Massive queues as Newtown welcomes Sydney’s hottest new cocktail bar and live music venue Pleasure Club

Proving that if you build it, they will come. Sydney’s latest late-night bar, the Pleasure Club, draws the crowds from the moment it opened

Odd Culture Group’s much-anticipated basement cocktail bar and live music haunt, Pleasure Club, is now open in Newtown. Picture: Supplied

Within three hours of opening for the first time, Newtown’s new late night venue the Pleasure Club had queues of patrons snaking round the corner.

The basement venue was the first in 100 years to be granted a 4am liquor licence and from the moment it opened on Friday February 23, until 4am when it shut, it was at capacity.

The Pleasure Club is the latest from the hospitality company Odd Culture Group, who are known for pushing boundaries and rewriting the hospitality rule book, with CEO James Thorpe a former Philosophy academic, campaigned Sydney’s strict bureaucracy for years to get the 4am liquor licence.

Lines out the front of the Pleasure Club on opening weekend.

Lines out the front of the Pleasure Club on opening weekend.

“It was very emotional moment to see the response,” said Thorpe. “People were losing their minds.”

The venue has a focus on live music and cocktails and is inspired by the philosophy concept of hedonism, which is the pursuit of pleasure over pain. The group have hired Sam Kirk, from Jackson’s on George, to lead the state-of-the-art cocktail lab and is serving cocktails like the Chicken Parm, which is concoction made of vodka, comte cheese, bacon, breadcrumbs, tomato and chicken salt.

Odd Culture Group’s much-anticipated basement cocktail bar and live music haunt, Pleasure Club, is now open in Newtown. Picture: Supplied

The venue fits 120 people and has a wide array of live music genres. Picture: Supplied

While Sabrina Metcalf (ex Frankie’s) has created an eclectic line up of live entertainment which ranges from acoustic, to drag, to cabaret to performance art.

During the opening weekend, life size puppets wondered the venue. While the food consists of just four hotdogs.

The bars menu consists of just four hot dogs. Picture: Supplied

“We want The Pleasure Club to be a step forward, not just in Sydney but across the world, on what a good cocktail bar can be,” said Thorpe. Who adds that the weekend’s entertainment offering was “the perfect mix of beautiful and shocking.”

The Pleasure Club’s opening comes hot on the heels of The Swillhouse Group’s new CBD music venue, The Caterpillar Club, which since opening last year has also drawn the crowds.

The venue is the group, who run Hubert’s and Alberto’s Lounge, foray back into the music world after the were forced to close late night rock and roll hotspot Frankie’s in 2022.