Oranges are not the only fruit

We have Lahannya playing down the club this weekend before Transmission - sounds like it's going to be a good gig and it's well cheap too :)

Doors 8pm, Band 9pm Transmission 10pm - £3

so who's coming along - it'll be worth seeing the band even if you can't stay late?

edit: gah deleted the silly poll as it won't work :(

well today's been up and down.

sorry about my earlier outburst but it was all beginning to crumble infront of my eyes. feeling a little more positive now. I think there's 6-8 weeks till we need money which gives me time to chase up more investment from round and about.

so today:

investor stuff - argh doom gloom. down

people rally round - an extra £2k confirmed - £1k saved from extinction and a whole pile of business plans and investor docs sent out. ace. up.

this afternoon my company stuff arrived. there now exists an ACTUAL company thesubculture (leeds) ltd. woo. up.

decide on a cash tariff bank account with co-op. this will take 10-15 days for them to sort out once I've filled in the forms. this is 2-3 times as long as natwest etc. but it's the account we need. you can pay in cash over a post office counter really cheaply (under half the price of most banks) but 10-15 days! ffs! I have to have this bank account operational before I can even start to apply for the john smith's loan. arse arse arse down.

steven henderson from savills phones. Helen Beckett from TCS is recommending my plan to the board and so basically we have the go ahead. gosh! up and they're willing to remove the clause about me having to pay if things run late and replace it with a £500 pre-completion deposit to be forfitted if I back out. up and completion can occur when the contracts are agreed or just after the loan arrives if that is later - i.e the loan timing isn't an issue up

so. get your arses into gear - there's almost certainly going to be a club for us all to start flapping about and refurbishing in 6-8 weeks. now all you have to do is not spend all your money on crack before then

following on from my last post and particularly keef's comment.

my whole thought for the club (and possibly the name) is subculture. I don't think it would work as a one genre pony but i'm also aware that people don't want 7 blended nights a week playing the same stuff.

the take off of monthly and 2-weekly nights has been a big boon I think as it allows for a good variety of nights out on a regular basis.

my initial thoughts would be to have some sort of generic alternative saturday (possibly with a more metal slant on wendyhouse weeks so as not to compete with a bigger and better fish) and then have a rotation of fridays between different alternative genres - goth, industrial/noise, metal, indie etc and with random nights midweek. I'm almost thinking of a bigger venue than the bassment that can be made smaller for smaller nights by having some sort of partitioning (it's the death of a night to appear to rattle round in its venue even if its at the capacity of it's audience) also 'subculture' doesn't strictly mean goth/alternative/metal/industrial so there's room for stuff like smaller gay nights etc.

the partitioning idea could also allow for a two roomed night - an alternative night with a conversation room would be nice

I also think it's important to be able to use the place as a venue and to approach any layout thoughts with this in mind. this is one reason why I think the bassment's a bad idea - it's got a shonky layout for such things. leeds is in desperate need of a good small/medium alternative friendly venue and midweek gigs could certainly help to fill the roster in terms of financial viability. I've had all sorts of thoughts regarding easily removable stage areas (it's the engineer in me)

I take on board the stuff about staff. I would never want to manage people directly so would need an excellent bar manager who would have absolute power in staffing issues. this is an involved job and is certainly not one you'd give to someone unqualified for it. my friend cat is a bar manager (in a large bar which was set up from scratch so she has some useful experience to impart) and has to be very harsh with people - this is not a role for me!

anyhoo that was just a few thoughts. feel free to comment and criticise.
I'm off to town tomorrow to nosey at what's going in the cheaper areas (if anyone wants to join me - I'm a slow hobbler at the moment thought)
what I most need to know right now is costs (premises, equipment, refurb and general running) so I can work through numbers and feasability a little more before we all get too excited