pgh-goth-list Digest, Vol 34, Issue 9

[j eric townsend]

At 10:44 AM -0400 6/15/06, Brian J. Parker wrote:
>On 6/15/06, j eric townsend <jet at flatline.net> wrote:
>>And it probably wouldn't hurt to have good 802.11 coverage and places for people to plug in.
>>
>>(Brillobox has an open 802.11 network, fwiw.)
>
>I don't understand.  If you're not going out to dance, presumably
>you're going out to socialize... or to drink, so as long as we're
>wishing, how about drink specials?  And video games. And a puppy...
>no, a hundred puppies!


Actually, that was kind of my point about people going out to dance clubs then standing around talking and never dancing.   Just because you set up a ambient/noise lounge doesn't mean everyone will stand around sipping frou-frou drinks and making witty conversation.     I wish more people danced at Ceremony (ok, so I've only been there twice) but you can't make people dance if they don't want to. 

Point being that it's difficult to proscribe to customers what they should do at your venue.   You can make a place favorable for a certain type of activity, but you can't force people to participate in those activities.   A place with a good dance floor will encourage dancing; a place with a bad dance floor will make it less likely people will dance.  Neither forces a patron to dance or to not dance.   Make it easy to hang out and socialize and more people will do that than not, but people will hang out and chat pretty much anywhere.  

If you set up an ambient/chill space, you can make it favorable to socializing over dinner or hanging out and having drinks, but you can't force the patrons to socialize.    Someone's going to show up with their journal and write, or read a book, or futz with their laptop simply because they enjoy being in the space.   They're happy to listen to music they might not have heard before, peoplewatch, maybe run into a friend or maybe not and just catch up on their reading for class or sort their todo-list.

-- 
jet / KG6ZVQ
jet at flatline.net
pgp:   0xD0D8C2E8  AC9B 0A23 C61A 1B4A 27C5  F799 A681 3C11 D0D8 C2E8