[Noisebridge-discuss] Fundraiser at Cellspace October 9th

Jeffrey Malone ieatlint at tehinterweb.com
Sat Sep 19 13:10:42 UTC 2009


I in fact still have the money with me.

Likely to no one's surprise, we did not do well.
Simply put, many people saw free bar and actively ignored the donation
box.  Additionally, there were a select few who definitely consumed
more than the average guest (and generally donated little or nothing).

At the end of the night, we had $325 in donations. (Don't take this
number as too much yet, see below)

The amount spent on the items were as follows:
Keg of beer $130
Ice $27.79
Capt. Morgans $22.98
Salsa $5.49
Chips $3.95
Cups $10.94 (there are many of these cups left over, however, and can
as such be used another time).

Additionally, paper towels and toilet paper were purchased for the
space at costs of $16.20 and $19.70.  As these two items were somewhat
separate from the bar, I'll leave them on the side.

In total I fronted $201.15 yesterday for items for the bar.  The
amount I spent running around town and on parking meters for this,
along with a bottle of port I randomly donated will also be left out
of this.
The initial thought that we walked away with about $125 extra sounds
good at first (or not terrible, anyway), but that number will get
dropped quite a bit, sadly.

Firstly, in order to keep the cash in the place safe, we emptied the
money from the fridge (it seemed like a bad idea to have a stash of
money that random people could find).  We didn't count this
(stupidly), and I am very unsure how much was there, but I'd say
somewhere between $30 and $50.
Then, there are some costs we incurred that are not included in my own
expenses.  We went through a bit of the soda that was kindly purchased
by JSharp -- I'm not sure at all how much off hand, but somewhere in
the vicinity of ~1.5 cases of soda (approx $20), and perhaps another
$20 in various other items (vitamin water, hansens, a couple mexican
cokes [we didn't hand those out really], some candy).  We also were
lucky enough to have Miloh's latest soda, which he put together
entirely at his expense, and I have no idea how much it cost.

In the end, I'd say we broke even or made $20-40.
--

So, do I think it was a good idea to do the bar?
I'm split.  I've heard of three "incidents" that people saw as
alcohol-fueled and "not excellent".

The girls with the chairs were the most destructive, and I did
actually immediately tell aestetix who was near me to go have them
stop -- which they ended up doing themselves.  I think this was a
situation where everyone thought it was bad and should stop, but
somehow no one felt empowered to be able to say anything.  A point I
actually put on the meeting agenda for earlier this week was that ANY
member has the right to tell guests to cut shit out, or get the hell
out of our space, but I sadly was unable to make it.  I think we
should drive this point home again though, as it applies to anytime
someone is doing something that is not excellent at Noisebridge.

I also heard of someone spilling a beer and leaving it, and rumour of
an incident in which a genius decided to pee off the fire escape
(which I'm still not convinced happened).
The spilt beer is sadly inevitable at events, and I see as less a
result of us having an open bar.  I've seen bottles of beer people
brought themselves spilt over the floor at 83c, and while people are
then mostly responsible to clean it up themselves, it's sadly not
always done.  I would encourage members to take the initiative to tell
someone who spills their drink to clean it up, and then to help them
do it (at the very least in assisting them get cleaning materials).
Accidents happen, and let's not stress over this too much.
With the fire escape, I sadly feared someone might do something
stupid, although I somehow predicted it would be something a bit
different than urinating off it (I envisioned worse -- someone
throwing a bottle or the like).  I might suggest we side-step this
issue in the future by not allowing people to use the fire escape to
smoke -- it's going to be one of those things where one stupid asshole
ruins it for everyone else who is responsible.

I do not think the bar was really a bad influence, however.  There has
always been a large amount of alcohol at 5mof events, and whether
people bring it or provide it, it will be a large influence.  In
providing it, I think we significantly reduced the amount of bottles
that are often left floating around the space (to the point of almost
eliminating them), and we didn't even seem to fill up our recycling
bin.  We had no incidents of broken glass during the event either.

The down sides that the bar introduced was that there were likely some
people who drank more than they may have otherwise.  There was also an
increased liability for those who ran the bar (especially me, as I
purchased the keg).

Before attempting to run a bar at Noisebridge again, I would have more
organisation involved and look into ways to help reduce the chances of
problems and increase the chances of donations.  I in fact have a
number of realistic ideas on this that should also hope to allay the
complaints some had of having an open bar (especially if we can find a
way to enforce something like a 3 drink maximum and have a closing
time for the bar).
If people think it's a good idea to try and repeat this, let me
know... with some help, I think we can do it right.

Jeffrey



On Sat, Sep 19, 2009 at 12:50 AM, Rubin Abdi <rubin at starset.net> wrote:
> Christie Dudley wrote, On 2009/09/18 22:52:
>>
>> I am curious how much we made on the "donation only" open bar we had the
>> other night.
>
> Poke Jeffrey as I gave him all the big bills before I left for the night.
>
> Last count we made enough to pay for all the booze we bought that night,
> two ice runs, and some snacks with extra left over.
>
> --
> Rubin Abdi
> rubin at starset.net
> _______________________________________________
> Noisebridge-discuss mailing list
> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
> https://www.noisebridge.net/mailman/listinfo/noisebridge-discuss
>



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