{"id":840447,"date":"2026-08-02T20:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/840447\/"},"modified":"2026-08-02T20:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-02T20:12:09","slug":"inside-sydneys-hottest-nightspot-where-shoes-are-off-laptops-are-on-and-customers-drink-matcha-sydney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/840447\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Sydney\u2019s hottest nightspot, where shoes are off, laptops are on and customers drink matcha | Sydney"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a cavernous space once occupied by a radical bookshop, the big lights are off, laptops are out, lo-fi beats are on and the matcha is flowing. It\u2019s 6pm on a Wednesday night and the students of Sydney<\/a> are living it up. It\u2019s not what one would expect from a venue on King Street \u2013 a strip better known for rowdy live music and anxious mornings after.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole point of it is that we don\u2019t want to remind you of work,\u201d says Luca Yang, founder of O3 Space. On LinkedIn, the startup says they are creating the \u201cbest study products the world has ever seen\u201d. In real life, this looks like 24\/7 study cafes, which Yang says are commonplace in Asia but relatively new in Australia.<\/p>\n

O3 is yet to join the ranks of Sydney\u2019s other, assuredly less wholesome 24\/7 venues<\/a>; while the study space promises around-the-clock access in future, for now it is open 10am to 9pm.<\/p>\n

Luca Yang, 27, owner-operator of the newly opened O3 study enterprises in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. Photograph: R\u00e9mi Chauvin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Yang opened his first cafe in Auckland in 2024 and has since built two more in Melbourne\u2019s Southbank and Brunswick. The first Sydney outpost opened one week ago. The launch event was their biggest yet, taking Yang\u2019s team by surprise, he says: the first weekend\u2019s queues rivalled those of a nightclub.<\/p>\n

I join the other patrons hovering awkwardly outside; to enter the space I need to scan a QR code on the O3 app. \u201cIt was a bit strange \u2026 because you don\u2019t even need an app to enter a library or a university space,\u201d says Annie McCann, an author who visited the cafe for a writing session last weekend.<\/p>\n

My annoyance at having to download yet another app quickly dissipates after stepping into the warmth. The door opens to a truly whimsical sight: a set of sloping roofs line the centre of the space, with a plot of astroturf in the middle. An upside-down Japanese torii gate hangs from the ceiling.<\/p>\n

The app says there are 126 people inside \u2013 and it shows. There are people cross-legged on the grass, sitting along a communal bench and splayed out over the various antique-looking sofas; it reminds me of another Japanese phenomenon, the cat islands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hiba Maricar and Zainab Kashif, both 20, from Silverwater say they enjoy the O3 space to study and see friends outside university. Photograph: R\u00e9mi Chauvin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Like everyone else I speak to, University of Technology students Hiba Maricar and Zainab Kashif found out about the cafe on Instagram; O3\u2019s marketing team have a knack for making videos go viral. Maricar appreciates not having to buy a drink to stay in the space \u2013 although they both have vanilla cappuccinos, which they order \u201cno matter\u201d where they study. They\u2019re sitting upstairs and look comfortable at their table. Says Kashif: \u201cI feel like I\u2019m in my own room studying.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cafe\u2019s location is convenient for Torrens university students Melak Al-Zuhairi, Renin Hamdan and Raiha Mariam to hang out after class. It\u2019s just a 10-minute bus ride from campus, and there\u2019s a train station nearby.<\/p>\n

When I ask if it\u2019s their first visit, it dawns on the trio that they\u2019ve been here every day since it opened. They laugh, sinking further into their seats up at the back of the cafe. Hamdan is curled up on a beanbag, with her shoes neatly parked to the side. \u201cYou\u2019re not at home unless the shoes are off,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

This \u201chome\u201d comes at a price. Visitors receive three free hours a week. After that, overtime is charged at $7.50 per hour. Alternatively, tiered membership plans give you more hours for between $10 and $50 a week.<\/p>\n

Many of the students are happy to pay, though only for the entry-level, 10-hour membership. \u201cIt\u2019s like the gym at this point. I\u2019m always here. I\u2019m always there. I\u2019m happy,\u201d says Hamdan.<\/p>\n

Others think their free hours will suffice, with one patron saying she wouldn\u2019t normally spend more than three hours at a library studying anyway.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to ignore the sheer quantity of books tucked into corners and lining the walls. I accidentally knock a pile over while squeezing through a corridor on the second level. They\u2019re remnants of the building\u2019s former life as a cherished bookshop run by Bob Gould, an iconoclastic figure in Sydney\u2019s far-left movement.<\/p>\n

Melak Al-Zuhairi, Raiha Mariam and Renin Hamdan have recently started meeting up in the O3 space in Newtown, because they like the lighting, vibe and freedom to study. Photograph: R\u00e9mi Chauvin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The cafe\u2019s use of the space has drawn the ire of some locals. While Diane Fieldes, who has been involved in radical politics since the early 70s, has seen a lot of the backlash online, she says: \u201cI don\u2019t have that attitude at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fieldes, a proud member of Sydney\u2019s Socialist Alternative organisation, has significant memories of Bob Gould, who died in 2011<\/a>, and of Gould\u2019s Book Arcade, which she says was Australia\u2019s largest secondhand bookshop with a well-established collection of leftwing literature.<\/p>\n

Gould\u2019s Book Arcade lives on in a new form, now further south on King Street. But the original site has been standing empty for years, a \u201csad story\u201d, says Fieldes. Seeing the place in use again is \u201cwonderful\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI figure it\u2019s better that it\u2019s used, than it just gets pulled down and turned into some soulless apartments that are too expensive for people to live in,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe bookshop was very much the spirit of Bob Gould himself, which was to be a radical, to never take a backward step in terms of arguing about politics \u2026 that\u2019s not embodied in a physical space.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photograph: R\u00e9mi Chauvin\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Fieldes believes businesses like O3 are attractive to people because \u201cthere is kind of a natural desire to \u2026 be around other people. You want a space where you can actually interact with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the \u201c3\u2033 in the name suggests, the cafe aims to have the qualities of a third place, a term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg to describe social environments separate from home and work. Does it matter that they charge by the hour?<\/p>\n

McCann is pragmatic: \u201cIt\u2019s a third space for three hours. And then you have to pay.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a cavernous space once occupied by a radical bookshop, the big lights are off, laptops are out,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-840447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}