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Warehouse VS Korova


djcaptain

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Well since you actually weren't joking, allow me to respond. Firstly, pulling someone up for their spelling and grammar is the poorest argument in the history of everything. And it's especially ironic when you yourself spell totalitarian and appalling wrongly. Secondly, my statement wasn't totalitarian in the slightest, it was just explaining why some posts on a music forum were deleted. It's hardly Nineteen Eighty-Four is it. We are not the Ministry Of Truth. There is no conspiracy. We're at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia. 2+2=5.

AFAIK - As far as I know.

Guess who finished reading a book a couple of days ago...

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Well since you actually weren't joking, allow me to respond. Firstly, pulling someone up for their spelling and grammar is the poorest argument in the history of everything. And it's especially ironic when you yourself spell totalitarian and appalling wrongly. Secondly, my statement wasn't totalitarian in the slightest, it was just explaining why some posts on a music forum were deleted. It's hardly Nineteen Eighty-Four is it. We are not the Ministry Of Truth. There is no conspiracy. We're at war with Eurasia. We have always been at war with Eurasia. 2+2=5.

AFAIK - As far as I know.

I spelt totalitarian wrong on purpose. Spelling incorrectly to try and be ironic and bring up the fact that the modding on this site can be almost Nazi-like, hence the aryan in totalitaryan. I'll admit it was a pretty good play on words :D

Thank you for telling me what 'AFAIK' means. I now hate it.

Now now boys back to the chambers.

I

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I spelt totalitarian wrong on purpose. Spelling incorrectly to try and be ironic and bring up the fact that the modding on this site can be almost Nazi-like, hence the aryan in totalitaryan. I'll admit it was a pretty good play on words :D

"Spelling incorrectly to try and be ironic", how applawling.

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Woman found seriously hurt at Aberdeens Exodus nightclub

23-year-old critical at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary

didn't know where to post this but very sad news.

TRIBUTES were today paid to Aberdeen woman Sarah Middleton, who died after being found seriously injured in a city centre nightclub.

Read more: http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Default.aspx?UserKey=#ixzz0uyfCClGT

http://www.eveningexpress.co.uk/Article.aspx/1846666

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I think there is at least one event from the past that might disprove this. Didn't the case end up on telly?

I think the inclusion of Carol Smilie confirmed that that particular court may not have been that legitimate.

Back on topic(s), sad to see The Bassment go, had a good night in there just the other week, although the cheapness of the drinks does make me wonder how profitable they were.

On the Triple Kirks business, terrible, did a girl commit suicide?

PS Bring back Henry J Beans.

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Seems like there's some businessmen in Aberdeen that just don't have a clue about business.

I'll clue you in. Up until the early 1990s around 50% of all bars and clubs were owned by breweries, the rest were predominantly freeholds (independent), with only a negligible amount owned by pubcos.

Everywhere paid pretty much the same for their beer. There were some minor variations between breweries, but not much. Typically for a pub or club to thrive it needed to be reasonably busy and to make a 60% gross margin before costs on every pint sold. That was the generally accepted formula.

A pint cost approx. 35p. With a 60% margin that = 35/40*100 = 87p. On top of that there was VAT at 15% which made the sale price 1.00 for a reasonably priced pint. The government gets the VAT, the pubs made around 52p on every pint sold.

If somewhere attempted to start a price war then the brewery would threaten to cut them off. The breweries would tolerate a small variation in price. Cheap places were charging 80p for a pint and expensive places were charging 1.20. If you went to the supermarket then you'd pay around 60p. The only places permitted to operate lower pricing schemes were student unions and private members clubs. The breweries could make these threats because the effect of cutting off one pub would have virtually no impact on their overall sales. The breweries also stuck together. You crossed one, you crossed them all.

Back then pubs and clubs were considered to be lucrative little money spinners. In some cases they were veritable gold mines. People who held freeholds usually had them for life, and even passed them on as inheritance. Sports personalities and musicians invested in pubs as part of their retirement plans. Breweries were also seen as safe haven blue chip investments.

There was no binge drinking culture. People could safely walk up and down Windmill Brae, Union Street, and Belmont Street all night. There was hardly any drink related violence compared with now.

What they had was in effect the perfect little communist system.

Then some capitalist big ass business knobs complained to the government that the breweries were price fixing. They sold this as the public was being short changed, that if the breweries were broken up then it would be possible to charge less for drinks. The government went and broke up the breweries, they separated pub owning from beer brewing. Big breweries no longer owned pubs. Suddenly half the pubs in the UK were up for grabs. The same capitalist big assed business knobs bought all of them. They formed pubcos. The rented the pubs out at extortionately high rates.

They then challenged the now toothless breweries to preferential bulk discounting. What you paid for your beer now depending on the total throughput of all your outlets. The breweries were not in a position to tell a chain of 100 pubs to fuck off. Then the supermarkets also got in on the act. Now you had the big corporates paying 20p per pint, and in order to recoup this the freeholds were made to pay 50p.

So now you had a situation where a Wetherspoons would pay 20p per pint, factor in a healthy 62% margin and sell it for 60p. Whereas a freehold would be paying 50p and to sell it at 60p would mean a 4% margin. They could no longer compete.

Of course everyone now believed that cheap was best so they flocked to those places and drank like there was no tomorrow. Unfortunately there is a tomorrow, it's today and our streets are no longer safe to walk.

Nowadays the price of beer has increased. A big chain will be paying 50p per pint, and a small freehold will be paying over 1. The gap has if anything increased. Nowadays a cheap pint is 1, the same price it was over 20 years ago. Some outlets are still making a decent profit at that level, others are barely covering the cost of said pint.

