060725
room fee no bar cut

the words "room fee" didnt enter my vocabulary as a musician, as a sound tech, or as a nightlife woker until the post-2020 deconstruction of nyc nightlife culture and real estate. we've had a full breakdown of all facets of living and entertainment and allowed a precedent to be set for venue owners across the boroughs (and probably other fucking cities) + needs to be reversed immediately. we are careening towards a booker-landlord state for nightlife where musicians are expected to perform double duty in show bookings to both provide an endorsement for venues by continuously working with them (and passively encouraging that you spend money on beer there or by buying beer themselves) and also by fronting cash for the right to perform within those venues regardless of the venue's ability to pack a crowd or market a show by somehow owing money from ticket sales come load out. this is the source of why seeing shows in nyc has sucked for years - you cannot convince me that living in a world where shit-tier pubs demanding money from both musicians and patrons alike & replacing loft spaces and real community run DIY spaces is somehow better for music.

those two words are the most embarrassing combination of two words to ever be put together by some slimy fuck wannabe ignorant aging venue booker. the words "room fee" are as disrespectful and childish and entitled as any drunkard capitalist could muster before recounting tangential stories about going to the same high school as c.j. ramone and him coming to the bar one time, as if c.j. ramone's lingering fart from 11 years ago justifies not paying musicians money they are owed. the only term i can possibly think of that elicits such a smarmy, dirty, putrid atmosphere is "flex wall", a term used by megafucked property developers and slumlords to justify using basically no framing + the shittiest gypsum in the planet in building the interior walls of an apartment in an effort to build more billable bedrooms and therefore charge triple for living spaces initially designed to hold a third of the amount of people. when i hear the word "flex wall" out of the mouths of any human being elicited with any tone other than embarrassment or frustration it signifies either a bootlicking acceptance to live under pisspoor conditions placed upon us by the wretched devils of corrupt property holdings and private equity companies OR a political / economic alignment with those devils. the term "room fee" is the exact same fake idea that has been actualized into common musician parlance and needs to be pushed back upon by literally everyone alive unless we are collectively perfectly content accelerating towards a new york devoid of culture or art.

there are different forms of spaces that exist for hosting performances. there's theaters, galleries, venues, squats, bars, lofts, living rooms, parks, yards, train tracks, etc. all of these things sustain themselves under different circumstances. there's ones that necessitate not requiring any exchange of money outside of paying musicians and laborers - it's nearly impossible to enforce charging for DIY outdoors shows so they're almost always free or a "pass the bucket around" situation. i've never taken money away from artists to allow people to perform at the skinny - it's our living room. maybe one day a rent party will be necessitated but in the nine years that skinny has happened me and drucker have taken very little, if any money from the proceeds of any shows with no expectation that we ever would. if you're the kind of person to charge people for performing in your living room, you're a venutre capitalist and an enemy of art. this is different from taking donations - which i have done exactly once for the skinny so we could build a new PA - and people are usually happy to throw their money at places they care about. the bohemian grove toilet show benefits were legendary. brothers wash n dry makes it obvious that they need donations to continue running the space but doesnt have an explicit integer charge for utilization of a glorified living room. people should be billing shows more with the transparency that proceeds from the show will be going back into the space if need be! when your space organically grows a community around it - because you care about the wellbeing of the human beings that arrive at your space and encourage them to exchange ideas and culture - some people are generally willing to help maintain it. fundamentally the room fee bar bullshit does not necessitate this exchange because they are businesses with the expectation that they deserve money on account of existing to make money. some real snake eating its own tail nonsense.

what the fuck is the deal with the rabbit hole by the way? like actually? 10pm cutoff? they take credit card???? they qualified to sign a multi-year lease paying $6,500/mo - how the fuck did they qualify for that? daddy guarantor? they love calling themselves a "DIY space" - currently in their instagram bio, the only online presence they have - what exactly did they "do themselves"??? the space was already built when they moved in almost exactly as it is right now except they painted the walls and branded it with the world's most generic "self-starter" looking logo. the place has serious LLC energy. yuck! they need transparent financials published PRONTO. if you are charging and/or not paying musicians in an effort to cover the cost of rent you are the world's least creative human being to ever have access to capital. if you are charging and/or not paying musicians in an effort to turn the rabbit hole into a business opportunity where you make money then you should be ashamed of yourselves for ever branding yourselves as "DIY". this mentality is a symptom of some transplant kids who are not inspired to do anything noble because they've never been to a DIY show in nyc before (because they just fucking moved here from california or something and there are few actual "spaces" for them to have ever seen operate). and this is the kindest possible explanation for their behavior - i'd guess in due time they're gonna jack their prices and try to turn it into a "legit business" posed as a DIY venue. there's not even a fucking sound tech there to justify labor costs!

