[HouTango-L] Derik comments on the Houston tango business

A. Lester Buck III buck at compact.com
Mon Nov 10 19:50:10 UTC 2003


Derik Rawson <d.rawson at rawsonweb.com> writes:

Derik here with an update on what I have found out about the
status of our venues.  Basically all of them are suffering and
endanger of disappearing.  The bottom line is that we are taking
up dance space and not paying for it adequately.   Cafe Matisse
is gone for a few months more and maybe will not come back at
all after it is remodeled and improved.  The Cotton Exchange
Bar and the Belmar are seeing some people come in and dance all
night for the price of a soft drink, about $2.50, and the Agora
does not really care much if we show up or not....lol.  Perhaps a
solution to this general problem would be for all of us to just
VOLUNTARILY add at least $5.00 to $10.00 cash to our bar tabs,
per person, to help out the people who are kind enough to lets us
use their facilities.  What do you think?  In New York City tango
people are happy to pay a $10.00 cover charge to dance plus drink,
even buying bottled water at soft drink prices.  In Paris the cost
of dance space is about $7.00.  In Houston, the fourth largest
city in the USA, we are paying nothing or about $2.00 to $3.00 for
dance space, which is not really enough.   I guess we are voting
with our dollars and our dollars are saying that we do not really
want to have places to dance tango.  Unless we vote better with
our dollars, the problem will take care of itself automatically.
Anyway, that is the latest.  Hopefully we can resolve the problem
in the coming days, by letting the owners of these venues know
that we do appreciate them.  If not, no problem....lol.

Derik
d.rawson at rawsonweb.com
713-256-9773 Cell



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