Barcelona Ultra Lounge

This place sucked so bad last night. Terrible house music and trashy crowd that never quite picked up. It nearly ruined our trip.

Cover is $ 18. Pshhhhhhhh yeah right. Girls, just look at the bouncer when he says that, roll your eyes, and walk away. They will chase after you and let you in for free.
Then… you will walk in… take a whiff, smell nothing but a mixture of throw up, body odor, and SHIT. and you will walk straight out.
Barcelona is lacking one word: VENTILATION. Actually two words: DEODORANT!

GARBAGE! If Unilocal would allow me to give one review of a NEGATIVE 5 STARS — I would give Basuralona Ultra Lounge just that. First, I was told that Vancouver has a bad club scene, NOT a bad bar scene, a bad CLUB scene. I was told to have low expectations. Knowing someone such as myself I wanted to give this city a chance. Well, after that night I held NO expectations for Vancouver’s club scene after our experiences. NONE at all. Sorry, first impressions are everything. Anyways, our group was looking for a place that would at least play top 40 music, and every Canadian we talked to told us to go down Granville street. Okay, no problem so we went to Basuralona. We waited for a minute and walked in and were asked if we were on the guest-​list — we said yes, but somehow they couldn’t find our name. They asked for $ 20. *Stopped and looked at them, looked at my group, and looked at them as if they had lost it* I reminded them that this is Vancouuuverrr and I’m sure my face told them to GTFOH! They magically decided to look at our licenses and noticed we were Americans coming from afar and they shook their heads agreeably and welcomed us with open arms with more excitement (it was weird actually).
Now, outside of Vancouver and its policy on giving people weak ass drinks (what is this Utah?) the music started out to be decent. I would expect a range of old school and hip hop from around 2 – 3 years ago to be played at around 11PM. We sat back and looked at the crowd — and I’m not into bullshitting you… the crowd wasn’t something I would say was diverse. There was Caucasian, Asians, and Indians/​Middle Eastern. that’s it. I already had an idea of what the music would be like so I just looked at my group and we were thinking «THIS should be interesting — lets see what music they play seeing as the DJ would probably cater to the crowd». Need I say again — GARBAGE. Why the HELL are you playing Nelly’s E.I. and Country Grammar at 1AM? That’s primetime for when you play the latest hits. What the hell is wrong with you? Then I thought about this again and the first thing I thought was this crowd has some bad taste in music, as they were clearly… CLEARLY dancing like it was 2001. I’m glad they had a good time and I’m glad I didn’t pay any money. The DJ even noticed us not dancing and it was very simple — «your shit sucks».
On another note, this place has decent décor, is well lit, but it could be generating more revenue by playing music from 2013!!! I remember leaving this place and thinking two things 1) I can’t live here with club life like this (even Delphi GREECE had better music than this) and 2) Where the hell is this ‘diversity’ that people kept talking about. I kept hearing Vancouver nightlife was ‘diverse’ — I’m sorry my thoughts and experiences on diversity include Caucasian, Black, Hispanic/​Latino, Asian, Indian/​Middle Eastern… yes I’m used to encountering that…
Concluding thoughts on Vancouver Nightlife — 1) My acquaintance was right 2) Go to a Bar 3) Spend less money, buy your own drinks, and live it up in a hotel room & 4) Stay in and watch Duck Dynasty all night long…
Last but not least — I can never, ever, talk shit about any US club I go to, even on a bad night it blows this place (and the other Granville place) out of the water and even still I’ll GLADLY give those clubs within the 50 states $ 20.

Always enjoy going to Barcelona.
In any time I’ve gone I’ve had guestlist which got me and my friends free cover. Pretty big place which includes 2 bars making getting drinks easier once it gets busy. Drink prices are pretty standard ($ 6 beer, $ 8 shots). If you plan on catching the last skytrain at 1am however this place early. Its at least a 10 – 15 minute walk to the Granville Skytrain Station from there.

