John Ibrahim is one of the best-known names in Sydney's nightlife history: nightclub owner and street fighter, known as the King of the Cross. This film sets out where he came from, then reads, with his permission, an extract from his book The Last King of the Cross about one night in a back lane, when a bikie club came for his club and his bouncers, and what that fight did for control of the Cross.
The Cross
From the 1960s onwards, Kings Cross was Sydney's main tourist accommodation and entertainment district and also its red-light district. Organised crime and police corruption were deeply entrenched. One of the city's most notorious illegal casinos ran for years only yards from Darlinghurst police station. Much of it began with Abe Saffron, known as Mr Sin, and with heavy gangland figures such as Lenny McPherson and George Freeman, long before Ibrahim came to prominence.
The Ibrahims came to Australia from Lebanon, escaping a civil war that ran from 1975 to 1990, left an estimated 150,000 dead and drove almost a million people out of the country. In Sydney they grew into one of the most infamous and respected Lebanese families in the city's west. John's older brother Sam was a top martial artist and street fighter, feared across the underworld, and a guiding light for John. He trained him, and he was fiercely protective of his little brother.
Trouble brewing
In the early 1990s, Ibrahim writes, gangs were terrorising the street and intimidating venues: bikies, thugs, football teams, westies. The Cross was the only place to go out late, so everyone came sooner or later. The policy was zero tolerance: no gang was let into any venue or allowed a foothold in the area. The bikies in particular did not like being told no.
Tension had already been building. Two weeks earlier Sam had been on the street outside the Pink Pussycat, where the bikies parked in a row and lounged on their bikes. A man arrived trying to rally backup. He had two teeth missing, and said some little so-and-so had just headbutted him. Sam asked him whether the place was called the Tunnel. It was. Sam told him the man he was talking about was his little brother, and offered him a choice: a drink across the road at Illusions, on Sam, or he could knock out the rest of his teeth.
The back lane
On the night itself, Ibrahim was hoping to close the Tunnel early and go next door to Porky's for Big Stan's party. With him were all the security from Bobby McGee's nightclub, led by Commando Nick and Roy, waiting for him to cash up.
He was called urgently to the front door. Before he reached it he could hear the roar of Harley-Davidsons. Jammed along the small lane were 30 or more motorbikes, most of the riders patched. They kicked out their stands almost in unison and the weapons came out: baseball bats and tyre irons. Earlier that night, one of his doormen had turned away two members of the club. Now they were back in numbers.
Ibrahim gave the door girl a nod. She switched on the flashing red light, a security system that linked all the clubs, and he told her to shut the bulletproof door behind him so she would be safe. Outside the bikies kept their helmets on, which was meant to intimidate. He saw axe handles and iron bars, and some of them putting in mouth guards. Standing there with two men in suits, he admits, he thought they were finished.
What the bikies did not know was that something like a doormen's convention was going on a few metres away. As they approached, the side doors of the neighbouring clubs opened and out came the bouncers from Big Stan's party, drunk and up for it. The kitchen door opened and the rest of the Bobby McGee's crew came jogging into the lane. Even Paulie, the Chinese chef Ibrahim had given his first job in Australia, who had been a doctor in China, turned up with a big medical case. About 20 of them in all, with spruikers, other club owners and a few of the working women from the street.
The message
Ibrahim ranks it as one of the ugliest things he had seen up to then. There was damage on both sides. The police arrived mid-fight, blocked both ends of the street and watched. Keeping their helmets on did not help the bikies: half of them had them cracked off their heads. Those who could get away did, so fast that they left their bikes behind, and the bikes were smashed to pieces with the weapons they had dropped. He heard later that some of the police had been laying bets on who would win.
He came away with two cracked ribs and a ringing in his head. The message, he writes, was clear: if you wanted to move on the Cross, you needed to bring more than a few baseball bats. No one who was there, he says, has ever forgotten it.