Strip Club Kings Cross 42 Darlinghurst Road · Doors 8pm

Inside, the room runs across two levels with a bar on each and a stage that never sits quiet for long. The cast rotates through the night, feature shows land through the evening, and the velvet booths ringing the floor are built for groups who want the best seat in the house without fighting for it. Bottle service is poured at the table, and reserved groups get a host who runs the night from arrival to last call.

The fit-out answers the address. The Cross has had every kind of room over the years; this one was built as its flagship, in velvet, brass and low gold light rather than neon. It is a strip club, unapologetically, and it is also the most polished room on the street.

Kings Cross has carried Sydney’s nightlife for the better part of a century. The strip runs from the Coca-Cola sign at the top of William Street along Darlinghurst Road toward the El Alamein Fountain, and for generations this stretch has been where the city comes when the rest of it closes. The area has been groomed and polished since its wildest decades, but the late licences and the appetite for a proper night never left.

Number 42 sits in the middle of all that. Groups eat on Macleay Street or along the strip first, then make us the destination rather than a stop. When the night ends, you are surrounded by cabs, a train station and half of Sydney’s late kitchens.

The room does occasions properly, too. A bucks party gets a reserved booth and a dedicated host, birthdays and corporate nights are placed the same way through VIP & Booths, and regulars do it best with a membership.