RTP-area local music and culture

[Kevin Browning <specialvibe AT yahoo.com>]

>>You're right, it's only over the past half-dozen years that local club 
>>owners have finally woken up to the fact that 80% of the population are
 
>>nonsmokers. It's also true that over the past 10 years the correlation 
>>between secondhand smoke and numerous health issues has been proven so 
>>definitively that many states have banned smoking in *all* public 
>>places, including bars.
   
  Actually, those figures need to be updated.  I believe that 78% of the 
population are non-smokers, 20% are smokers, and 2% are little girls.  
   
  I'll personally hand out small bottles of Febreeze and some gas masks at 
the next show and we can ROCK!

grady <grady AT ibiblio.org> wrote:
  You're right, it's only over the past half-dozen years that local club 
owners have finally woken up to the fact that 80% of the population are 
nonsmokers. It's also true that over the past 10 years the correlation 
between secondhand smoke and numerous health issues has been proven so 
definitively that many states have banned smoking in *all* public 
places, including bars.

Since the NC legislature hasn't been able to get a similar ban out of 
committee yet (though the support for it grows every year), local 
clubowners have made the economic decision to focus on the 80% of their 
potential audience who don't smoke, rather than the 20% who do, in 
addition to the 100% of their employees whose health is negatively 
impacted by breathing all the secondhand smoke (including those of them 
who are smokers . . . working a 6-hour shift in a smoky bar is like 
adding a handful of unfiltered Luckies to your daily intake, and most 
smokers I know are trying to cut down, not ramp up).

I've been to shows all over, in a variety of venues, and I can tell you 
that the only thing a rock club is "supposed" to have is a band onstage, 
playing. Some of them have swank velvet curtains and weird art on the 
walls. Some of them are more or less outdoors under a tin roof. Some of 
them are restaurants during the day. Some of them don't even rise to the 
level of "stage, bar, concrete slab for a floor" . . . they look more 
like "abandoned warehouse." Some of them have tables and chairs, and 
cocktail waitresses, like a jazz club. Some of them are in 100-year-old 
union halls that don't look like they've changed since the 50s.

My experience has been that the ambience of the club doesn't suffer for 
lack of a thick cloud of cigarette smoke . . . and in fact, if a 
clubowner realizes that the place isn't going to be instantly funked-up 
by smoke, they sometimes do *more* decor-wise than they otherwise would.

Would you miss the Cradle bathrooms too, if they got cleaned up?

xo

Ross

Kevin Browning wrote:
> I could be very wrong but I don't remember this being a historically big 
> issue. It seems that only over the past six or seven years have some clubs 
> been adopting no smoking policies. Places like the Cradle and the 506, in 
> my eyes, have the basic rock club set-up: stage, bar, concrete slab for a 
> floor. These places are supposed to smell like beer and stale cigarette 
> smoke. Are clubs going to begin using potpourri or scented candles in the 
> future? Now, I say this in a joking way but there is sincerity in my words. 
> 
> Bottom line is that I appreciate the 506 trying to cater to both groups of 
> people by limiting the smoking to one room only. I mean, when I go to the 
> Cradle I have no problem smoking out back. I think that it makes me laugh 
> more than it irks me. Maybe we should make some clubs alcohol-free so that 
> I don't have drunk assholes bumping into me all the time and spilling beer 
> on my shoes.
> -Kevin.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> grady wrote:
> In the past month, I have attended [multiple] shows at the Cat's Cradle, 
> Bull City Headquarters, and the Cave. I haven't been to any shows at 
> Local 506. Saturday night I walked up to 506 from the Cave and sat 
> around outside talking to some friends in the between-bands downtime, 
> but then once Filthybird went on, I had to decide between seeing a band 
> I really liked in nasty smoky Local 506, or walking back to the Cave to 
> see Twilighter (a band I like, but not as much as Filthybird) in 
> smoke-free comfort, and I chose the Cave.
> 
> So I think anything you were to do to mitigate the smoke would be a very 
> good thing, although I'm not sure about this half-measure you're 
> proposing, which would necessitate running a smoke-gauntlet to 
> enter/leave the club, to use the bathroom, or to buy drinks. It's 
> possible to do all 3 of those at the Cave, plus watch the band, without 
> ever going into the smoking back room.
> 
> But I'd at least be willing to give it a try. Be aware, though, that in 
> the past your perception of the smokiness of the club has differed 
> sharply from mine, a fact that I've chalked up to your senses having 
> been dulled from all the secondhand smoke ;-)
> 
> What direction does the ventilation move in Local 506? I should know 
> this already, but I don't. If the outside-air fans at either end aren't 
> set up to pull air from the back alley and push it out onto Franklin, 
> you'll need to change that . . .
> 
> If you're going to do anything that involves changing the smoking 
> situation at 506, you'll have to do a couple of things if you intend for 
> the experiment to be semi-valid:
> 
> 1) publicize the change thoroughly to the large community of folks who 
> might be attending shows were it not for the smoke (and keep in mind 
> that they may not even be aware that's why they aren't attending shows . 
> . . it may be more like "I'm too tired to go to a show on a weeknight 
> because I feel like crap all the next day," not realizing that it was 
> the smoke that was primarily responsible for that feeling of assy-ness)
> 
> 2) wait long enough for the word to trickle out, and for the smokers to 
> adjust, before declaring the experiment a success/failure
> 
> Keep us posted!
> 
> Ross
> 
> local506 AT gmail.com wrote:
>> Although this discussion died down on here, it's still something I've
>> been battling on a regular basis at the club. Recently, by request of
>> the artist, we tried restricting smoking to the bar-area only, while
>> no smoking was allowed in the room where the artist performed. And it
>> worked really well - I got several comments about how (somehow!) the
>> smoke itself didn't infiltrate the smoke-less room (or likely, it did
>> so at ceiling-level, not head-level!) And this show was well-
>> attended, over 100 people.
>>
>> Anyway, I'm seriously considering this as a permanent policy, but
>> looking for feedback before making this decision.
>>
>> glenn / local 506
>>
>> ps: Of course, all Summer I've been seriously considering adding wine,
>> updating our Reverbnation page, taking a vaction, among other things,
>> and they haven't happened yet (but Summer's not over!)
>>
>> -- ch-scene: the list that mirrors alt.music.chapel-hill --
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>>
>>
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