The Crew Behind Oxford Tavern and Odd Culture Is Opening a Basement Bar in Newtown

There’s a tiny sliver of Newtown – the block where The Bank and Newtown Station sit – that’s zoned by the City of Sydney as a “Late Night Management” area. It’s the only spot in the suburb where businesses have the opportunity to be granted 24-hour trading licences. And it’s in this little area that the new venue by the Odd Culture Group (Oxford Tavern , Duke of Enmore , Odd Culture Newtown , The Old Fitz) is set to open next year, with a licence to trade until 4am every day. And while details are being kept under wraps, we do know two things.

“It’ll be a fucking bar,” Odd Culture CEO James Thorpe tells Broadsheet. “And it’ll have live music. Those are the two things I can say.”

The site is a gigantic basement beneath King Street, a little further towards the train station than Odd Culture’s Newtown bar and restaurant (which has a 2am licence). Once an adult bookshop, it’s sat dormant for years. And while Thorpe and his team were only searching for a basement in Newtown to put a bar – there aren’t a lot of basements in the suburb, says Thorpe – it just so happens the space they found is in that tiny zone where late-night trading is a go.

“It’s the first 4am licence [for a Newtown bar] since records began,” says Thorpe. “Obviously the Marly and [other pubs] have had their grand old hotel licences for 200 years, and they trade super late. But in terms of bars … there just aren’t that many.”

The licence also means the bar will be able to trade until 4am, even on Sundays – a rarity when most venues in the area are licensed to close by 10pm.

“The Duke is usually completely full at 10pm when it closes on a Sunday,” says Thorpe. “I do think there’s an appetite for this.”

Odd Culture Group’s new venue is slated to open in early to mid-2023.