Hermann's Jazz Club
Near the corner of Blanshard and View, you can enjoy Jazz music in this well-established pub-style restaurant. This local favourite presents Dixieland Jazz, Big Band music with dancing, the Esquimalt Jazz band, the Tom Vickery Trio and many other live bands. It's the place to see fantastic live jazz in Victoria.
Lucky Bar
Definitely a local favourite, Lucky boasts a supremely killer sound system with massive bass drivers, rad live music almost every night, with house music Saturday nights.
The place is decorated in a beautifully warm and inviting way, and it's full of possibilities: near the door there's tables where you can sit and chat, there's the bar where you can get drunk and hit on other kids, then there's the dance floor, and then there's the stage. It's wicked! See you there.
Steamers
A great place, where, if you hang out long enough, you’re sure to run into Ocean Island staff members. The patio serves as the break room for the city's disgruntled but rowdily upbeat service-industry kids.
Live bands several days a week - varying cover charge. Check out local heroes Velvet on Sunday evenings - they dominate the night with their always-popular live instrumental and electronic house music jam sessions.
Prism
Victoria’s gay club hosts ultra-sassy drag nights and regular club nights with the queerest selection of techno and disco ever, they also hold the best karaoke night in town, ever. These people can sing like crazy and the selection blows everybody else out of the water. If you've never been able to find anything good in the karaoke catalogue to sing, check this out, they've got binders full of songs! Like two-inch ring!
Plan B
This is definitely a place to see, be seen, and get toasted and roasted. They also happen to have Canada's only LED fully controlled lit dance floor.
Watch out for dress codes, and don't piss off the bouncers!
Hush
If you like loud dance music and you like electronics, this is the place for you. You'll find sultry girls, funky dudes, some nice pool action, back lit with dramatic red lights, and tons and tons of techno, house, and best of all, wicked cool drum n bass. It is the next best thing to being at a real rave, without the long drive!
1325 Government Street (map) 385-0566
Logan's Pub
One of the staples of the local music scene, Logan's hosts some of the city's best gigs, mostly having to do with rock and punk and such.
Sunday afternoons, Logan's hosts the best Open Mic Night ever, called the Hootenanny. Be there at four if you want to play, stay 'till 7. The patio rules, and what can I say, it's got a pool table.
Sugar
Sugar was THE place to be. Then it closed. Then it opened for special events only. Now it's open regularly! It bounced back with the flair it had once before and is again bumping every Saturday night! To top it all off, they still do some of the city's best live shows!
Evolution
This place is famous for it's cheap drinks and has no cover charge before 10 pm. Each night of the week has a different theme i.e. Heavy metal Mondays, Retro Wednesdays- definitely a good place to dance it up but keep an eye out for the sometimes-sketchy crowd.
Element
This is a bangin' top 40 bar. A warning: if you're not into dodgy guys looking to pick up, sassy girls determined to get as drunk as possible, and one top 40 anthem after another on shuffle play with no mixing, this is hell. Another warning: if you're looking to pick up or get picked up, dance the night away and bliss right out to ecstatic top 40 anthems and get pissed-ass drunk, this may be too fun for your health.
This place also ends up hosting one major international band after another. Sloan was here. The Black-eyed Peas were here. Vanilla Ice was here!!!
Barcode
It's a strange scene down there. Lots of commercial hip hop, lots of sketchy teenagers getting drunk and kicking it. They have things like Ladies Nights, freestyling competitions... and we should say, the room itself is quite swanky. If you're thinking of going to Barcode, first wander around the corner of Government and Yates - there's often sketchy-looking dudes there who will hook you up with a stamp that will get you in free.
The Jungle Room
This place opened up with the promise of serving Victoria with actual Drum n Bass & Jungle music on a regular basis, but it must not have worked out, because now it's mostly house and other dance music. But the craziest drum n bass events come here, including Dieselboy! The official address is on Pandora but the entrance is on Government.. at least the last time I headed down there.
603 Pandora Avenue (map)
