Pawn & Co: Inside Fortitude Valley’s wild buy-everything nightclub

We’ve discovered Brisbane’s weirdest and wildest nightclub, from cocktails poured from Seinfeld artworks to buyable kink paraphernalia and vintage goods. WATCH THE VIDEO.

Kink-paraphernalia, cocktails poured from paintings and hundreds of thousands of dollars of eclectic, purchasable goods are what await revellers at one Fortitude Valley nightclub.

Pawn & Co, which has reinvigorated the former Laruche and Beehive nightclubs on Ann Street, opened almost a year ago after the success of its Melbourne venue, and may well be the most bizarre venue in the city.

The premise of Pawn & Co is that every item inside the venue is for sale, thanks to a partnership with three local pawnbrokers that keep them well stocked, with everything from $10 costume jewellery and $3000 vintage bags to some truly bizarre and impressive offerings, like a $60k gramophone and their very own house-made perfume line.

Pawn & Co nightclub on Fortitude Valley's Ann St, is Brisbane's wackiest venue.

Venue co-owner and General Manager Alex Docherty said the bar has sold over 250 specialty items since their opening in mid 2024.

From 6-10pm every evening, guests are treated to a truly theatrical display from the venue’s highly-skilled bar staff, including bar manager Kris … as they offer their specialty ‘Pawn Shop Cocktails’.

Far from just a simple drink, these cocktails are a performance art.

From the ‘Liquid Assets’ served smoking inside a locked vault, the ‘Stolen Stiletto’ brought to the table in a glass slipper nestled in a shoebox full of rose petals, to the ‘Floating Pearls’ created inside a lava lamp and the colour-changing ‘Davinci’, poured straight from a framed print of Kramer from the hit sitcom Seinfeld.

Pawn & Co. guests are treated to a truly theatrical display from the venue’s highly-skilled bar staff,

Each of the items involved in the cocktail presentation are also available for purchase, with the Kramer print setting drinkers back a whopping $3000 should they wish to relive the experience at home.

The cocktails are far from the wildest aspects of the venue, as more excitable guests can take their evening upstairs to the intimate Vault of Curiosities, where the display cabinet walls of the booth seating are filled with everything from condoms, nipple clamps, harnesses and vibrators.

According to Docherty, this room is one of the highlights for date-night guests with the most commonly sold item across the whole venue being buttplugs.

Heralding the entrance to the vault is a risque bathroom featuring a two-way mirror door, allowing those inside to see across the venue while those outside are unaware.

The premise of Pawn & Co is that every item inside the venue is for sale.

Docherty grew up in Brisbane before moving to Melbourne, and spent his youth clubbing at the site’s former La Ruche nightclub, so when it became vacant, he jumped at the opportunity to bring their team’s boundary-pushing concept north.

The venue also consists of a perfumery, where they occasionally offer bespoke perfume making events, where guests create their own signature scent and the team of bar staff create drinkable cocktail versions of each and every scent created.

Due to the complexity involved, these events occur very irregularly, so the venue created a famous scent-inspired cocktail list, featuring sippable versions of scents like Chanel No. 5 and Baccarat Rouge 450, as well as their own signature scents ‘Curious’ and ‘Curiouser’ which are also available for purchase onsite.

As the evenings progress, the venue transitions from bougie cocktail bar to pulsing nightclub, as modular furniture is put away, the gramophone turns into a smoke machine and the music turns up.

An outdoor area complete with a martini station is also on the way for the venue, with a completion date not yet set.

Originally published as Pawn & Co: Inside Fortitude Valley’s wild buy-everything nightclub