I'm sorry guys, I had a really disappointing experience at Kanaloa.
My girlie friends wanted to "chillax" on Friday and after work, we went to various bars, had dinner around St Pauls, and they decided to go to Kanaloa afterwards. Now I haven't been to a club for a good amount of years (nor do I miss it), but I do expect not to be treated like scum of the earth.
We were 3 girls, paid £10 each to get in at around 10-11ish. We were each given a flower necklace (I'm guessing it's called a Lei) and to the bar for a drink. They were all tropical Tiki themed. I had the Coconut Canonball which came with the cute fuzzy little coconut but was a bit strange tasting. It had a slight sour taste to it which I wasn't really expecting. It was an ok drink and I don't doubt that this is what it should taste like but I just preferred sweeter drinks, which I was expecting from the ingredients. Drinks are around £8-10 mark.
My friends ordered Kanaloa Kula and I believe a Diablo, which I quite liked as it was sweet tasting. The barman was really friendly and gave us girls each an orchid off the stem, even wiping it off before giving to us so we could play with/decorate our hair with. So far as good right? Yep, but read on.
We turned right into the little enclosed dance floor room, which had quite a lot of people on a Friday night but was in no way packed. There seemed to be a big party at the sofa area. We wandered to the table next to the bar and dumped our bags and coats on a stool and stood around the table to sip our drinks. Within 5 seconds, the security guard (who we later gathered was called Richard from the security manager), came over and said we cannot put our stuff there and had to put it into the cloakroom (at least this was what I gather he was trying to say as the music here is overwhelming and I could barely hear anything). My friend pointed out to him that the party at the sofa had dumped a huge amount of items onto the sofa and why wasn't he speaking to them but only picking on us? We tried to move away from this irritating person and put our stuff onto the sofa with the other people and he just kept following us and basically stressing us out.
So when the security guard figured that we weren't scared of his power trip antics, he decided to call the rest of the team. Within another few minutes, 5 butch security guards were stood in front of us spread out in a threatening manner. Now, seeing as I didn't hear most of what was going on, I found this was a very disturbing scene. We had not caused trouble, we were not drunk girls, we had not hit anyone, nor were we shouting at anything or anyone. This security guard had decided to show us who's boss.
My friend wasn't having this and went outside to speak with the manager. I didn't go along with them and I stayed inside just standing there sipping my drink and waiting to see what was going on, as to be honest, I didn't like confrontation and I do not like being outside of public view as anything can happen outside.
It seemed the issue got resolved and my friends came back, but the mood was ruined. I was quite angry that after that incident, another group of Indian girls basically did the exact same things as us, they put their bags onto the exact same chair and now THAT security guard decided he was not going to confront them. Really? Is it now a racism issue then? Because 2 of us were Chinese?
We left about an hour or two later, when we were outside looking for the taxi, I spoke to the security at the door and that's how I figured out what was happening all that time. He decided to give my friends free cloakroom as he agreed that it was a very heavy handed way of dealing with the issue. And he said that because he couldn't hear anything on the walkie talkie about what was happening, all the guards turned up instead of just 1 or 2.
I have my doubts about what really happened, but I know this person I was talking to at the door is quite reasonable. It was just the initial guy "Richard" who was really going out of his way to spoil our night. I really didn't expect this from the sister club to Mahiki to be honest. Return trip? No thanks. I am not a teenager anymore, I do not like being harrassed like I was a child. We ARE all adults here right? read more