ABOUT TROUGH
Located in the heart of surry hills, trough x Sydney is a dedicated space for underground electronic music and late-night culture.
Conceived back in 2005, trough emerged from the subversive darkrooms of Melbourne/naarm’s queer fetish scenE WITH THE event trough f****t party. After ruffling a few feathers with the name, trough f****t party quickly built a cult-like following at its original home, inflation, as an event for alternative gays and their admirers. After two years of stomping its boots into the dark corners of the Melbourne/naarm techno underground, trough f****t party was ready to give the gays a much needed sexually-liberated dance-club experience.
In 2010, trough matured into the x-rated moniker, trough x and settled inside Melbourne/naarm’s iconic 4-level men’s cruising venue, club80. This quickly became the new home for homos, queers and jocks, strapped up in their finest fetish-wears, coming together to UNSHACKLE their s*xual inhibition and energies on the dance-floors and in the darkrooms.
When club80 closed it's doors in 2020, trough made it their mission to continue it's legacy.
Returning to their original home at inflation, trough set about transforming in to a mobile cruise club, which they deploy across a number Melbourne's best-loved clubbing institutions, keeping the spirit of the club80 SPIRIT alive through it's pop-up experience by providing a maze of slings, glory holes, intimate & collective spaces that haVE paved the way for a new generation of sex-positive creatives to explore new possibilities & break new ground.
in 2024 Trough was offered the opportunity to establish a permanent home at the HISTORIC 273 Crown St, Surry Hills (Formerly the site of cruising intitution HeadQuarters & Trade, as well as Australia's first Lesbian Bar - Ruby Reds) and set their sights on providing SYDNEY with a dedicated home to host the kind of events we made possible in melbourne, with the explicit goal of fostering a new late-night culture in this city.
TROUGH X SYDNEY is the result of extensive works untaken to build UPon the legacy of it's FOREBEARS, WHILE improvING the safety and functionality of the spacE for a new generation. Built for durability, acoustic performance AND integrating provocative photography and video art directly into its architectural layout, TROUGH X SYDNEY operaTES as an immersive, living installation. This approach ensures that our programming works in tandem with the physical environment, where patrons can fully engage with space and make it their own, Ensuring that it remains a dedicated asset for the community it serves For years to come.
THE VENUE
The history of 273 Crown Street, Surry Hills, represents a remarkable timeline of Sydney’s LGBTQIA+ social evolution. Since the mid-1970s, this building has served as a consistent anchor for queer nightlife, evolving from a pioneering sanctuary for lesbians into a prominent site for gay male subcultures.
1975–1996: Ruby Reds and Successors
Widely recognized as Sydney’s first recreational venue dedicated to the lesbian community, it provided a rare, inclusive space during a period of significant social suppression. It was a space for students, feminists, and professional women alike. Patrons remember a long, narrow floor plan featuring exposed brickwork, a central dance floor, and the original leather banquettes from the steakhouse days.
The venue became a site of queer resistance, notably during a high-profile confrontation between police and lesbian patrons from Melbourne on New Year’s Eve in 1979.
The Transitional Years (1986–1993):
Following the initial closure of Ruby Reds, the venue hosted several short-lived, community-focused establishments, including Querelle (a mixed venue, 1986), the Boogie Room (1988), 'B's (1990), and Pastels (1990). A final iteration, Rubies, attempted to revive the spirit of the original club between 1991 and 1993 before the building underwent a major shift in identity.
1995–2016: Headquarters CRUISE CLUB
In 1995, the site was reborn as Headquarters, a multi-level gay male Cand social club. This marked the building's transition from a dance-heavy bar culture to a more private, sex-positive environment.
Operating across four levels, Headquarters was engineered to provide extensive cruising facilities, including private cabins, specialized playrooms, and a bar. Its layout catered to the evolving needs of the gay male scene in the mid-90s, offering a controlled, safe environment for intimate social and sexual exploration.
For over 20 years, Headquarters acted as a cornerstone of the Surry Hills queer district. It was a destination both for locals and those visiting for major events like the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, serving as a landmark of adult-oriented nightlife.
2016–2023: THE tRADE CLUB
Following the legacy of Headquarters, the venue was rebranded as the TRADE Club. While it maintained the infrastructure of a cruise club, it adapted to the changing demands of the 21st-century queer scene.
TRADE leaned into a "sex-positive" nightlife identity, integrating elements of a dance club—often characterized by heavy techno music—with the traditional cruising layout of its predecessor.
Current Heritage Status and Legacy
As of 2026, the building at 273 Crown Street is in the process of being formally protected. The City of Sydney has proposed the site for local heritage listing due to its unbroken record of LGBTQIA+ association spanning half a century.
This proposed status recognizes the building not just for its 1920s architecture, but as a critical piece of "social history." It stands as one of the few remaining physical links to the early days of lesbian activism in Sydney and the subsequent development of sex-positive queer spaces that helped define the Surry Hills and Oxford Street precincts.