[HouTango-L] Great evening at the Cotton Exchange Bar last Thursday...

[A. Lester Buck III]

Derik Rawson <d.rawson at rawsonweb.com> submitted this report after
the first night of tango at the Cotton Exchange Bar:


We had a great tango evening at the Cotton Exchange Bar last night and
the owner loves it, so we will do it every week from now on.  The bar
was packed at 9:30pm with all brand new people who wanted to dance
tango. I did not know that they were there.  There was no tango
dancing at first, because I had no one to dance with.  A few quick
calls brought out more of our regulars.  After we all started to
dance, the new people came up and joined us.  More regulars showed at
11:15pm.  I filled in until Greg Harbar showed at 11:15pm.  We all
danced until 2am and closed the place down.  I had the tango CD loaded
so we did have recorded music for the evening.  I talked with the
owner, Ronnie, who himself showed up at 11pm and he polled his
customers and found out that they all loved the tango dancing scene,
so now he really wants the deal to continue.

The schedule now is:

9:30pm- 10:00pm  Belly Dancers (who may not last, because Ronnie
is not enthused about their deal, his audience is not showing a
lot of interest, and they cost him cash in advance)

10:00pm-11:00pm Dancing tango to CD's

11:00pm - 2:00 am  or earlier....Greg Harbar and his group take
over and play "live" tango music (Ronnie, the owner, told Greg
that he needed to play a heavy tango schedule for us because
he wanted to see the tango dancers dancing to "live music".
Ronnie said that Greg can also do some of the other stuff, but he
will need to guarantee to play a lot of tangos.  Greg has enough
tangos to play for a hour or two, so no problem.

NOTE:  When Greg's group takes a break, the owner wants us
to dance to the tango CD's, and dance to them.  If Greg does
not show up then we dance to the tango CD's as a backup  The
bottom line is that this is going to be exactly  like BRAZIL,
but tango is being featured, and the owner wants it that way.
He say that he likes the adult crowd, and the adults like tango.

REALLY IMPORTANT!!!!

There supposedly is FREE parking in Thursday nights for the
foreseeable future across the street on Travis where there is a
Mosque with empty places which are not used at night. Ronnie says
that it is OK to park there   Also, he says that a there is a lot
of easy to do free parking on the streets around the bar since it
is off to one side of downtown.  We need to check this situation
out.  If true, then access to downtown will be easy for people who
think it is too expensive and complicated to go downtown to dance.

Anyway, that is my report on the COTTON EXCHANGE BAR.  It is a
beautiful place to dance, with a different downtown crowd and
an owner who wants adults.. Very cool.  We shall see how it
all develops.

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