Well, I didn\'t want to say anything before because The Breakfast and Kung Fu were still playing so many shows there, but I guess I can say it now:
I have never, ever, in 12 years of showgoing seen a club run as poorly as the Stone Church was being run by its new management. They came in and immediately shut down 75% of the club\'s revenue streams and all of its character. Consider the following:
- The old management made very good food. The new owners shut down the kitchen and turned it into a trash pit (literally). As I walked through the kitchen on the way to the upstairs room last month, the kitchen was full of months\' worth of empty bottles and trash bags. If you buy a club with an industrial kitchen, you are paying for the kitchen. If you do not know how to operate the kitchen profitably, then do not buy the club. Good god.
- The club is set up for 12 draft lines. The old management ran all of them. The new management had 2 beers on tap at the last Kung Fu show, with 10 empty draft lines. So they simply decided that running at 17% efficiency was a smart thing to do. If you ever see any bar running less than 3/4 of its draft towers, that bar will be closed in 4 months or less, guaranteed.
- The club has a good light rig. But the new management decided to hang about 10 miles of white Christmas lights throughout the club as a permanent decoration. How dumb can you be? Did nobody tell them that tons of white light and a colored light show don\'t exactly mix together?
- The new management cut the capacity at every show by 30-40% because of the "fire code" (according to them). This just never added up. I have never seen any room be considered "sold out" at as low a density as the Stone Church was. Also, if the previous management were really going 40% over code every night then I doubt they would have operated for as long as they did.
- Finally, I have to comment on two of the most bizarre and ridiculous moments that I have ever experienced in all of my time being around TB/KF. At the last KF show, myself and a friend were up in the green room before the show with 3 of the band members. First, the band members let us know that we had to chug our beers because the Church staff had warned them that they would shut down the show instantly if anyone, band member or otherwise, were caught in the green room with a beer. Talk about a horrible way to treat the bands that shlep to your club to make you money! Most clubs bring beers to the green room as a compliment; so-so clubs make bands use drink tickets at the bar; the worst clubs make band members pay full price and wait at the bar like any other customer. But to tell a band, a bunch of guys in their 30\'s, that they can\'t have a beer before their show or their show will be shut down? Completely unprecedented.
Second, at some point some very bitchy chick who worked for the club came up to the green room to check on us. Not to see if we needed anything, but to make sure that we were sitting still and behaving and following all of their rules (as if we were 10-year-olds). She yelled at us: "THIS ROOM IS OVER CAPACITY! SOME OF YOU NEED TO GO, NOW." That\'s all she came up to do. Then she just left without even actually waiting for people to leave. Keep in mind that there were 5 total people in the room, which is the same number of people that are in the band. Want to know what we were doing? Sitting still and passing a couple of iPhones around playing Scrabble. We were all pretty somber about the state of the club and we were not lively at all. I\'ve been in libraries that were more excitable than we were right then. And the Stone Church is sending staff up to scream at us. Because their green room (which has seating for 6 and could fit 15 people) apparently is not safe for bands that have 5 or more members.
Good riddance, Zombie Stone Church. I hope someone else comes in and does it right because I\'d hate to see this venue join our "RIP venue" list. Then again, it was really already on the list even before this closing. Zombie venues are as dead as closed venues.