It’s a club on Granville — surprisingly not as douchey as I expected. Pretty clean and well-​ventilated and not that crowded on a Saturday night and crowd was generally amicable.
— $ 18 cover — yuck. I would never pay $ 18 to enter a club in Vancouver — but I was plied with free cover. Seriously — do I need to pay you $ 18 for the honour of dropping a couple hundred at your bar?
— line to get in was pretty quick… line to pay cover was pretty quick… line to have your ID scanned was pretty quick… why not condense the last two lines together?
— $ 4 coat check and it’s one jacket per hanger — and the coat check girls can’t be more unhelpful if they tried. No wait — they did try to be as useless as possible. My friend lost his coat check ticket and was too… ‘celebrated’… to remember the label of his coat. I understand there are security concerns — but when we show you coat check ticket #(X — 1) and #(X + 1)… don’t you think we’re probably telling you the truth and we probably have rights to ticket #X?
— wait for drinks was reasonable — female bartenders aren’t very friendly — the guy bartenders will longpour a bit more…
Drinks were actually reasonably priced — or I remember thinking so at the time. But here’s the weird part — I remember getting two double Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks on the first round — I was charged $ 32.50… each shot is $ 8.125? Or did I get screwed?
But the coat check girls… come on — don’t ever tip these hags.

definitely a mixed review here…
Barcelona was the last stop after a night of long lines which didn’t seem to move.
They did not have a line when we showed up around 11pm…
So, the good:
1. Great music — mix of house, hip-​hop, and old-​school
2. Friendly bar staff
3. Quick service at the multiple bars
Sketchy:
1. The auto 20% gratuity on my bar tab and the fact that they have a «tip» line as well…
Good job on taking advantage of the drunk folks who don’t notice what you’ve done.
Remind anyone of the olympics at certain yaletown establishments?
Otherwise the experience was pretty solid, but I’ll never give them my credit card again…

Barcelona has turned into my favourite club in Vancouver on a Friday night. Resident DJ Remsta is one of the city’s best and consistent DJs, and he always knows how to make the crowd move.
The washrooms aren’t a total mess like some clubs in Vancouver, there’s 2 decent sized bars to handle the crowd, and the workers aren’t uptight about sitting in reserved VIP seating.
It’s one of the few clubs that will offer iced water instead of making you pay for bottled water (what can I say, I appreciate small pleasures). They still have the sneaky trick of not giving back your change when you pay for cover, so make sure you don’t pay more than you have to just to get in.

Cover is $ 18 and coat check is $ 4. A typical, average size club in Vancouver. There’s 2 bars so it doesn’t get too crowded and you’ll still be able to get a drink in a timely manner.
The dance floor is not that big, but Barcelona is well ventilated so you don’t feel like you’re dancing in a sauna. The décor is modern with a little glam. The music was R&B and hip hop.

Cover is on the higher end, and lines are on the longer size on the weekends.
Most of the staff is pretty cool and chill.
Thursdays should be a good night this summer, «Dance Mix ’95» — $ 10 cover and $ 3.95 high-​balls.
Crowd is a wide mix but seem to be dressed less trashy than most Granville clubs.

This club was a total disappointment. I came to Vancouver for an overnight trip with my girlfriends. I don’t know how she came up with it but off we went.
First, we had to pay something like $ 15 – 17 cover. It came with a drink ticket but I still thought this was ridiculous. If they aren’t charging cover in Seattle or Vegas (if you’re in at a certain time, on a guestlist etc), I don’t expect to pay in Vancouver. And yes, we did put our names down on the guest list (which apparently earned us a drink ticket).
When we got inside, it was not worth the $ 15. The dance floor is big and the décor nice but the crowd was full of what my friends and I called, «meatheads.»
We hung out for a little while and wandered out to the next club.

I’ve never been to Barcelona on the weekend (and I honestly don’t plan on it) but I will give one great reason for this club — FIRST LOVE WEDNESDAYS.
Best weeknight out. The crowd is definitely a dancer crowd — people actually know how to get their dance on, and I’m talking hip hop, pop and lock, etc. You can wear Chucks to a club because really, it’s all about the dancing. Highballs are on special Wed nights too, and cover is $ 10 which isn’t too bad.
I don’t like how limited seating there is, so there really isn’t any place to crash if you’re legs feel like giving out unless you have table service. But there are two nice big bars, nice bathrooms, and seriously the sickest mix of old school and hip hop to dance to night away.

