Bar 101 Auckland — Restaurant in Waitematā

Used to love this place as an easy-going cheap club to chill with friends, unfortunately after last night and seeing how everyone in the reviews seems to also have been treated by the security, won't ever be going back.

My friend looks really young for her age, always has and due to this we always expect her ID to be given a second look, however, the security guards last night seemed to be extremely obsessive and after passing her ID to two more of the security team to check over (For some reason they need 5 dudes and a lady guarding the entrance on a Wednesday?) they decided her ID wasn't good enough and demanded to see her Facebook, which we thought was a strange request but went to comply before realising she'd left her ID with her boyfriend who was parking the car.

While my friend was using my phone to try to log in to her Facebook she remarked to me that she wasn't sure she remembered her password, to which the female security guard snapped "Well you'd better." Which was unnecessarily rude but we shrugged it off for the moment, knowing we couldn't magically just remember stuff we didn't. I decided to log back into my Facebook and show the security guards the "Happy 20th" birthday posts on my friend's timeline, which wasn't deemed good enough (This would be understandable on its own however what else are we supposed to do? She literally gave them her ID?)

We also pulled up a previous photo of her at Bar 101 from the official Facebook page and were once again snapped at by the female guard. At this point, I told my friend I just wanted to go to Saturdays as the guards weren't even telling us what they wanted from us, however, they would not return her ID.

Thankfully her boyfriend showed up with her phone not long later and she pulled up her Facebook page, they seemed to find whatever they were looking for and agreed to finally let us in. We decided not to go in just due to the curt way we were talked to and instead went to Saturdays.

Saturdays was a bit of a flop due to there being some sort of old people function on in there and the walk had calmed us down a little so we decided to return to Bar 101.

My friend pulled her ID out again as we approached to hand over (As she wasn't stamped before we left) The male taking the IDs at the door asked if she had a "Proper ID now." To which I frustratedly snapped "What do you mean? That's her driver's License, it is a proper ID", The guards seemed to have a chuckle amongst themselves and he said he couldn't let us in with that ID, I was confused and reminded them they literally were gonna let us in before and what possibly could have changed in that time? While my friend demanded they call the police then, because what else were we supposed to do to prove it was real? He continued to refuse us entry and so we turned around and decided to call the night a fail and just go home, as we were walking away they changed their mind and started yelling after us that 'no we actually could come in,' and that it was 'fine now'. Confused with the constant changing my friend waved them off and we kept walking just wanting to go home, to which they responded by swearing at us as we walked away.

Very unprofessional, clearly there is no standard for how they ID people at this club, the decision for not letting and letting people in on the bouncers' whims is an extremely confusing business decision, the owners should install some standardized rules or maybe hire some professionals that don't resort to swearing at customers and being all-around unpleasant. To the female bouncer, perhaps you should look for a job you enjoy, customer service is not for you. To the male security guards grow up and learn some professionalism. To the owners, if you have 5-6 security guarding a single-door entrance, they tend to have nothing to do for the night and stand around joking with each other, losing you patrons. I've seen many reviews about the security being just downright nasty people at this place, perhaps you should look into fixing...

Great atmosphere, met heaps of people and the music was awesome, however, it was the security that ruined the night for us, our first encounter was when we were about to enter, we didn’t realise that there were three security guards that checked ID and thought that you had to be at the end of the line before you had to present it, one of the three security guards that checked ID then told us to present our ID, when he realised we didn’t have our ID at the ready he said “you’ve been waiting in line all this time, how do you not have your ID ready?” He then proceeded to yell “NEXT” as we were pulling out our IDs

Our second bad encounter was when my girlfriend and I went to our respective bathrooms at the same time, I was walking out of my toilet stall and one of the other security guards was standing there, he then grabbed me and escorted me from the building, on the way down the stairs I repeatedly asked him what I had done wrong, the only answer he gave is that I was intoxicated, however I had only had one drink, I offered to do a sobriety test to prove that I was ok but he ignored me and proceeded to push me down the stairs, I had also left my girlfriend in the club and had her phone so I could not contact her, nor could I get back into the club, she was all the while under the assumption that I was in the toilet or that I had left her, I was stood outside the door to the club for a good half hour talking to one of the security guards about my situation, he was understanding and eventually let me in so that I could track down my girlfriend.

I would rather not bring race into this but unfortunately these are the only defining characteristics that I have, the one at the door was a larger Māori/islander man, and the one who kicked me out was an Asian man, relatively muscular, and reasonably tall, I would also like to add that I am a 19 year old half Nepalese male and that I think one of the reasons that I was kicked out was because I have a darker skin tone and the other may be that I was a male, as one of the other reviewers said “females are better for business than males.”

To finish this off I would like to say, reading through the comments proves that bar 101 has a serious issue with it’s security especially when it comes to kicking people out without providing a valid reason as to why they are being removed, I understand that they must be vigilant and that they get many belligerent individuals that aren’t very receptive, but, this does not excuse their behaviour, I really enjoyed my time in the club, which makes it that much more bitter that I got kicked out of the club. I sincerely hope that action is taken to prevent this behaviour in the future as I really enjoyed...

I came here last Saturday and had a very unpleasant and uncomfortable experience with the staff. My friends and I had just come inside and we stopped in the disability bathroom on the way up the stairs. My sober friend used the toilet while I stood outside in the stair well (I was also sober). A girl came to clean the bathroom and I let her know someone was in there, he won't be long, and we just had small talk. Then a security guard came and also talked to the girl. It was all pretty friendly and normal but then the situation became passive aggressive. The girl said she was waiting for a guy to come out of the bathroom and the guard asked her if she has been waiting a while, she said yes she had, and the guard offered to "get him out". At this point I intervened, it had only been a minute since the girl started waiting, and my friend was just using the bathroom so there was no need to "get him out". I said he was sober just incase they thought he was throwing up. The guard started knocking on the door and I tried to stop him. I told him he was literally just peeing in there and there was nothing more to it. Then the guard said "well it doesn't normally take a guy that long to pee" and "is he your boyfriend or something". These were very unnessecary comments, and my friend is trans so obviously he isn't going to piss like a cis guy. I just said something like "he's just peeing, he's completely sober, there's nothing dodgy is going on in there. You don't have to open the door". I was pretty worried at this point because my friend was in a vulnerable position and it would've been very disarming if this guard suddenly burst into the bathroom. The security guard ended up opening the bathroom door and going in, but luckily my friend was coming out at the same time. You would think, that the guard and I both being sober, we would engage in a rational conversation, understand eachother, and not escalate a situation which does not need escalating. The girl cleaning didn't help with the "I've been waiting a while" comment. This entire exchange lasted 3 minutes. Your staff members need to improve their attitude to people who come inside. Not everyone requires...