{"id":23359,"date":"2023-08-19T11:40:54","date_gmt":"2023-08-19T15:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/?p=23359"},"modified":"2023-08-19T11:40:54","modified_gmt":"2023-08-19T15:40:54","slug":"club-reports-opa-hampton-social-blue-martini-ice-bar-the-vanguard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/?p=23359","title":{"rendered":"Club Reports: Opa, Hampton Social, Blue Martini, Ice Bar, The Vanguard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Pointe<\/em> is located along International Drive and Universal Boulevard and was previously known as Pointe Orlando<\/em>. It’s where we began our Friday night.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Pointe <\/em>is a tale of two cities; upstairs and downstairs. The upstairs remains a sad place with virtually everything shuttered. Adobe Gila’s<\/em>…..closed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Lafayette’s Music Room<\/em>…..closed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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B.B. King’s Blues Club<\/em>…..closed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hooters<\/em>…..closed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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These two places are open upstairs. On the left is Earth Illuminated<\/em>, a tourist attraction and on the right, Orlando Improv<\/em>. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Back in the day, these two venues were known as Metropolis <\/em>and Matrix<\/em>. Metropolis <\/em>was a velvety Top 40 club back when most of the Top 40 songs were Hip Hop. Matrix <\/em>was the silver metallic & black House\/EDM dance club where young Mickey Mouse Club<\/em> members Britney & Justin were known to hang.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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One other place still operational upstairs is Opa<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Here we found DJ Owso (YV\/USA) in the booth playing Greek.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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At Opa <\/em>you’ll find belly dancers.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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You’ll find table dancing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And you’ll find napkins strewn all over the floor. Opa!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The downstairs of The Pointe<\/em> is another world. There are a few retail shops but mostly restaurants\/bars and they were all jammed last night including Cuba Libre<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Kavas <\/em>is a new Mexican place.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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JoJo’s<\/em> is also new. They had a great Classic Dance track playing but we didn’t see any DJ.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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We did drop by Hampton Social<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DJ Alex Chang (USA) was in the booth which overlooks the venue’s main room.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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While Hampton Social<\/em> is primarily a restaurant, it also has a huge bar scene which was active last night.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It’s a great place to begin your evening on the town.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The music is light House and EDM hits.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Also located in The Pointe<\/em> is Blue Martini<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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They had a live Top 40 band which had ended around 10:30PM. And then at 11PM it was time for the DJ!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DJ Ray Love (USA)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The dance floor got packed!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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You can never go wrong with Go Go girls.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The music was mostly EDM hits during my visit.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Hey guys, the crowd was about 80% female!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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About one block north of The Pointe<\/em> and thus just a 5 minute walk away is Ice Bar<\/em> Orlando<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Yes, there is an actual frozen room in here where paid entry gets you a fur coat and an alcoholic drink served in a glass made of ice. But if you’re just going to the club, entry is free.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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He we found DJ Rincon (USA) in the booth delivering the music.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It was still pretty early but there was already a crowd.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The music was a mix of Classic Hip Hop, Top 40 and EDM.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DJ Rincon was a resident DJ at The Groove<\/em> at Universal CityWalk<\/em> and at House of Blues<\/em> in Disney Springs<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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There are many other clubs along International Drive so it’s possible to spend an entire evening there. But we still needed to make it to DTO and The Vanguard<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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It was crowded but not super crowded. Indeed, even though it was midnight we were still able to snag a usually scarce free street parking spot just a block away.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DJ duo Castor & Pollux (USA) was still playing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The NYC-based twin brothers were playing a lively all-vocal EDM set. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Popular hits by Cher (USA) and Eminem (USA) mixed to a faster Electrohouse beat had the crowd singing in unison!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And then, at 1AM, the unfurling of their flag…..<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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DJ trio Cash Cash (USA). <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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They played a House\/EDM set including some of their own hits.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The Vanguard<\/em> is notorious for keeping the place so dark and hazy that it’s next to impossible to see who is playing. We did the best we could.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Although they are a DJ trio, we’ve never seen more than two of them at any one time!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Everywhere we went last night, a good time was had by all.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1899],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-club-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/DSCN1878-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OlZE-64L","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23406,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23359\/revisions\/23406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orlandoentertainmentnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}