Pumping rock 'n' roll hits, a welcome late night pizza slice and whispers of a secret bar inside marked many late nights at Sydney's Frankie's Pizza.
"Hot pizza out front, endless party out the back," co-owner Jordan McDonald summarises.
But soon it will be demolished to make way for an underground train station for the Sydney Metro.
The bar branded its final week as "Frankie's Pizza Goes to Hell"
The party will fall silent after Sunday, exactly 10 years after it opened.
In the last week before closing, thousands of Sydneysiders spilled out around the corner on Hunter Street to score their last drink, last slice of pizza and jig into the early AM.
Located in the city's financial downtown, hedge-fund managers with silk ties could be seen mingling with metalheads clad in lace and leather.
Pouring into the seedy and sticky dancefloor beyond restaurant doors was every kind of person, all with the same goal of a good time.
Some older couples on Thursday night had returned to the venue to reminisce. They told men in cowboy outfits about the time Guns N Roses visited.
Younger pairs were also there on their first date, some sneaking off to pash by the pinball machines.
The performers on stage throughout the week were also caught up in the nostalgia.
The venue was a staple of Sydney's shrinking underground and countless bands had their first breakthrough on the club's tiny platform.
"Frankie's is the greatest venue in Australia," the frontman of rock band The Casanovas declares to the crowd's raucous agreement, "and we say that as people who come from Melbourne''.
Beneath the low ceiling covered in band posters, graffiti and god-knows-what-else, every person from every "tribe" is equal, McDonald affirms.
"You do get the suits. But concurrently, you get the strippers," McDonald says.
"You do get the weeknight vampires, the hospitality freaks, the tragics – all types."
If anything, defying Sydney's workaholic centre was something to be proud of, he says.
"It was like a clock off at five you get the hell out of there," McDonald says.
"But we did cultivate a scene right there in the CBD and proved it could be done."
Defying the odds
The lockout laws the New South Wales government introduced in February 2014 forced the 24-hour licensed venue to turn new patrons away at 1:30am.
While rates of drunken-violence plummeted across the Harbour City, many felt its soul had been hollowed out in the process.
Most late-night spots didn't survive — especially at King's Cross — but Frankie's Pizza was a rare holdout.
Patrons outside the venue described the place as "grimy", "filthy", "sketchy" but brimming with personality and carrying an undeniable sexual energy.
It was where people wanted to be at 1:30am and, provided they could behave, a place they could be themselves.
"No cover charges, no judgement," says one woman.
Frankie's was also one of the few venues that never turned to poker machines to stay afloat.
McDonald says the years were tough through lockout and the pandemic but the party spirit kept the venue alive.
"We always kept our game face on," McDonald says.
"And throw that party like there were no problems in the outside world."
While they were tough years, McDonald says he's had enough of complaints about Sydney's nightlife.
"The general public, they really need to turn to us to keep their spirits high," McDonald says.
"It shouldn't be a place of complaint, it should be a place of revelry."
Rock 'n' roll royalty, but no royal treatment
The bar was a destination for international celebrities and touring rock legends such as Guns N Roses, Dave Grohl, Queens of the Stone Age, Priscilla Presley and Jason Momoa.
Despite this claim to fame, McDonald hates name-dropping personalities who have graced the halls of Frankie's. He says they never treated anyone like royalty and that's why the big names kept coming back.
"From the very start we had a no VIP treatment, no preferential treatment, no door lists, no guest lists," McDonald says.
"I think that's why they love it down there — because they don't get treated like some special case."
One more song?
When the plans for the Metro Station were announced in May last year, the transport minister said the place would be looked after and relocated.
Over a year later, McDonald says there has not been a suitable location to move into.
But this doesn't mean the end of the Frankie's name, or McDonald's spirit.
"I do want the Frankie's Pizza name to live on. Whether that occurs in a physical sense or not, I'm not certain," McDonald says.
"I can say that I'll be involved in another game-changing rock and roll bar in the future."
