Sydney: Too Pretty for Its Own Good, Too Rich to Notice Its Soul Slipped Out the Back

There was a time, not long ago, when Sydney was a city with swagger. A place with monorails in the sky and music in the streets. A place that could look Melbourne square in the laneway and say: “We have beaches and culture.” But somewhere along the shimmering harbour, past the empty pokie lounges and the ghost of Kings Cross, Sydney lost its rhythm.

Let’s be honest: Sydney has always been a bit too good-looking for its own good. It’s the Hemsworth of cities—absurdly attractive, enviably toned, and not particularly deep once you get past the surface glisten. For decades, it coasted on its good genes: golden beaches, postcard-perfect weather, and a skyline that flirts with you shamelessly at golden hour. But the bronzed exterior was hiding a creeping cultural osteoporosis. And now the cracks are beginning to show.

Because if you take away the Opera House and the State Theatre, peel back the ICC and the government-funded mega festivals, what’s left? A city that used to stay up late and now turns in after dinner. A city that traded its personality for property value. A city that once had a monorail.

The Monorail Wasn’t Just a Transport System—It Was a Metaphor
It was weird. It was pointless. It was brilliant.

The Sydney Monorail opened in 1988 as a steel-tipped love letter to modernity. A 3.6 kilometre elevated loop that drifted anticlockwise through Darling Harbour, Chinatown, and the shopping district. There were eight stations. The entire circuit took twelve minutes. It looked like something out of The Jetsons, and it made absolutely no sense. And yet—there it was. Suspended above traffic, humming its way through the city like a child’s toy someone had forgotten to turn off.

It connected all the places tourists were meant to go. Powerhouse Museum. Paddy’s Markets. The Convention Centre. But very few places locals actually wanted to be. It wasn’t efficient, it wasn’t cheap, and it broke down more often than a 2004 Commodore on the F3. But still—it moved. It dared. It dreamt.

And then, in 2013, it was gone.

Officially, it was removed to make way for light rail and the new Convention Centre expansion. Unofficially, it was removed because Sydney got embarrassed. It had outgrown its weird phase. The monorail didn’t fit the aesthetic anymore. It wasn’t luxe. It wasn’t minimalist. It wasn’t monetisable.

And so it was dismantled. Sold off on Gumtree. Turned into meeting rooms at Google. Shoved behind fences in industrial suburbs. A few sad carriages are still rusting quietly in storage somewhere, waiting for the ABC to make a nostalgic documentary about them in 2040.

But something shifted when the monorail disappeared. Not just in the skyline, but in the psyche. It was the end of an era. The beginning of Sydney’s slow descent into cultural beige.

The Lockout Laws Were the Final Nail in the Neon Coffin
If the monorail was Sydney’s eccentric teenage phase, the lockout laws were its conservative middle age.

After a few tragic incidents in Kings Cross, the government cracked down on late-night venues with a fury that suggested no one in Parliament had been outside after dark since 1992. In came the lockouts, the curfews, the bottle shop bans. A city once known for its chaotic, charming nightlife was now being tucked into bed by 1:30am with a mug of chamomile and a stern warning about noise complaints.

Clubs closed. Bands vanished. Promoters gave up. Even Oxford Street—once the pulsating artery of queer Sydney—felt like a ghost town in heels. The city’s subcultures fled to Melbourne, or Marrickville, or the UK. Kings Cross, that glorious mess of neon, flesh, and questionable decisions, was reduced to a few wine bars and a Woolworths.

And the cruelest part? The people who voted for it didn’t even live there. They lived in leafy suburbs with cul-de-sacs and rotary clubs. They didn’t go out. They just didn’t like the idea that someone else might be having fun. And so, Sydney’s nightlife was not reformed. It was euthanised.

Melbourne Knows Something Sydney Forgot
Let’s not pretend Melbourne doesn’t have its flaws. It has the weather of a mood ring and the self-regard of a barista with a PhD. But you know what Melbourne has?

Culture. Depth. And laneways that don’t end in a gated apartment complex called “The Artisan.”

In Melbourne, you stumble into bars that look like ex-storage rooms and leave four hours later discussing the state of post-capitalist semiotics with someone named Saskia. In Sydney, you stumble into a rooftop bar where everyone looks like an extra from The Bachelor and leave $42 poorer after two cocktails and a side of aioli.

Melbourne hosts the F1, the Comedy Festival, and about 74 jazz nights a week. It values art that can’t be turned into a TikTok. It’s a city where people build scenes, not just schemes. Sydney still hasn’t figured out how to keep a live music venue open without slapping a pokie room in the back.

Sydney’s True Religion is Real Estate
Culture in Sydney has been replaced by capital gains.

You want to talk to someone about music? Good luck. Everyone’s talking about property. Auctions are our sport. Open homes are our religion. A fibro shack in the inner west just sold for $2.3 million because someone put a rosemary bush near the front gate. Entire suburbs are now just investment portfolios with a light rail stop.

This obsession infects everything. Want to open a gallery? Better make sure the yield stacks up. Want to start a theatre? Cool, but have you considered turning it into a Pilates studio with heritage floorboards and on-site parking?

We don’t build spaces for people anymore. We build them for developers. We plan precincts like PowerPoints—zones of activated vibrancy, carefully engineered to be walked through but not lingered in. Sydney doesn’t have a housing crisis. It has an imagination crisis.

The Soul Slipped Out the Back
Here’s the thing. Sydney didn’t lose its culture all at once. It slipped out quietly. Between DA approvals and liquor licensing laws. Between new light rail stops and CBD revitalisation plans. It disappeared while we were looking at the view.

But there are still sparks.

In Marrickville warehouses. In council-run art spaces clinging to relevance. In gigs that pop up in breweries on industrial estates. In the sound of someone rehearsing with a loop pedal in a Redfern sharehouse kitchen. Sydney’s soul isn’t gone—it’s just hiding.

Waiting. Watching.

Maybe even riding the ghost of a monorail in the sky.

Maybe It’s Time to Get a Little Weird Again
Bring back the monorail.

Not because it worked. Not because we need it. But because cities need symbols of ambition. Of audacity. Of fun. Sydney was never meant to be efficient. It was meant to be electric. Alive. Messy.

It’s not too late. We can still fix this. Just build something weird. Throw a gig in a tunnel. Open a venue in an old car park. Let people dance again. Let artists be broke and brilliant and take up space without being evicted by a strata committee.

Because Sydney doesn’t need more perfection. It needs more personality.

The city’s still beautiful. But beauty without culture is just a postcard. And nobody moves to a postcard.

So let’s move.

Even if it’s in a circle. Even if it’s on rubber wheels, 5.5 metres above the street.

Even if it’s only ever going nowhere—at least we’d be going together.