Is Sydney Nightlife Dead? I'm Going Suburb to Suburb to Find Out.

Newtown. The lefty central of Sydney. Filled with the garish stench of breweries, pubs, pokies, pool, gentrification and 18-year-olds from Sydney University as they stumble home trashed on a Tuesday night. Where psychotic, Christian, bald headed mouldy-men, screaming in the name of Jesus, sometimes like to march, and the local BWS showcases a year round pride sign: BWYasssss.

Drag Queens, rock dogs, English backpackers, pool sharks, uni students, that guy on the corner of Enmore Road that sometimes plays Led Zeppelin on electric guitar: it has all types of people, in all walks of life.

But what about the nightlife? 

Sydney’s known as a graveyard, where hopes of a big night out come to die, the ghosts of King Cross still haunting the living as tumbleweeds roll by in the festering wind of big development. But we’re on a mission to show you what the suburbs have to offer. We want to make this city great again. First stop: Newtown.

The night begins at the “I have a dream” mural located just up from Newtown Station. In 1991 it was painted illegally by two artists using a cherry picker to spread a message of tolerance, acceptance and peace. In 2016 it became heritage listed after the Marrickville council dubbed it of “local historical, aesthetic and social heritage significance."

An interesting side note: 12 months before the mural was painted, one of the artists, Andrew Aiken, fled from the UK to Australia, painted the mural, before turning himself over to the UK police. His crime? murder. 

Minori Ueda waits on the bench underneath, a camera slung around her neck and a cheeky grin on her face. She’s come along for the ride and also to take photos of the pubs, bars, bands and hopefully punters looking to have fun.

We walk southwest down King street, up Eliza street and into a security guard that stand before a rainbow gate. 

“ID.”

[gives ID]

[looks at birthday] “Oh Taurus, love it.”

He does this every time. 

We pass the smokers, breathing in the stale air, to the inside where we’re met with a whiff of old carpet and spilt beer. Perfect! 

The Courthouse, or Courty for all those in the know, is the perfect manifestation of old and new. Someone’s dad, here since the 80s and who only peels his ass off the bar stool for another refill of Newtowner, sits to our left, while a girl fitted in a TikTok-core emo aesthetic orders a seltzer to our right. In-between are rugby fans and 30-something friendship circles breaking the monotony of their 9-5 with a beer on a Friday. Usually an old, blind border collie sits at the foot of the bar but alas he’s not here today. 

We saunter up to the bartenders, grab a shot of tequlia (why not?), a schooner of Grifter Serpent’s Kiss and make our way into the vast beer garden fitted with colourful lights that swing across the masses of finished-workers and youngins starting their night. If the Courty is perfect for anything, it’s laid-back afternoon catch-ups, but that’s only if you can get a seat. On a Friday at 7pm, it’s packed, meaning we have to steal the end of a table off two old timers who chat about economics or some such political matters.

As the lights dim and the Serpent’s Kiss drains from the cup, we’re off, up the incandescent rainbow stairs and onto the street. 

A little further down King street, peeling off onto Enmore road, we’re met with a glowering blue sign etched with the words: “Bar Planet”. It’s a newish addition to the Newtown circuit but a favourite with locals for its nice cocktails, free popcorn and a Melbourne-ish vibe: punk meets high society. I can imagine the struggling artist skulking in the corners, feeling inspired about something (Eat your heart out, F. Scott Fitzgerald). Everything about this place is lip-lickingly sexy: the candlelit glow, the terrazzo mosaic benchtops created by David Humphries and Masou Nadoust, and, of course, the bartenders. 

It’s date-spot 101. Imagine: eye’s meeting over a martini, knees touching under the table, lips puckering as you slowly slip the olive between your lips, the candlelight bringing your facetuned-Tinder-photos to reality. “Your place or mine?” they say, drunk off the fumes of vodka and popcorn and Bar-Planet induced lust.

Now when it comes to martinis, my puny cynical mind thinks: “this is nothing but watered down vodka. What the fuck?” The first time I had one I think I actually retched. But the martinis here are the stars of the institution, poured from a glass jug, two feet above the martini glass, sprayed with the residue of lemon skin. It is actually quite *chef’s kiss*. 

Giovanni, who looks to be on a date, and who has taken a special interest in our camera equipment and microphone, agrees.

“Why do you like coming to Bar Planet?” I say.

“Why? Because it’s cute, it’s nice and it’s friendly, and I got my dirty martini baby!”

His lips pucker as he slowly slips an olive between his lips, the martini dripping down his chin (what did I tell you?).

“OOOH YEAH,” he yells in orgasmic appreciation.  

As I sit at the table alone, skulking into my struggling artist persona, no date in sight, and funnelling popcorn into my martini-tainted mouth I realise, what’s a night out without friends? Evie appears, the type of person who can make even the most anticlimactic nights out fun (which, of course, this won’t be) and we head to our next destination.

While the Botany View Hotel is still considered Newtown prestige, it sits a while away down King Street. We use the work Uber account. This is a place where the pool junkies come, lining the walls, looking to get their next fix as a row of coins sits along the pool table top. In Sydney, people that play pool are probably the friendliest people around, a game of doubles can be instigated just by asking, and most of the time it’s assumed. 

I see a guy I see everywhere in Newtown, mostly sharking around the pool tables inciting easy deaths to novice players. It’s Brent wearing his signature red jacket and white cap. 

“Where’s the cheapest place to play pool?” I say, sticking a microphone in his mouth.

“The cheapest place to play pool is at the Botany View Hotel [a shameless plug], it’s a dollar a game for the table, usually it’s like three dollars now. They upped it a few years ago, ” he stares about shiftily. 

