Pop-up afternoon parties in Hong Kong proving a hit for health-conscious clubbers
Woo and Sandy Lam Sin-yi, who founded Riffs, a music discovery and ticketing platform, had been thinking about daytime parties since December 2024, but did not come across 'a good venue and DJ pairing that we thought might make some noise', Woo says.
'Every time we go clubbing, we get so drunk and can't do anything the next day,' says series co-founder Isaac Woo Siu-hin, a commercial and music video director. 'An afternoon event would give us time to party, have dinner with friends and still go home [at a reasonable hour]. It's a healthier lifestyle, which I think a lot of people in Hong Kong are also looking for.'
The idea is to create interesting events for Hongkongers looking for fun things to do on weekend afternoons.
Their 'Social Club Series' consists of pop-up parties that are themed around a distinctive music genre and have a specific dress code. They are always held during the day and at a different venue only disclosed to ticket-holders.
Tired of staying out all night at the weekend and being hungover on Monday morning, two clubbers and music industry professionals in their late 20s have turned to the new global 'coffee rave' trend – which turns cafes into dance clubs – to infuse some light into Hong Kong's nightlife.
That changed in March, when they learned that Dcr Milda, a Toronto-based DJ born in Prague to Vietnamese parents, was in town to spin at a nightclub.
Lam quickly DM'd him on Instagram, and she and Woo put the event together in less than a week while also getting local DJ Hyphen on board. They mostly invited their friends for a small and intimate party, but had 'a strong instinct that we needed to film the first event to see if anyone would resonate [with this kind of party]', she says.
The first party took place at Islet Coffee Lab in Central on a Sunday afternoon, on March 16, with an all-white dress code.
Woo's most popular video of the event has since racked up 159,000 views on Instagram, and the Social Club Series page has already garnered more than 5,000 followers.
Since then, there have been three more editions: two on Sunday afternoons at coffee shops in Sheung Wan and Wan Chai, and one on a Saturday afternoon at a craft beer bar and restaurant in Central. Both coffee and alcoholic drinks were available.
Lam thinks each party having a dress code is 'part of the fun'. She explains that the second party's theme was 'sporty', with most attendees wearing tennis outfits thanks to a tennis racquet in the centre of the promotional poster. Though the dress code was a looser rule at the third and fourth events – wearing green and basketball shirts, respectively – many attendees still followed it.
Lam says that 70 per cent of tickets for each party typically sell within the first 30 minutes. All four parties so far have sold out within 24 hours of their announcement.
Social Club Series attendees are mostly in their 20s and 30s, although Woo recalls seeing a few 50-year-old women dancing at the second party – he reckons they found out about it on social media.
He believes that revealing the event venues only after ticket purchases generates a sense of mystery.
'We like to surprise our attendees, who like us because of our concept of pairing different venues with different genres of electronic dance music.
'Every time, there are people who don't want to leave and still want to go on partying, which is very encouraging to us.'
The fourth party in the Social Club Series was held in a craft beer bar in Central, Hong Kong. Photo: Social Club Series
But it is also about creating something new and exciting.
'We know some restaurants [in Hong Kong] have been struggling with business in the afternoons, so this can be a win-win situation for both our attendees and venues, which can make use of off-peak hours to do something that brings joy and good business,' Lam says.
On June 21, the duo will host one of their biggest events. They will turn Messina and Peak Pizza, two interconnected restaurants on The Peak, into a mini music festival, with two stages and a maximum capacity of 300. The event is a collaboration between Social Club Series and
Black Sheep Restaurants , one of Hong Kong's biggest hospitality groups.
'Initially, we were thinking of just hosting the party at the pizza restaurant, but when we visited the site, we were inspired to do it at both shops,' Woo says. 'We want to give different formats and experiences to surprise the crowd.
'We will fly in DJs from Thailand and the Philippines, and maybe one more from overseas, but the rest of the line-up will be Hong Kong DJs. We want to draw in people with international acts but put the spotlight on local DJs, too.'
Daytime party-goers have fun at Social Club Series' third edition, at a coffee shop in Wan Chai. Photo: Social Club Series
One stage will have house music, Afro house and open-format music, while the other will consist of more hard-hitting genres like hard hip-hop, UK garage and baile funk.
Tickets for the event sold out in 10 minutes, so the duo added one more date, on June 22.
'We're starting small, but as we learn more about the scene, hopefully we can evolve into something bigger,' says Lam.
'I think there's a lack of Asian faces when it comes to headlining acts at the bigger festivals in Hong Kong. There are a lot of good DJs locally and in other Asian cities that people should know, and as we develop our project that belongs to these regions, we want to promote them more.'
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