It’s the crack of dawn on Sunday morning and the line at the EndUp's door bends around the corner at Harrison and Sixth Streets. Some look great in their tight jeans and stylish sunglasses; others look spent from a long night of drugs and alcohol. But on this morning, it isn’t looks or style that have people lined up at the front door. It’s Church.

It may be known as “Church,” but instead of pews there is a deck and a waterfall. Instead of a priest preaching the word of God, DJ David Harness spins an infectious array of house beats. Sundays at the EndUp are sacred. It’s a religious place of worship for hundreds of people from around the Bay Area.

“The people that come here on Sunday come here regularly,” says Piere Tran, 31, a Sunday regular for more than 10 years. “You see the same people, the same groups and the same attitude. This is religion to us.”

Sundays at the EndUp are a special occasion. The club opens its doors at 6 a.m. and doesn’t shut down until 4 a.m. Monday morning. That’s right, 22 hours of sick house music, gay boys dancing and crack heads twitching. Eric Powers, a security guard at the EndUp for six years, says Sunday is like no other day at any club. “Everybody comes here—gay people, straight people, transsexual people—everybody,” he says. “It doesn’t matter who you are. Once you’re inside, everybody is the same. That’s the attitude here.”

The EndUp still occupies the same space it did when Al Hanken opened it in 1973. Originally, it was a gay club featuring go-go boys and “wet jockey short” contests. The party was fueled by disco, drugs and sex. But by the early 80's, the AIDS epidemic began to take its toll on the club and its patrons. Debby Greene, a bartender at the EndUp for 21 years, recalls the tragedy. “People just started dying. It was sad,” she says from behind the wood roundabout bar that has been there since the club opened. “Nobody knew what AIDS was at the time; people just started getting sick. I remember we would look in the obituaries and read off names of people who we knew from the club.” In fact, Hanken and five resident DJs all succumbed to the disease during that decade. The party was dying.

However, the EndUp survived, and over the years, it would survive again and again. Today, on the verge of its 33rd birthday, the EndUp is an eclectic after-hours nightclub. “This club is about diversity, freedom of expression and a damn good cocktail,” Greene says.

The EndUp also hosts some of the hottest DJs in the country, week in and week out, from resident DJs Harness and Ruben Mancias to guest DJs “Little” Louie Vega and Tony Humphries. The EndUp features a dance culture that takes off on Thursday night and doesn’t fizzle out until Monday morning. “You can always just end up at the EndUp,” says Rudy Mena, a patron of the club for more than 14 years.

By 6:15 a.m., the line moves forward little by little as bouncers check IDs. Church is about to begin, but on this Sunday, there will be no sermon or communion. Instead, it'll be a party celebrating the great sounds of house music and freedom of expression.