Thanks for Rocking!

[manny at telerama.com]

> Ugh, I CANNOT RESIST!  MY FINGERS ARE TYPING DESPITE MY BETTER JUDGEMENT!
>
> Like, uhm, if you'd managed to take over being the venue, despite
> being on the other side of town (ignoring the fight with Jeremy)?  I
> mean, so Joe'd have lost most of his audience, seeing as how walking
> three blocks is much easier than driving 3 miles (for those that can
> drive), but he'd have saved $300, and you'd have made $200!

Sorry, but you're wrong.

Your logic is flawed. Of course we now know it's only about the dark aesthetic
and not the money. But let's go ahead and follow your line of reasoning
anyway(ignoring the fight with Jeremy, which he could have put aside
for scene solidarity's sake, being that it was *Joe's show*, not mine).

'Walking three blocks'? 'Most of his audience' implies a majority, i.e. more
than half. So you're saying MORE THAN HALF the audience 'walked'
to the show rather than took a bus or drove? At least EIGHTY-ONE of those 160
people were from Oakland, or from within blocks away, in the middle of the
summer? Hardly!

The truth probably is that people drove from all over the suburbs for that show,
and took buses from Sq Hill, South Side, and points Downtown, etc. My guess is
that at least 75% of the audience automatically had a way to get to Garfield
Artworks, a mere 10 minutes away, by car, without even asking anyone to help
them with a ride.

Maybe another 15% took the bus. Well, considering that the show was doors at
6:30 pm with only three bands, we could have easily pushed doors back to 8 pm
at Garfield Artworks (which can rock up until midnight, but with 8 pm doors we'd
have been done about 11 pm). During which time that 15% of the audience, if
they absolutely could not find a ride with friends, could hop on the 54C by 7
pm and be there within 45 minutes (including wait, and ride, and 2 block walk).

So theoretically, since anyone who would have 'walked' to the show could have
easily taken a bus from Oakland and then back to Oakland, Joe could have done
the show without losing almost ANY audience. But let's by sheer attrition and
audience exasperation with the situation, plus a few outright haters, he lost
maybe 30-40 or so people.

That's still 120 people. I remind you we had 90 for Birthday Massacre, and Bella
Morte has more a of long track record of popularity than Birthday Massacre. So
that's probably right in line with about the number of people who would have
come had the show been scheduled at GA *in the first place*. (even though, as
we said due to the Jeremy beef that probably wouldn't have happened).

And now my second point of why you are wrong.

You don't know about my positive history of dealings with Jim Semonik, and I'm
not going to divulge details.

But note this:
I wouldn't have 'made $200'. I'd have asked Joe for at most
$100. Maybe less - I might have just said let's wait and see. Certainly not
$200. That would have saved him $100 or more right there, compensating him for
at least half of those 30-40 lost people.

Here's why I think you've posited a faulty argument:

You don't go to Garfield Artworks. For all I know, I've never seen you at a
venue on Penn Avenue, period. You don't know the facts of what I might charge
to do a show at GA, and it doesn't look like you even know how easy it is to
get here. Droves of hipsters live over here in this four neighborhood area for
a reason. They live here because it's cheap and it's easily accessible to the
university and to downtown etc. So, for the same reason, the show audience
would not have found it any more difficult coming from Oakland than any other
show audience that normally comes to Penn Avenue, such as the 250 people who
came to see Don Caballero on May 19.

And even after all that - I'm not absolutely arguing that the show HAD to be
moved to GA anyway. As I said before, there were other options that would have
come to my mind IMMEDIATELY a lot quicker than Sphinx Cafe. Joe didn't think of
them because he didn't have the experience I do.

> > Who cares. Semites can't be anti-Semites anyway.
>
> Sure they can.  That's a line too often stated by assholes justifying
> bad behaviour.

It was a joke. I'm sorry I forgot the emoticon :)