"Everyone treats it like a nostalgic thing, but it was s---. You had to build your own stage. Now it's all haloumi and chips in candelabras," Frenzal Rhomb frontman Jay Whalley said when the band returned to perform at the Newtown Social Club in 2015.
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His band mate, Lindsay McDougall, was a little more reflective of the live music institution, formerly known as the Sandringham Hotel or "The Sando", where they rocked out during the early 1990s.
"The toilets at The Sando always smelled terrible," McDougall said.
"When they did it up the final time and turned it into Newtown Social Club I remember getting upset. Because I used to think that I could close my eyes when I got just below Newtown Station and find my way to my house just by the smell of The Sando toilets."
Gone are the dingy bathrooms, now there are spotless, unisex ablutions, grapefruit mimosas and Korean glazed wings.
That dodgy stage, which has elevated names like Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds and The Whitlams, is now the eighth hole of a mini golf course with a speaker hanging above it blaring tunes like Crazy Frog.
The historic Sando, which then became the fizzled Newtown Social Club, is now Sydney's first licensed putt putt pub.
Holey Moley Golf Club, an 18-hole course boasting a cocktail bar and Boa kitchen, opens on Thursday. The shiny, gentrified venue, which is situated alongside a vegetarian, pay-as-you-feel restaurant, is the latest in a number of similar ventures rolled out by entertainment business Funlab.
The Holey Moley concept was established in Brisbane, then Melbourne, inside an old nightclub venue where punters now sink hole-in-ones on the 27-hole course instead of shots. Funlab, which sees itself as a direct competitor of the embattled fun park provider Ardent Leisure, will have a national footprint once it opens Holey Moley in Adelaide and Perth at the end of the year, 14 months since launching the initial concept.
Speaking to Fairfax Media ahead of the opening, Funlab chief Michael Schreiber said hospitality in Australia, and Sydney particularly, is no longer about clubbing till all hours and yelling over thumping music. Patrons now live by the Instagram-age mantra of "pics or it didn't happen".
"A lot of old-time pastimes are now back in favour, like crocheting, Jenga and bowling. Hospitality now is about experiences, offering real ice-breakers and places you can have a conversation. Our market, the Millennials, like 18- to 35-year-olds, want to spend money on experiences, things you can document on social media," Schreiber said.
"The industry in Sydney has been hurt by the lockouts [laws] but we're a kick-off venue, so by midnight we're done."
And Holey Moley Sydney has plenty of "good content for Instagram". Golfers tee off from The Simpsons loungeroom or in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory before moving through the split-level retro course which includes a donkey with Donald Trump's head plastered near its tail standing outside a small barn emblazoned with the motto: "Make Mini Golf Great Again".
