​redbull and vodka/​soda with an orange slice. He asked me not once, not twice but THREE times what the 2^nd part of the order was. Really?! Decently strong drink though! .5÷5 star because I can make my own vodka/​soda at home, it’s not that tough!
The people I was with ended up wanting to go back there after Bar 35 because some dude knew the band that was going on, so we went back and the band was pretty cool, I had been sucking down vodka/​sodas to keep warm (it was super windy last night), and was really feeling the reggae/​hip hop/​rock thing they had going on, plus there were people finally dancing so I was like, whatever, I’m on vacay, I’m going to wave my hands in the ay-​errr ay-​errrr like I just don’t care! ¹⁄₅ stars.
Will I go back? Nope. Sorry. Boise «dance clubs» are FAR ABOVE this one! Maybe I won’t get my hopes up so high tonight…

ok this spot is super duper brand spanking new and underground, but i’ve noticed about 98% of the google searches leading to my website are looking for this spot.
The LOFT! it’s HOT!
it’s on hotel st one block ewa of that maunakea police station. there will be a bouncer just sort of sitting there outside a bakery. THAT’S THE SPOT! show him your id and get upstairs, man. eat your heart out Manhattan/​los angeles/​insert trendy city name here.
once you’re upstairs you’ll want to run around with your arms spread. it’s soooo roomy. the stage is epic too. they just put a bunch of new art work around and you really feel like you’re in this amazing loft. the entire second floor of this building i think. there’s like 5 or 6 couchie areas for you and your crew if you get there early. then you will feel like you’re in the living room of your loft. heh.
every friday it’s on– that super fun dancedancepartywoo party called The Enterprise has become a weekly there and that means balloons, indie kids, really good live music, and late night dj’s playing stuff you can’t not dance to.
no liquor license til 2008 i hear, so at the time of this review, it’s best to bring your own whatever but keep it cool, man. no need to be carried out of there. a bottle of alize in champagne glasses or a 12 pack of stella will do the trick.
sunday go off here as well, so i hear. i know it’s also a 2am joint but they might get that 4am thing going.
let’s hear it for über underground hot ass spots honolulu! woooooo…