Hello Kurt, I am not sure that the problem is with drinking. You drink, I drink, everybody does. Do I buy drinks at Tonic? Well, I used to, but frankly speaking I basically can't afford drinking at the bar and the music. I have to choose to go to the second concert or to have a drink at the first one. I think the problem with the club is not about drinking but rather with the audience which is really small. Obviously there are much more rock fans. Some tiny amount of them goes to the particular concert every once in a while, packs the clubs and drinks the drinks. In a meantime I've seen lots of Tonic concerts with the same 20 or so people who attends every show and who cannot afford extra dollar to be spent. And half of these people for one or another reason would not even pay for the ticket. Of course in that case the club will be in a financial trouble. Unfortunately, the drink minimum is a bad way to solve this problem. For me it means only that I probably won't go to the club on those days and will try to find some other venues. I know that I'm not alone in such decision. I think there are two things to be done to improve the situation. The first one you mentioned: finding grants (first of all government) and fundraising in general. The second thing is a good branding. The club should be better recognized and, in order to achieve that, it should be better organized. It won't harm if all tickets would be possible to buy in an advance. It won't harm if the schedule would be printed in several newspapers and magazines. It won't harm if the club will start promotion on the internet. Etc, etc... The only problem I see here that the club should find somebody who will do these things: fundraising and improvements. Right now they are even not answering e-mails. -- Best regards, Peter Gannushkin URL: http://www.downtownmusic.net/ Saturday, September 13, 2003, you wrote to me: KG> In a message dated 9/7/2003 2:33:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time, KG> shkin@shkin.com KG> writes:

...

The drink minimum so far is only for Friday and Saturday shows. Hope Tonic won't become Knit2 in trying to get as much money from customers as they could.

KG> the problem the knit had, and tonic is having, is that this audience don' KG> drink nuff. i'm not sure what the answer is, but the money problems are KG> real. they got hit with unexpected expenses when they had to redesign the KG> club to meet fire code violations. and keep in mind, even if the house is KG> packed, 25% of the door only goes so far. the knit's response was to become KG> a rock club, because those people drink. KG> and actually i do know what the answer is. art shouldn't be dependent on an KG> open market system. look at places where there are great festivals and KG> you'll find government grants.

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.