Let's build a business.

[Chaostracize]

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First floor will be the basic, smoke machines, black lights, strobe lights, effervescent colors on the walls, maybe a plasma or two up on the walls (near the ceilings), DJ booth in the back near the stairs. Almost totally open space.

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Once a place gets full and people start dancing, one of the major problems is air, or lack of it. The oxygen starts to turn into CO2 and it's just a matter of time before everyones legs turn to jelly and you lose the energy. Have a good ventilation system, open windows, and for gods sake do not use a smoke machine. It is the most useless invention known to man.

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This is a really interesting point, however I am still planning on having a smoke machine for the third floor. The ceilings are going to be very, very high, and I'm going to be sure we're extremely wary regarding ventilation.

Also, regarding opening windows...this is going to be a problem dealing with sounds issues, which makes good ventilation even more important.

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Your description of the first floor sounds boring to be honest. You've got an open space with some lights and some stuff on the walls and some plasma screens. Well, it might work when it's full of people, but when it's empty it'll probably look like crap. Which means that it will be difficult to get it full. You room must look comfortable and inviting with no customers in it. You don't want your first floor to be the basic. You want it to be the best. If I go to your bar and the first floor is the basic, what's going to intice me to go further upstairs?

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Yup, this idea has now changed (as you already know).

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Lights. They will make or break it for you. You want natural, yellow lighting. Why? Because people look good under natural lighting. People look bad under artificial lighting. They look horrible under neon lighting. If the girls look good under your lighting then they will stay. Your bathrooms should have the best lighting possible. When girls go into the bathrooms, look into the mirror and they look fantastic, they're staying in your bar.

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Right now my idea for lighting is to have the bar and dancefloor both pretty dark with neon tube lights on the bar. The dance floor will have a light grid with moving spotlights.

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You mention one or two plasma screens. Why? What's the idea behind them? What are you going to show on them? Do you really need them? Do you know how much those things cost?

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Yeah, this idea is gone now. Initially I wanted to gather as many ideas as I could and throw them on paper, and now I am in the reverse mode of what can we ditch and still keep the general idea for the establishment.

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I'm not trying to be mean here. But you're running around talking investment of 200 grand and you really haven't got a clear idea of what your space is. I worked on what I wanted for my own space for three years before we started work on it. And we ended up changing about a third of it.

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Not being mean at all, you're being constructive and I'm reading it that way.

[adsman]

Chaos,

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Right now my idea for lighting is to have the bar and dancefloor both pretty dark with neon tube lights on the bar.

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Start studying lighting, really study it. Go into every bar, club and restaurant in town and see which ones make you feel like staying. Then check out their lighting. You can do everything right, you can have the whole place perfect, but if you feck up the lighting you'll be history.

And do not use neon. We have neon lights in our bar. We use them as the "get the customers out of the bar at 3am lights". They work really well in this regard. There is no sarcasm intended here.

Lets talk DJ's. Your average punter doesn't know jack about music or DJing, but they all think they do, and they're vocal about it. I advise you not to base your music rostering system on public popularity from tenny-bobbers. Here is the key with DJ's; do not have a fixed DJ at a fixed time. Move them constantly around, keep them on their toes. As soon as one starts getting stale, swap him for another one. We are a small club, I can get maybe 200 people inside. I have a roster of six DJ's and I'm training three more to do my bidding.

My suggestion to you is to locate and hire a music and lights co-ordinator. They are responsible for the DJ roster, band bookings and out of town DJ bookings and managing the dance floor lighting system. What? Managing the dancefloor lighting system? What the hell is he on about?, I hear you say.

You didn't think you could just put some moving cool lights up and that was it did you? Apart from the fact that gels burn out and need constant replacing, you need to reprogramme your lights every week. Otherwise it becomes staid and predictable and boring. I can do this in my current bar, you won't be able to, you'll have too much on your plate. And lights are an evolving science. You won't hit on the right combination until about 6 months into your operation. The same goes with your sound system. Move one subwoofer two feet to the left and your entire phasing balance is out. Or Perfect. Who knows? A sound and light engineer, that's who. And that's who you need to worry about all this stuff.