If you want to 'hit the town' on foot, Melville's Seventh Street is barfly heaven; the five-block strip offers a lively mix of good and bad restaurants, watering holes and coffee bars ranging from Rats (university students) and Xai-Xai (media types) to Statement (gay) and Buzz 9 (trendoids). A few blocks away, in Fourth Avenue, is oh!, a buzzing gay bar. Join Jo'burg buppies in action at Katzy's on Thursdays (The Firs, Rosebank, +27118803945) for live music and crowd-watching.

For club action, super-slick Kilimanjaro (The High Street, Melrose Arch, +27112144300) is home to the city's power players. The 2,000-capacity mostly-gay Bitch (Metro Centre, corner Hendrick Verwoerd Drive and Jan Smuts Avenue, Randburg, info line +2711844059164) is the club locals are referring to when asking each other 'Are you going to the club tonight?'. The funky Color Bar (44 Stanley Avenue, Milpark, +27114822038) attracts a mixed crowd, with a slant towards film, art and media types.

The Johannesburg Civic Theatre (Loveday Street, Braamfontein, +27118776800), led by Bernard Jay (once the manager of Divine, the 1980s drag icon and John Waters-created superstar), offers affordable world-class theatre productions, along with an art gallery, ballet studio and a branch of the News Cafe (+27118776847), a South African chain of slick diner-bars.

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