Sydney Nightlife & The 24 Hour City: Nothing Good Happens At 3am (The Naked City)

‘Sydney Nightlife & The 24 Hour City: Nothing Good Happens At 3am’ is the latest column (October 28, 2024) from Coffin Ed‘s The Naked City column – featured exclusively on City Hub.

During the late 1980s a popular indie cinema in the Sydney CBD ran a series of midnight to dawn screenings. The New Mandarin, later The Mandolin, was a regular haunt of B movies fans and renowned for the unusual way its eclectic programming was often presented – with a touch of old school theatrics.  The all night screenings featured at least four classic horror movies, a ‘wake up’ service for those punters who occasionally nodded off and plenty of hot coffee at the candy bar. Patrons often arrived with cushions and doonas, an ample supply of No-Doz and other stay awake stimulants, plus a healthy sense of humour. The rest of the city might have shut up shop but at 4.00am the ‘Swamp Creature’ was running amok at The New Mandarin.

Flash forward nearly four decades and the Sydney City Council has announced plans to transform Sydney into a true 24 hour city rivalling the night time cultures of Berlin, New York, Tokyo and Bangkok. Have we heard it all before? Well yes, and as recently as four years ago when Stuart Ayres the then Minister for Tourism stated

 “To compete on the world stage and create jobs, we must have a fantastic after dark experience and 24-hour amenities for all to enjoy, and live music, and increasing public transport options. At its core, our objective is to create a 24-hour city that is world renowned for its vibrancy, diversity, safety and access to amenity right throughout the day and night.”

The current proposal would see the designation of a number of 24 hour entertainment precincts embracing parts of the CBD and the usual suspects like Kings Cross, Newtown and Oxford Street Darlinghurst. The Council is quick to point out that it would not only be encouraging extended drinking and dining hours but the opportunity for people to shop late and enjoy a whole range of activities that are traditionally curtailed well before midnight.

We have come a long way since the infamous days of the so called ‘six o’clock swill’ when pubs in NSW closed their bars at 6.00pm. Drinkers flocked in, many direct from their workplaces for the final hour of trading, with schooners out numbering middies ten to one. This quasi prohibition ended in 1955 and gradually pub and club trading hours were extended over the following decades.

Just how the proposed 24 hour entertainment precincts would work is yet to be fully explained and already there are cries of opposition from residents who could find themselves with a brain pounding disco only a few doors away at 2.30am in the morning. The chaotic spread of the CBD and the sprawling suburban landscape also presents numerous problems. What’s worked in cities like New York and Tokyo is the compact centralised nature of the areas devoted to entertainment, dining and other 24 hour activities.

Admittedly the ability now to run 24 hour Metro trains could have a major impact, allowing late night punters to party into the wee small hours and not be at the mercy of cabs and inflated Uber prices to get back home. How much workers will want to work the après midnight hours and all the economies of restaurants, bars and night clubs extending their trading will also come into play. Just anointing a certain area as a dedicated late night precinct is no guarantee new businesses will set up shop or established ones will want to stay open longer.

If we do eventually create a genuine 24 hour city, here are just a few of the changes and innovations we could encounter – a 24 hour sleep clinic would be great for those all night workers who can’t get their daytime shut-eye, picnics in Hyde Park at 2.30am in the morning could see punters sharing their hampers with possums, rats and other nocturnal critters and the return of the six o’clock swill might find bar services ceasing at 6.00am, so night time revellers could have an hour or to sober up.

There’s no doubt Sydney could do with some major improvements and creative thinking when it comes to our night time culture and the extension of trading hours. Whether we ever become a real 24 hour metropolis raises all sorts of questions and a lot of cynicism. The cities around the world that have developed that culture have done so over many years with multiple factors involved. Here in Sydney, government and council regulations and red tape have often worked against late night enterprise. To turn around now and think we can artificially create a 24 hour city is the stuff of pipe dreams.

Perhaps the final world should come from an ABC listener who texted in on an ABC radio program last week, where the topic was being discussed:

“Nothing good happens at 3.00am.”