Various people wrote various versions of:

Government grants would make Tonic better.

As someone who's done a lot of work writing grants and doing other administrative tasks for various non-profits over the years, let me say that government grants would make Tonic different and Tonic would also have to be different to be eligible for most government grants. Some of this would be invisible to most audience members and some of it would be quite visible, but given the amount of government funds that are actually likely to be available, as well as the fact that the grant application process is competitive and Tonic might not even receive any grants, the changes might not be worth the trouble. Especially for a club where complying with city fire codes is an "unexpected expense" this becomes a big issue, because dealing with government grants is all about increasing your exposure to and compliance with bureaucracy. This is always time-consuming and often expensive. To be eligible for most relevant government grants, Tonic would have to be a non-profit organization, which is significantly different from whatever kind of business structure (sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, whatever) they now have. Each of these business models has different advantages and disadvantages and the current owner(s) of Tonic may have good reasons for the way they have things set up and may not be interested in changing how they run things. Being a non-profit is NOT a license to lose money. Tonic would still have most of the same expenses to pay as well as some other obligations of both time and money that are unique to non-profits. As a guess, without knowing ANYTHING about how the financial details of Tonic or the local funding scene, the necessary changes required to become a non-profit may not be offset by the additional percentage of government money that would be available. I expect that Tonic will do what most businesses (whether they're for-profit or non-profit) do, try to increase revenue while cutting expenses. For music that at the very best might attract a maximum audience of 500-1,000 people and usually many fewer listeners than that in a metropolitan area the size of New York's, that's a daunting task that, as several folks have already written, may not be sustainable in the long run. Bests, Herb -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com