There's no need to turn the lights out in Sydney, why don't we turn on the stage lights?

I'm a news junkie and for the last couple of weeks the Sydney Morning Herald and News Ltd publications have been having a field day with coverage about the lock out laws following a LinkedIn post by Freelancer's Matt Barrie saying that Sydney was a joke and King's Cross was dying.

The general gist is that the NSW Liberal Government is a nanny state and that premier Mike Baird doesn't want people to have fun anymore.

This is of course in reference to the lock out laws which came into force in February 2014 following the deaths of Thomas Kelly and Daniel Christie in Kings Cross.

Premier Mike Baird is being blamed for these laws and killing Sydney.

People are ignoring the simple fact that Barry O'Farrell was premier at the time the laws were introduced and that Mike Baird is simply not reversing them.

Yes, several bars have closed as a consequence of the lock out laws, but has there been any research about rising rents or any focus on that?  The answer is no.  The most recent bar to close is George Street's Bar Century which will close at the end of the month.  An article did mention that rising rents were a factor but instead zoomed in on the lockout laws as killing Sydney rather than accepting that maybe its closure was due to low drink prices and high rents.

Do any of these commentators and people on their soap box live in Kings Cross?  Would Matt Barrie really be in King's Cross at 3:01am?  Come on people, he's the CEO of Freelancer, surely he'd be more at home somewhere else rather than The Cross.

Have any of the critics taken a walk down Darlinghurst Road in the Golden Mile?  Well readers, I've saved you the trouble.  Here are a few photos from King's Cross during the day today, on a Saturday.

Anyone who walked down Darlinghurst Road today would have seen several things.  They would have seen people still drinking at the bars - Kings Cross Hotel, Las Vegas Hotel and Sugar Mill are three bars that are always busy.  Coffee shops like Froth and Five Borroughs are always busy too with seats out on the pavement.  As you can see from the photos King's Cross is far from dead.

You'll see from the last two photos that the former Astoria Hotel which had been empty for months is finally being developed into apartments.  Across the road at 30 Darlinghurst Road, Iris Capital have renovated a former backpackers into furnished apartments.  Further down the road the old Crest Hotel is being turned into apartments and the former Mercure is also going to house apartments.

The last photo is off Llankelly Place which has several cafes and an art gallery, which if you didn't venture off the main strip you wouldn't even know it existed.

King's Cross is not dying, far from it.  It's evolving and becoming a different area, but it still maintains its heart and soul.  The heart and soul people don't talk about is one of creativity and culture combined with development and gentrification.  That's not a bad thing.  King's Cross has always been home to creative types like presumed murdered journalist, Juanita Neilsen (pictured below) who ran a newspaper from her Victoria Street terrace, Dame Mary Gilmore who was a poet, and several other media personalities including SBS's Lee Lin Chin and even former Prime Minister Paul Keating.

King's Cross will never die.

The major issue that's being highlighted with the anti King's Cross headlines is that people don't know King's Cross for what it really is, an artistic Mecca in Sydney. One of the plaques on Darlinghurst Road even says, "many Sydney 'identities" who chose artistic and creative lives above money."

Kenneth Slessor is one such person.  He was a poet and journalist who lived in King's Cross.  He is responsible for the plaque, "you find this ugly, I find this lovely" taken from a poem, William Street, written in 1935.

King's Cross once housed a couple of theatres (King's Cross Threatre and  Newsreal Theatrette, and the ABC several years ago until 1984 as shown in the below photograph published by Crikey. This photo shows the King's Cross Theatre where the new apartment building, Omnia is being developed on the corner of Darlinghurst and Victoria Roads.

There has always been so much more to King's Cross than alcohol and the night life.  It has a vast history of arts and writing that people don't tend to talk about.  To say the area is dying ignores the other important aspects of its history and shows that the state government was right to introduce the lock out laws. 

It's rather sad that people are complaining there's nothing other than drinking to do.  There is loads to do in Sydney and if people really need to drink then they can do so outside of the CBD or before 3am. 

Or, are people so dependent on alcohol that they can't see that, in which case the state government has a huge drinking culture problem on their hands.

The simple facts remain, Kings Cross is still busy and there is so much more to the area than drinking, along with Sydney as a whole.  People could go to the zoo, casino, beaches, see the harbour, go to movies or if they really do need to drink they can do that outside of the CBD.  Is it really so hard to find another place to drink if it's so important to them?

Sydney's not dying and there is no need to turn the lights out like Freelancer CEO Matt Barrie suggests, but maybe he should go to Melbourne as he'd obviously be more at home there and doesn't appreciate all Sydney has to offer.

King's Cross is changing so with the apartment development why not take this as an opportunity to develop live music venues and theatres for local productions and local actors and writers?  Why not take this as a chance to return King's Cross to its true roots rather than giving up on such an interesting and special area?