speaking of which, let's talk about the discrepancy between venue workers and "room fees". i'd wager that any given sound tech at any given shit-tier bar venue is either part owner and therefore their income is somewhat based off of the business's net profits ("i won't turn up your monitors" guy from bar freda who has told me he bought their house drum kit off of trixter three separate times? king buzzo looking dude at gold sounds?) or a portion (or the entirety) of the room fee. while i disagree with the idea that the workers' pay justifiction is paid out of the musicians pockets (which is basically how pecos, hart bar, TV eye etc do it) i can at least understand the decision making that leads to making the room fee the pay for the workers - this is an uncreative business decision that could easily be fixed by finding other ways to generate income.

gone are the days of "bar cuts" for bands. who the fuck is going to gold sounds to just "drink and hang out"? sometimes i go to bars like TV eye or the windjammer where i actually like drinking and hanging out, having nothing to do with a show going on - when i'm witness to this, the bar is usually making very little money when there's no entertainment going on. especially compared to non-venue bars in those areas like birdys or jones bar (ok they technically have shows sometimes but that's besides the point). this leads me to the point that the only reason these places even get major business from alcohol sales in the first place is because they host entertainment! we - the entertainers - are providing you with patrons! and you are witholding payment or create unnecessary stipulations for musicians to make money at your establishments on the grounds of what exactly? the privelege of playing on your shitty soundsystem? and especially fuck places like trans pecos that incessantly demand some legend status and celebrate themselves constantly. $400 to book your stage with no green room or amenities with barely a sound check? and you have in house bookers who solicit kids to play? what a fucked racket. and especially especially fuck those stone circle guys - i dont need to rewrite jess' legendary church page.

the minimum i demand is venues adopt ticket splits - no more than 30% (which sucks but i'm being realistic) - if you want to take money i generated for you, then do it as a percentage of the amount of money we generated. not this fucking videogame style qualifying bonus score shit. when a venue does a ticket split they have a vested interest in maximizing the amount of people who know about shows because the more people paying the musicians the more money the venue can take from the ticket split. i still don't see why a venue can't pay entertainment the full price of the ticket sales. make beer cost more money! alcohol is a luxury! these bars draw you in with cheap drinks and hook you in like the fucking mafia making you generate hundreds of dollars for them between drink sales and "room fees". how come beers and show tickets cost only sightly more than they did ten years ago? a beer is $5 and a show is $10? ny hardcore shows literally cost $10 in the fucking 80s. this is a targeted effort to placate the ny music community into giving these sorry places money. if bars really cared about harboring the well being of musicians we'd be charging $30 for independent shows and giving musicians a buck minimum for every beer sold. in the era of room fees we only harbor the ability for financially stable musicians to set the precedent for what culture is hostable here. relying on performing for money because you can't get a job that pays you fair? visibly of a marginalized identity in a non-tokenizable way and can't find work because of it? recovering addict going through a difficult time? undocumented? on welfare? fuck you, can't pay you, there's a room fee and you didn't pull enough. your booking will later go to someone who's "not so concerned with making money off the show". that sentence seems altruistic or like you truly like, believe that your art should exist without talking about like, money , man, like money is literally fake man.... until you realize that there's people out there who don't have other ways to support themselves and need that shit! they should have been born with something they could exchange for social mobility. should have been instagram ready. should have gone to college and made a bunch of friends. only the educated kids who can afford $1600 bedrooms in fucked buildings in former slum neighborhoods in the outer boroughs are allowed to play music at the bill-churning scene-ambivalent bars of NYC so they can continue cosplaying as real artists. those are the ones who get to set the precedent. those are the ones who get rewarded.