Upstairs we go for another drink and a smoke in the two-tiered beer garden, where trendy looking 20-somethings hit their vapes and nod coolly like they’re being watched.

We hear the faint callings of an electric guitar downstairs and arrive at an empty floor where I sway back and forth, waiting as it slowly fills out. The Botany has live music almost every night, particularly Jazz. The bartender also tells me that they’ve just stopped doing karaoke. The real charm of the Botany though is its visitation of characters along every spectrum. You have the oldies for their jazz and the young guns at the pool tables, one time I was even there for a 40th birthday procession where they were decked out in 70’s/80’s ensembles, shaking their synthetic-afros to ABBA on the top floor. 

But our time comes to an end and an Uber is enlisted to scoop us up to our next destination. 

If Friday nights are for anything, they’re for having unhinged conversations with Uber drivers who have become the unofficial psychologists of the weekend. They’ve heard hopes, dreams, tales of deceit, fables from unwritten childhood memoirs and watched life flash before our eyes as we zoom home, tail between our legs, from an 8am kick-on. You can see it in their eyes, weary, wise, all-knowing.

[Start of conversation]

“So what’s it like driving an Uber on a Friday night?”

“I mean, it’s alright, it’s not bad.”

“What do you think about us?”

“You?”

“Are we nice customers?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

[End of conversation]

I guess it wasn’t time to check in my free chips for some advice on this ride. Next time.

A fluorescent green pickle wearing a cowboy hat greets us to our next destination. “HOME OF THE PICKLEBACK” the sign reads. It’s the Duke of Enmore. And it’s PACKED.

We squeeze in and of course the first thing that we do is order a [surprise] pickleback shot. I’m no stranger to these so it goes down a treat but if you are, it’s quite simple. One shot of Jameson whisky is followed by one shot of pickle juice. And while you might think that sounds disgusting, the sourness of the chaser blunts the sharpness of the smoky brown death-juice, making for a tolerable quick hit of woozy energy.

As we squeeze our way through the mayhem, a band called Operation Ibis with a shirtless frontman kicks it on stage. They rattle the bartops as a frenzy of dancers flail their arms to a ska punk remix that The Specials would be proud of. No one in here gives a fuck.

In fact, the Duke is a hidey hole from the pseudo intelligent yapper of uni students and the virtue signalling of the white Newtown kid with no POC or queer friends. What you see is what you get. Rock on, man, punk it up, man, chuck on a bit of metallica, man. The vibe is immaculate. 

A girl with a cowboy hat and tattoos down both arms instantly draws my attention, mostly because she’s surrounded by a bunch of other beautiful women as they play pool. They belong to an all-girl rock band called Down Girl, and because I’m nosy and want to know what they’re doing here I go in for a chat.

“What do you like about the Duke?” I yell over the musical kafuffle, soberish but kinda not.

Holding a pool stick and a semi-empty beer, cowboy hat girl, also known as Scarlett, answers, “The Duke was the safeplace that this incredible human being, Sabrina, started at the start of COVID…she gave the queer, gay community, the neurological community a safe space during hard times and when we had nowhere else to go that kind of became that place.”

Unable to resist the music any longer, we head onto the dance floor for a last head-banging extravaganza where I meet a guy with wild eyes.

“You like this music?” I yell.

“What?”

“What do you like about this music?” 

“SCARRRR.”

Having no idea what the hell he means I just smile and leave him to it before stumbling outside into the cooling air. [Looking back on this I realize he was trying to tell me that the genre was, in fact, Ska].

Finally, we’re onto our last stop: The Marlborough hotel a.k.a The Marly.

Now I know sometimes The Marly gets a bad rap. Some might say, “Go there if you want to be surrounded by numpty 18-year-olds”, or “Go there if you like Top 40’s music.” but I disagree.

When I first moved to Sydney and had no preconceived ideas funnelled into my head from people that thought they were part of the trendy-elite, I actually thought the decor and general vibe of the Marley was impressive. It has this 80’s, old school atmosphere with band posters for wallpaper and a cosy beer garden.

I guess, when I first went there on a Friday night, yeah, the crowd was young, but they weren’t really hurting anyone and, to be fair, it is one of the only places in Newtown that is open until 4 am on any given night. 

Alas, we enter and make our way straight to the top floor. We need a little reprieve from the Duke so we get a beer, plant ourselves on the upper deck and look out at the twinkling lights of the street below. 

That’s when a Liverpool accent catches my ear. The boyzzz out for beerzzz. 

“So what do you like about the Marley?” 

The scouser turns to me, looks me dead in the eye and quotes, “The wild women, the wild women, the rippin and the tearin, the rippin and the tearin.” 

“Jesus Christ.”

Nice lads with questionable meme-related knowledge of the infamous hedo Rick. 

Soon we’re downstairs surrounded by fresh-faced newly graduated baby-adults who dance to “About Damn Time” by Lizzo. After spinning around in the bluelight for a while, stomachs begin to rumble. And it’s lucky that just across the road a little red shop with a modest little kitchen serves $12 dumplings.

‘Dumpling Hut’ is a good go-to if you’re low on cash and late-night brain cells. It takes but minutes, is hot, crispy, salty, fatty, everything that’s bad for the body but good for the end-of-night.

As the night resolves and I sit on the street watching the Ubers roll by, eggplant dumplings on my knees, the sky dark and the footpaths full, I think, “What a great night.” Though I was probably the only black person I’d seen, that didn’t diminish the fact that Newtown has a lot to do, a lot to see, and a bit of something for everyone. 

With the last dumpling rolling down my throat I disappear into the abyss never to return a.k.a I go to see a DJ.

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