The headline pretty much sums it up.

Okay...I’ll elaborate:


Embarrassingly (or not), I hadn’t been to Mansion until last night. I’d heard very few positives. We all know the Crobar space is larger than a small country, making it necessary to let everyone and their slobbery relatives in to even create the illusion of ‘full.’ But forget this pretentious bullshit, I just don’t like big clubs, not even when big was in style. I enjoy surveying a small room and seeing everyone, locating all four walls and noting my emergency exits. I hate clubs with high ceilings. I hate clubs with multiple rooms. I hate clubs with stairs.

Math lesson:

[Stilettos + drinking + stairs = trip the emergency room waiting to happen]

What kind of masochist would even give fuel to an environment like this?

Anyway, Mansion filled much of the frightening square footage of their club with an obstacle course. You enter, walk up stairs, down various hallways, past coat check and Maitre D’-like people standing around to give to illusion of check points, go upstairs, down a hallway, upstairs, and down again. Then you open into an area the size of Kiss & Fly but with a second floor balcony and ceilings higher than a New Jersey warehouse. The entire entry experience was identical to getting to your airport gate at JFK (up escalators, down escalators, walk for miles, stairs!). On the plus side, I wasn’t wheeling a suitcase. On the downside, I was wearing suede stiletto boots which aren’t conducive to physical movement. Essentially, I felt like a test rat trapped in a club laboratory. Not so fun.

The central space itself was beautiful. We were seated right away and brought an Hors D'ourves platter that had everything from Cajun shrimp to sushi to pigs in blankets. I personally enjoy eating mini hot dogs with raw fish, so that part didn’t bother me. What was a little crazy was the massive, alien-like orb above the seating area. It made the whole room sparkle with gold dots which spun around and around, making me feel like a prisoner trapped inside a whacked-out snow globe. People prone to seizures shouldn’t be exposed to this, also because the music (two DJs on a large stage with a string orchestra) was extremely trippy. The club’s sound system is clearly state of the art and impressive, so if you like to feel music beat within your lungs (which I personally don’t) this is a good place for you. Occasionally, they’d switch the music to hip hop: silence then BOOM! then Jay-Z so loud that several women screamed and dropped drinks.

Then the whole place started to feel like a bomb shelter.

I’m sure all my negative analogies are making it sound like I didn’t like the place. This isn’t entirely true. I don’t think I’d go there again without reason but to their credit, the décor’s lovely and they did a remarkably impressive job of killing square footage through obstacle courses to make it all seem smaller. And I have no doubt Mansion has stunning areas and rooms I never even made it into.

Next time.

Maybe.