If you look at a 1,000 capacity site, their cost base (rent, payroll, rates, insurances, overdraft, operating costs) was probably approaching 1M in total. In other words they'd have to make a gross profit of 1M just to break even. If they were selling pints at 2.80 then they'd probably be making a healthy 60% margin or thereabouts, which is 1.43 per pint. So to cover the cost base they'd need to sell the equivalent of 700,000 pints a year, which equates to 153 kegs a week. But if they dropped their price to 1.50 then that would only equate to a 25% margin or a profit of 32p per pint, meaning that they'd need to sell the equivalent of 3,100,000 pints a year in order to cover their cost base and break even, that equates to 675 kegs a week. How many trucks is that? Yeah - I don't think so, you be as well laying a fucking pipeline to Carlsberg. OK in reality there are spirit sales, food sales, door charges all contributing towards this, but for most places the draught will make up at least 50% of all sales. Still requires a throughput of several hundred kegs a week at that price point.

So imagine that your 1,000 capacity site is failing to cover it's cost base, and it's also being threatened with legal action over noise pollution. Now to properly soundproof a building you need to build a room within a room. That means demolishing the whole interior, laying down some huge rubber blocks (the kind industrial machinery sits on), and then construct a room on top of that, which does not touch the outer shell anywhere. Then you need to do some basic soundproofing on that inner shell too. Then you need to rebuild your whole interior. Cost of this on a 1,000 capacity site would be upwards of 500,000 if not double that. And guess what, you'd need to be closed for weeks, with no money coming in, in order to do the work.

But at the end of it all, for possibly a 1,000,000 plus total hit you wouldn't even sell one extra pint. Nobody is going to come along to admire your soundproofing. So ask yourself - is it really worth blowing 1M of capital on a RENTED building, in order that you can continue to fail to break even?

Bottom line is that the game is fucked, and will continue to be fucked for the foreseeable future. It's not a case of bad business brain, it's a case of mission impossible. Look around you, how many independent pub/club ventures last more than 5 years? Even the pubcos are suffering, and they started this whole process!

Adding the cost of live music into the mix is like smoking in a burning building.

End of drinks business lesson.

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I think the inclusion of Carol Smilie confirmed that that particular court may not have been that legitimate.

Back on topic(s), sad to see The Bassment go, had a good night in there just the other week, although the cheapness of the drinks does make me wonder how profitable they were.

On the Triple Kirks business, terrible, did a girl commit suicide?

PS Bring back Henry J Beans.

That's a good point actually, I always found it bizarre that every drink in Warehouse seemed to cost 1.50. Jack and Coke for 1.50 on a Saturday night? Fuck aye.

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That's a good point actually, I always found it bizarre that every drink in Warehouse seemed to cost 1.50. Jack and Coke for 1.50 on a Saturday night? Fuck aye.

Aye, whisky, vodka or gin with mixer, or Jaeger bomb, 1.50, pints of Carlsberg 2.50. Way, way cheaper than any of the other places we went to that night, although a 21 year old girl did laugh at me for drinking a gin and tonic. :down:

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Working the next day? Don't want to feel like your going to die? Gin & tonic:up:

totally worth looking like a jobby jabber.

Well somebody needs to tell the lassie that was in Bassment a week past Saturday, I forget her name but she had nice glasses, was 21, had a kid and her boyfriend was called Joe.

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Guest Gladstone
Well somebody needs to tell the lassie that was in Bassment a week past Saturday, I forget her name but she had nice glasses, was 21, had a kid and her boyfriend was called Joe.

Was her name Christina?

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I have so many amazing memories of moshulu, the place was practically a second home for me in my very young teenage years... i suppose i owe MASSIVE thanks to jamesy for all the fantastic gigs he put on back then.

I would be very sad to see it go, but i was sadder to see moshulu go, Warehouse to me was like the end of an era, the place was never the same... i suppose i've changed a lot too, but the gigs just never caught my fancy, and the clubnights were in my opinion inferior to korova. Still as a venue it will still be sorely missed, i suppose it will give lemontree a chance to jump on that gap, and with Steven there im sure they will do well, but personally i always prefered moshulu for gigs...

Will be intereasting to see what happens with the building now... i REALLY hope it gets taken over and given the renovations required, but with the costs involved i really can't see it happening, which is sad.

I hope steven/warehouse management manage to get the majority of gigs re-located asap!

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Guest Gladstone
Yup, that's her. Nice lassie. Does she laugh at you for drinking G+Ts as well?

She once laughed at my "man bag" which was my work briefcase and not a man bag at all.

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I'll clue you in...

Thanks Flash, was an interesting read that. :up:

I suppose if you look at it like that and factor in the extra soundproofing then you can maybe understand why they'd cut that corner. But surely it's a big risk (which hasn't paid off this time) to ignore it when the soundproofing had been an issue before.

Then again, is the soundproofing just a front or just one part of a list of issues regarding financial difficulties?

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Thanks Flash, was an interesting read that. :up:

I suppose if you look at it like that and factor in the extra soundproofing then you can maybe understand why they'd cut that corner. But surely it's a big risk (which hasn't paid off this time) to ignore it when the soundproofing had been an issue before.

Then again, is the soundproofing just a front or just one part of a list of issues regarding financial difficulties?

They may not have been made aware of that issue when they took on the lease.

The whole building was up for sale for 2M only 5 years ago. That includes the pool hall. If it was me then I'd rather invest 1M of capital on buying suitable premises and kitting them out than blow it on soundproofing leased premises.

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