Thursday’s fire on Oxford Street has left a local business owner mourning the sudden loss of his adult store/sex venue.

Several fire trucks tackled the blaze as the Den Adult Concepts store burned on Thursday afternoon – Same Same readers tweeted us dramatic photos of the incident as smoke rose high into the air and the building was extensively damaged.

A small crowd gathered outside on the street nearby as the firefighters did their work. Among them was a man who claimed to be the venue’s owner. He told a camera crew he’d rush there after a staff member phoned him.

“I was speaking to the employee at that shop and I thought he said, ‘I can smell shit,” he recounts. “And I go: ‘No shit, it’s a gay back room.’ He goes: ‘No, I smell smoke.” I said, ‘You’d better go check that out.’ And then, before I knew it, the whole fucking thing’s on fire and they’ve blocked the roads off.”

The businessman lamented the fact that his store had perished only a week away from Mardi Gras’ major events – he initially blamed a nearby rival venue owner, in YouTube footage doing the rounds this morning on social media.

The video’s description assures us: “Yes this video is real, this person IS NOT an actor!”

Take a look. The clip contains coarse language and ‘adult concepts’...