This is a perfect example of «over-​promising and under-​delivering» when it comes to nightclubs. I took 2 weeks to decide on a nightclub for NYE so that I could give my husband an amazing night, I wanted to be sure to make the right choice to get a club that would be a little more elevated than normal which is why we paid the $ 65 per ticket price (vs $ 50 at all other clubs) plus the online ticket fee of about $ 11 PLUS THE $ 2.50 fee to pick up tickets at the door. Wha? We were coming from Seattle and didn’t want to pay the $ 75 price at the door.
The club website and articles I read make claims that they are akin to the clubs of Vegas, Miami, etc. I have been to those clubs and they are really nothing like this. I get that the décor is nice and the sound system is really great, etc. (My husband almost wanted to go the ER the next day because he thought he had slight ear damage, the sound was so loud.) The dress code was supposed to be strict, as the letter I got confirming my guest list said, no Ed Hardy, no running shoes. First, it’s arrogant to tell someone what brand they can or cannot wear especially when you ARE going to allow people in with Adidas soccer jerseys and RUNNING SHOES! People had full on track shoes used in cross country running and the sort. Give me a break. If you are going to talk the talk, walk the walk. But they want the money and they have to compete with the other clubs on the same street and they excuse they said was «if they paid the ticket price, we can’t really do anything about it.» Oh yes, you can, give them the money back and send them down the street. And next time they will not make the same mistake.
Its also not as big as it looks in the photos.
For my ticket price there were supposed to be party favors, and mini bottles of Champagne but we never saw either. I can buy my own party favors and 100 bottles of champagne, but if you are going to promise something, you should deliver.
As for the crowd, the drinking age in Vancouver is 19 and it shows. Overall it was a very young crowd, I am not sure there were even anyone over 30 there, except for me and my husband. And its very culturally diverse but not a lot of white people, which was fine because at least most of the people were dancing like crazy and having fun and interacting in a fun way.
Drinks were weak, stick to beer. They added a 20% gratuity into our bill which they were supposed to tell us about but didn’t. When I added a tip, then tried to change it after I notice they already were so kind to do that for me, the female bartender screamed at me, wouldn’t let me finish a sentence when I tried to explain over and over what had happened. I don’t think she understood what I was asking and never took a moment to try, she just kept literally yelling at me every time I tried to open my mouth to say something. At that point we had it and left but we wanted to make sure someone knew what hat happened. We had to get the club manager, told him what happened, and he was happy to take off the %20 tip so that I could add in what I wanted. He actually let us go back in to identify the horrible biatch of a bartender and I hope she got in trouble.
One other thing, the bathrooms for men and women are all in the same area, individual doors marked M or W along one wall. So you get men going into the stalls marked by a W for women and there is piss on the floor, etc. I couldn’t go to the bathroom with out worrying about my pants landing in piss, disgusting. There was enough staff here that someone could have taken a mop every so often and given it a once over. And my husband said there was puke in the men’s urinals, which by they way, were not really invisible. When looking for my husband in line on the men’s «side» I could see the guys peeing I didn’t know there were urinals there, I thought it was sinks. Now that is super fancy, ha? And they say this is one of the unique and better features of this club, how the bathrooms are lined up.
Coat check was $ 4 per item.
Ladies, the men here are super creepy. The kind that will sneak up behind you and dance with you and kind of hope you don’t notice. One guy was dancing up behind another guy in a pretty sexy way, but he was with his girlfriend. When they guy noticed he was really offended and grossed out, we laughed but its just that the clientele here don’t really know how to act. This went on with this guy all night long, doing it to all different girls and some guys.
I will NEVER go back to this club again and I would be warned, don’t believe that this is going to be anything different or more special than any other club on this street. Blown out of proportion sound system, weird bathroom set up, disrespectful and abusive treatment by staff, etc. I know NYE is not an easy night, but these things could have been handled differently regardless and didnt have to happen.

Don’t let the name fool you. This is a full on club, but there are booths to sit if you are one of those types.
I was expecting majority white folk, but the crowd was a mix of all types. Everyone was well dressed, good looking, and in a good partying mood. A lot of people were throwing it down pretty hard on the dance floor. Good times. Dj Relik and Remsta were excellent.
I like the set up of the place because you can navigate around easily, there is good effects lighting with kick ass disco balls, and they can open/​close a lounge area depending on how busy it is.
The $ 20 cover was painful, particularly since it was not a weekend.

I will say that it was nice inside but really can’t be classified as a lounge. The part that was preposterous was an $ 18 cover charge for a night club in Vancouver. I paid less for a nightclub in New York City.

(Preface: the mental record had started to skip by the time we made it here…)
Good: they were very fast to respond and their marketing director was quite helpful when arranging our table. But upon arrival, even with a table reservation, it took a bit of time to get in and settled and served.
Average: I’d describe this place as more club, less lounge. The atmosphere was generally good, especially when compared. Plenty of good looking ladies upon arrival, but grew increasing testosterony around 12:30 or so.
For an out-​of-​towner on a short stay, this is a good option if you’re looking for mostly-​club, part-​lounge. We happened to be looking for the inverse, but we all enjoyed it for the most part.

It stands out from all the other places I have been but once along the ENTERTAINMENT STRIP, ok it must be that it is just so much more grown up in a good way. I’ll head back for more evenings in the future. It had a great sound system, you can get out of the line of fire and hear the person you are with.