Miss Diana Fuller at the Rex Hotel in Kings Cross on 14 September 1954.SMH NEWS Picture by HUGH ROSShhollins
High Society ... Diana Fuller at the Rex Hotel in the Cross in 1954. Photo: Hugh Ross
Louis Nowra laments the changing face of his beloved Kings Cross.

There is no way I will be venturing outside tonight. As usual Kings Cross will be invaded by up to 20,000 people who will take over the streets, nightclubs, hotels and bars. Sunday morning there will be evidence of what happened during the night on the entrance to the front door of my apartment building - in the past it has included blood, urine, shit and vomit.
Last Sunday's early morning shooting of a 14-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man by the police, as the driver tried to escape from the law by driving on the crowded footpath of Darlinghurst Road, was not a surprise to locals. Only the week before someone had fired a shot in the Bada Bing nightclub just a few doors up from the incident. There have also been shootings in other nightclubs, bullets fired at clubs and guns fired in the main street.
These acts of violence are merely symptomatic of an epidemic of aggression and antisocial behaviour that engulfs the Cross every Friday and Saturday night, much of it fuelled by alcohol and drugs. There are drunken rampages, unprovoked attacks on passers-by and the homeless, and drunks and the drug-addled assaulting police.
Norm Erskine, who was a famous crooner in the Kings Cross area during the 50 s and 60 s with Sammy Davis Jnr. Photo Supplied. SHD Sunday Extra. 28 May 2010 
 Those were the days ... Norm Erskine, a famous crooner in the area during the '50s and '60s, with Sammy Davis jnr.

One of the most alarming statistics was that in 2010 there were almost twice as many assaults on the police as there were officers on patrol. It is thought that 80 per cent of assaults are alcohol-related. And no wonder the main culprit is alcohol, as there are 300 licensed premises concentrated in a tiny area of 500 square metres.
To go out on the main streets on a Friday or Saturday night is to be amazed at the thousands of men and women milling around, waiting to get inside clubs, searching for a pub or just loitering. By the early hours the sense of fun has turned into one of menace as men tanked up with testosterone, drugs and booze roam in packs, drunken girls totter on their high heels, fall and brawl. Residents can only watch from their windows as the mob use the parks and doorways to urinate, shit and vomit. As dawn comes up the crowds may have lessened but this is when the violence is at its most palpable - when men take out their aggression on friends and strangers.
To understand what is happening in the Cross now it's important to know the role it has played in our city for the past 70 or so years. During the 1930s Kings Cross became a byword for sophistication in clothes, architecture and openness to other cultures. It was the Cross where foreigners and their food were accepted, where social and sexual experimentation took place. It was a neon island surrounded by endless drab suburbs.

The infamous Pink Pussycat club part of the Kings Cross Strip Club scene, 31 March 1989.SMH Picture by STAFF 
 Part of the scene ... the infamous Pink Pussycat Club.

It became a centre of hedonistic pleasure during the World War II, where American servicemen lodged and spent their R&R. The black market flourished and sly-groggers made a fortune. After the Americans left, successive state governments realised that all cities require a safety valve where activities such as prostitution, sex clubs, late-night drinking and other dubious pleasures could be found. The idea was to be able to confine these activities to one particular area, which could be controlled and separated so that these activities would not spread to the morally pure suburbia.
By the time of the Vietnam War, when Americans came again for R&R, Kings Cross was party central. With the Americans came hard drugs and the Cross, always at the forefront of social experimentation, became a hub for heroin and later other drugs. Yet, at the same time, the Cross stayed a vital mixture of the wealthy and the poor, the bohemian artist and the hooker, the straights and the gays. It became a place of tolerance while the rest of Australia remained a bleak conformist society.
Part of its tolerance is that it is a port town. For decades sailors from across the world have stepped off their ships just down the road and made a pilgrimage to what the media refers to as the ''red light'' district. A Kings Cross resident knows this is part of its charm and notoriety; its Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde character. By day the locals own the area. It has a village-like atmosphere where even old widows can go about safely and, unlike other parts of Australia, remain part of a community. At night during the weekend the locals retire to their apartments to allow the visitors their Bacchanalian impulses.
But, of course, given the Cross was a moral exception to the rest of society's values, it was easy for political and police corruption to flourish. By the late 20th century the Cross was in decline. But in the past eight or so years there has been a remarkable transformation. Most of the hotels have become apartments, there are gourmet shops, upmarket restaurants and the once dangerous lanes are becoming as fashionable as those of Melbourne. Gentrification has meant the influx of the affluent and the disappearance of the artist and others who can't afford to live here any more. And as usual the Cross tolerates what other suburbs wouldn't: for instance the library is a couple of doors from a sex shop on one side and the injecting centre on the other.
These weren't the only changes. The rest of Australian society had caught up with the Cross. Prostitutes found they could earn more money in the suburbs, and porn on the net effectively killed the sex clubs, which no longer make money. Because so many hotels closed there are few tourists these days, which means that many shops which catered to them have closed.
But the government remains fixated by the Cross being society's safety valve and so the decision to make it a 24-hour entertainment district is in keeping with its past history. But what exactly does that mean? There are few real nightclubs and strip shows; instead it's the beer barns and bars that have become the main attractions. For most visitors, the allure of Kings Cross is now alcohol and drugs. The constant presence of bikies and their guns is all about the various bikie groups trying to take over the lucrative trade in drugs.
The police are so overstretched that nightclub owners offered to have their own security people help patrol the streets of a weekend. The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, said last year he would use all his powers to clean up the Cross, saying that it contained the most alcohol-fuelled streets in the nation. But little has happened.
If it's so patently obvious that alcohol is to blame for so much violence and antisocial behaviour then why doesn't the government and City of Sydney do something about it? It's clear the hotel industry is a powerful lobby group and it doesn't want to ruin its cash cow by limiting hours and enforcing lockouts. But the City of Sydney doesn't have exactly pure motives either. It may have helped restore the Cross to some of its former glories but as Suzie Matthews, the City of Sydney manager of the late night economy, has said, ''A balance needs to be struck between the needs of business, what Sydneysiders want, public safety, consideration of local residents and economic growth''.
But the balance is now heavily weighted towards the needs of business. In other words money trumps social responsibility. If this attitude continues we'll continue to experience shootings like last week and the Cross will slowly be destroyed for the sake of a quick buck.

Louis Nowra has lived in Kings Cross for more than 20 years. He is writing a history of the area, to be published next year.