Club Reports: Noir Lounge, Palm Tree Club, Broken Strings Brewery

Most of us know this spot as Suite B Lounge or Peek Downtown. It was known then as Orlando’s home of Breaks. But after owner Sammy retired, it became Sports Club at Celine, then Ann Teague’s Lamp Supply and then Arena Art Bar. And most recently, it is now Noir Lounge.

We visited when they first opened but subsequently during every pass-by, they’ve been closed. And these pass-bys have been on weekend nights when you think they would be open for business.

Well lo and behold, this weekend they were open! Hip Hop was blaring and the bar was staffed with two employees. What was missing were customers. The immediate area is awash in Hip Hop clubs so we’re unsure what niche they’re trying to fill in this already difficult downtown environment. It’s been beautifully renovated from what you may remember. Maybe someone should offer to do some smaller Breaks shows here. Seems like they could use the business.

Late yesterday steady rain moved into the Orlando area so we wondered how the event scheduled for Palm Tree Club would happen. Located upstairs in the Pointe Orlando complex, the venue is covered above the DJ booth and the bar but is otherwise open to the sky in most areas. We arrived to find all the doors closed.

We quickly found out that the DJ party had been moved downstairs to the Palm Tree Club restaurant.

We’ve been to the upstairs club numerous times since they opened about two years but had never visited the restaurant. And there was a DJ already playing when we arrived before 10PM.

DJ Maha Fourar (USA) was on duty playing Downtempo House and Deep House.

Turns out the restaurant has DJ’s playing here during dining hours. Who knew?

At 10PM they pushed away many of the tables and chairs to create a small dance floor for what was originally scheduled for upstairs.

And what was scheduled for upstairs began.

DJ Nuans (USA) was up first.

House music all night long.

In the makeshift tech booth, DJ Alfred Michael (USA) was controlling the lights and sound.

There are six arches on the wall behind the DJ booth and an ever-changing graphics package gets displayed back there. Pretty impressive.

Palm Tree Club (both upstairs and downstairs) does not have a shiny disco ball but they do have a shiny disco palm tree.

Palm Tree Club is owned by DJ Kygo (N) and there is a Kygo-themed memorabilia nook along one of the walls. There are other PTC locations in Las Vegas, North Bay Village (Miami) and Kansas City.

Beautiful bar setting along the entry wall. Nonetheless, the restaurant is not the ideal location for shows and we prefer the actual club upstairs.

With the rain continuing, we headed to just outside downtown along Church Street and Broken Strings Brewery. While you will hear different genres of music here on different nights, BSB has become Orlando’s de facto new home of Breaks.

OMG, we walked into this!

We arrived just in time to catch the last few minutes of a mostly Breaks set from DJ Amber Jane (USA).

Always adorable…..and she plays good music too.

The lasers were flying.

She had the club bouncing.

Those looks you get from great music, lol.

There were two areas of music last night; the main stage indoors known as the Digital Stage and this tent-covered stage on the patio known as the Vinyl Stage.

DJ Flowburn (USA) was out here.

And indeed he was playing off vinyl.

At 11PM inside, the headliner took over.

The legendary DJ Andy Hughes (USA).

And even though this was the Digital Stage, his mostly Old Skool set was all off vinyl. Many of the big dance hits around the turn of the century were Breaks.

For our younger readers, please be aware that those round black things are called records and although we’re not sure how, somehow music actually comes out of them!