It’s no secret that Sydney’s nightlife is in an absolutely cooked state (and has been for a while). Take a little jaunt around the area and your best late-night options arne: city joints filled with douchebags like sardines in a can, cute wine bars that close up shop at 11pm for some reason, or a kebab shop (I know where I’ll be).
Just as we’ve settled into our new 10pm bedtime and weekend brunches that just ooze ‘live, laugh, love’ energy, we’ve been thrown an absolute curveball — a fresh new bar in the heart of Newtown, open until 4am.
Yes, 4am.
The venue, Pleasure Club, is set to open in mid-2023 and is the first Newtown venue in 100 years to be granted the elusive 4am licence.
The bar will come from the Odd Culture team and is slated to be stacked with live music (seven days a week!!!), good food, yummy drinks, and won’t close its doors until the wee hours of the morning.
A decent spot in Sydney that is actually open at night? Holy shit. Honestly, my excitement says a lot about the abysmal state of Sydney’s nightlife.
Formerly an adult bookshop, Pleasure Club is set to be positioned in a yuuuuuge basement underneath King Street, nestled in the same spot where Newtown Station and The Bank sit.
The 12-seat bar and live music venue is set to absolutely transform the area, which has gotten a bit stale in the last couple of years.
“It will be a game changer,” Odd Culture chief executive officer James Thorpe told The Sydney Morning Herald.
“It will be very different to anything else on that strip at the moment.”
The Sydney hospitality group already have a bunch of venues under their name, including Odd Culture Newtown, The Duke of Enmore, and the Old Fitzroy Hotel.
Understandably, people are hyped. Pleasure Club will give us another option for late nights in the inner west, which so far have been constrained to The Bank Hotel and the crusty floors of the Marly (ah, the memories).
“It will be a warm, inviting, cosy space where you can settle into a corner of the bar at 3am and chat shit with the bartender, or go play pool with your mates,” Thorpe says.
“We’ll be open until 4am trading every night, including Sunday. We’re really hoping to develop Sunday night trade in the area.”
The music and entertainment lineup will be a big selling point, with operations and entertainment manager Sabrina Medcalf taking the wheel. Some Sydney hospo tea: Medcalf previously ran the tunes over our fave pizza joint and late-night hub, Frankie’s (may it rest in peace), so we might finally have a venue to fill the pizza-shaped hole in our hearts.
“We plan to blow up the status quo of what your average live music bar is presenting, especially late-night offerings in entertainment,” Medcalf told Time Out.
“Pleasure Club will be a celebration, homage, scrapbook; something that ignites or reignites a pleasure in your present or past – beyond that, we don’t like to make a lot of rules. We will be performing all our own stunts so to speak, there will be no limitations for us to pull the curtain open at 1:00am and offer up the coolest band you’ve seen in some time. We are here to entertain you.”
The idea for Pleasure Club flourished after the team took a trip to the States and is set to be heavily inspired by the Hollywood rock ‘n’ roll and New Orleans soulful blues scene. Fuck. Yes.
The place is set to be a perfect blend between a pre-dinner drinks spot for those more civilised among us, as well as the spot for late-night debauchery.
With a rotating list of local craft beers (and some international faves), natural wines, and maybe even a *checks notes*… absinthe fountain (???).
I’m just imagining what the line is going to look like at 1am on a Saturday. Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts.
