Brant House - June 10th, 2006

522 King Street West

www.branthouse.com

Unless you are a regular or go early (by 2100hrs), you will have to wait in a steep line up on a Saturday night. We fortunately enough had to do no such thing, since we "know the owners".

Now they do serve food at Brant house but, since this is not a restaurant review we'll just stick to the describing the club scene.

I'm not a huge fan of the decor. The open loft design is stark, with the 7,000 sq. ft. space being far from cozy unless it's packed with people, and the feel of dark wood and mixing old with new design is disturbing. On this night as it is with every Saturday night the place was packed to the gills, therefore the the "ugliness" of Brant House was blurred out.

We adored the musical selection, and although we don't remember who was spinning we give all the kudos to him. Brant House does not seem to have a regular DJ for their Friday and Saturday nights, and mainly do an event DJ type thingy.

BH attracts a hip, 25+ crowd, and the ladies seem to love this place. You will meet everyone from Bay Street up-and-comers to male and female social climbers seeking to broaden their contact list. The dress code is fashionably casual, and with a big helping of trendy on top. The revelers actually go there to dance, more so than chat loudly over the music. After spending some time on the floor, we made our way to the side door where people were converging for their ritualistic inhalation therapy. We quickly went back in and headed to the VIP section of BH.

Now the VIP area is where it got most interesting at BH. We were almost body checked by the assigned bouncer when we ascended the first two stairs to get into the VIP. We were looking fashionably well dressed and attractive I thought, so what was the problem? We never did figure it out, because before we could protest for longer than a minute, we were rescued by a friend who was already in VIP and who obviously had some kind of clout with the burly bouncer.

While in the VIP we thanked our friend and took a look around. The people in VIP are absolutely boring, and usually so pretentious that you can't stand them. BH's VIP squatters were no different. We left after 15 minutes and went back to the floor scene. We spent the rest of the night dancing, and evading drunken women who apparently turned into weekend lesbians, and aggressive Euro-looking men with long hair and unshaven faces. Overall it was fun, but not to be added to our list of things to do.

Scale of 0-10 (10 being the best)
Music - 8 People - 7 Ambiance - 41/2 Love factor - 7