Forbidden City - LALate.com Attends Venue Opening

[lalate]

Saturday night LALate and its clubgoers attended Forbidden City. If you haven't heard, Forbidden City is one of the first of a series of major new hotspots openings in Hollywood and West Hollywood this summer along with 9000 Lounge that are resparking nightlife again in Los Angeles. With the exception of a private "Fame-the series" party, Saturday's grand opening was, for the priviledged guestlist only few of LALate, the first time any clubgoers have walked into the Forbidden City in advance of the venue's biggest bash coming this next Friday.

Forbidden City is located at Hollywood and Vine across the street from Deep and the Palace. In fact the location of "F-City", as LALate likes to call it, may be the key to its success. In 2002, nightclub visionaries moved nightlife from its predominance in the west side of Hollywood and neighboring West Hollywood further out to the Cahuenga, Wilcox, and Vine areas (often referred to in club scenes as deep Hollywood). With a mere presence of venues like Deep and the Palace, at first, came new hotspots Nacional, Cinespace, Ivar, and then this year, White Lotus, all within walking distance of each other.

With the huge success of these venues, the notion was then to continue opening more venues in this 2 mile radius and give clubgoers the ability to in essence walk just a few blocks between top venues, typical in most top clubing cities like Toronto but absence in recent memory in LA. Forbidden City follows upon that notion. In the structure that once housed a Chinese Restaurant and across from the soon to be remolded Palace, F City is a sandstone-throw from Ivar and Deep.

Upon walking inside F City you realize that you have entered perhaps one of the best looking nightclubs in recent memories, an exceptional venue that clearly was renovated as a nightclub should. What makes F City so exceptional is it's floorplan. Premiere party participants all agreed that every room had an exceptionally different look and flow than the room next to it, an idea and flavor first capitalized by AD on Highland.

When you first enter F City, you enter into really the only room we didn't care for, a room that looks like Canters meets Miss Siagon. From there you exit out onto a narrow concrete hallway, that reminds you of the nightclubs of New York City, a place you expect to see someone like Lil Kim come down in an upcoming MTV music video on TRL.

From there, suddenly, you are in a deep red expansive dark wooden dancefloor room that is a clubgoer's dream and says "Sunset Room - down the right way". The floor is huge, bigger than anything we've seen in new club openings, bigger than even the back room in Cinespace. The vip lounge tables are raised above the floor in this room as opposed to the Sunset Room where they are on the same level. The dj is on stage under a Asian-motiff overhang with brick and wood beams as your styling. A side room offers more vip tables in an alcove feel.

The next room is upstairs, a carpeted second floor that fosters red/blue/grey painted paneled walls (with the paint still fresh) and windows opening onto the parking lots showing a venue of the Capitol Records building. We expect this to be the liability room, jokingly, because in all ease a clubgoer can drop his drink out of the window accidentally onto an unassuming parked $70,000 SUV below. This floor is carpeted in a Joya-esq flavor leading into a balcony area that overlooks the dancefloor, that reminds you of the Limelight back in New York City and other east coast venues where balcony-watching is par for the course. On the balcony, you are eye to earlobe with a winged budda-esq 2 story figure that following a couple nights of heavy promotion we believe has a shelf life of two weeks before budda looses his head from a drunken patron.

Finally, the last room is perhaps the most lucrative for the venue, an outdoor patio with bar designed in the structure of Garden of Eden but decorated in complete Hotel Viceroy flaire of white vinyl sofas with the addition of peculiar stone structural chairs that even the rears of non J Lo endowed clubgoers will find comfortable.

The premiere party on Saturday offered a totally inappropriate crowd, to be polite, for an opening, something that could be the kiss of death at any other venue, that caused capacity levels to drop during the premiere early in the evening. However, with the bigger bash set for this Friday to be hosted by the same team thereafter, clubgoers will be able to sense the venue and people together.

In Hollywood, three factors determine success of a venue - the a) location, venue, and c) the crowd. With a home run in its location and a jaw-dropping stunning venue, Forbidden City's last hurdle to conquer to financial success will be its crowd and staying power. For now, F City will remain certainly the best venue LALate has walked into since the opening of White Lotus, a true jem that LALate will return to over and over again. Truly, a beautiful venue, Buddha and all.

[lalate]

fyi--- public grand opening -- Friday night.

CROWDED! lol

[lalate]

TWO Weeks ago, LALate was the first to get you into Forbidden City, the hottest new venue, before anyone else (and we delightfully named "F City" because of our adoration for the exquisite venue that friggen rocks).

Well this week was the opening to everyone for F City - and the reports in say the promotions brought in a beautiful, young crowd. F City, if it keeps it up, will be on track to hold its own against the remodelled Palace being unveiled this fall across the street. The question is if F City can overtake White Lotus as the #1 buzz venue for the moment. Stay tuned

[lalate]

LALate attended the venue last night, now that a few weeks have past since we attended it's private opening before everyone else, to see how the venue has progressed.

The venue's kitchen was open for the first night tonight. The food was very good and very reasonably priced, two great things to consider. However, the menu selection was quite small and the physical menu itself, we hope, was only temporary because it was not presentable. We hope that the venue is still getting itself organized because cocktail napkins were served with dinner with no proper place setting nor linen napkins.

The venue has added some truly exceptional furnishings to the inside, new light features and goregous sofas in cigar and similar colorings.

One item clearly obvious is most staff seems a little bothered about the operations-- complaining insufficient facilities at bar stations for bartenders, confusion as to what and when table and dinner arrangements are changing, etc.

One clear confusion was for the opening dancing was all night long on the dancefloor. Now they have flooded the dancefloor with table seating (even though there is more than enough empty tables in the venue) to inhibit early dancing.

The clientelle is good, not great, and needs improvement. Early 30s, guy to girl ratios quite high, a small prevelance of really beautiful people (unlike 9000 Lounge this week, see other thread). It looked like a slow night @ Joya crowd.

Overall, we love the physical venue, the food, the door operations (exceptionally smooth), and the service.