At the risk of sounding too negative, I've still gotta say that in 25 years of trolling the underbelly of the NY music scene, the idea of an ongoing music club that regularly presents "art" (for lack of a better term) music is simply a non-starter, it just doesn't work. It will always come down to selling alcohol to subsidize the club. It was like that as far back as the 1940's as some of my relatives who ran restaraunts and jazz dance halls in the Bronx have told me. Real estate and operating costs are simply too high to subsidize art as entertainment. So people cut costs by hiring "interns" as staff, which eventually chases a portion the audience away when they get horrible service. (Ive seen people at tonic just give up when they actually wanted to buy drinks from the non-attentive or overwhelmed staff). Even the semi-successful clubs and organizations over the years had "other' means of finance; Soundscape and Roulette were actually peoples homes, Giorgio Gomelski's ZU spaces were used for certain illicit activities. One of my favorite spaces was actually subsidized by CIA money, as it was owned by refugees from an "enemy' nation. The knit would have died years ago if not for the venture capital they managed to acquire. One infamous downtown label owner regularly bootlegged his own and other artists. Musicians, journalists, and a contingent of people like myself pumped our own personal money into concert/club/record label productions that if we were very lucky, broke even. You can only do that for so long until you have to go get a real job. Public financing financing of the arts is a pipe dream, look at what's already happened to NPR and PBS, look at what happened to Franklin Furnace when they dared to present so-called "offensive art" . When things like the power grid , the water supply and the military are being privatized, the arts have no hope at all for a piece of the pie. Private endowments are really the only way to go, but it is a very tough road in such a mass-media dominated country as this. I have a friend in corporate PR who regularly spends huge sums of money within her company, at their last company shindig the guest speakers/performers were former president George Bush, John Stewart and Elton John, Think about what THAT must have cost! Yet when I enquire about possible donations for Jazz/new music events I inevitably get the shrug and the yawn. That said, I do salute all those who persevere and continue to present, the Musicians like Zorn and Laswell who continually reinvest their own money to see that these things get heard. and especially the label owners who let a world-wide audience in on whats going on. So I guess what I'm saying is to enjoy these places for what they are, and while they last, cause they probably wont last long.