Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 595
Location: Madison, WI
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I just received this news in a mass emailing from the West Coast Swing Club:
| Quote: | We are sorry to report that Wed. March 3 will be the club's last night at the Badger Bowl.
In today's economy, the Badger Bowl ownership needs venues that bring in more revenue. Our membership, even with the drink tickets, was spending only an average of $2-3 per person. An alcohol-drinking crowd tends to spend closer to $15 per person in a night.
The club's board is actively seeking alternatives, including Turner Hall, Pheasant Branch Retreat Tavern, the Dry Bean, the VFW, Fitchburg Community Center, Monona Community Center, or possibly some hotels.
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In place of WCS, the Badger Bowl plans to bring in local bands starting at 7 pm on Wed. evenings. |
Although this will have no immediate impact on the Lindy scene in Madison, it should give us some pause to consider the dance venue situation in Madison.
Sometime around 2006 J.T. Whitney's booted out our weekly Wednesday dances from their venue. Several of us looked for alternative venues. I happened to find the only alternative that was available at the time ... Badger Bowl. I was able to secure this only because the West Coast Swing Club had their regular Wednesday dance there every week ... and I knew the group's president at the time, Mike Topol, pretty well. He immediately agreed to help us out by letting us share the venue with them.
So we got to keep our lindy dance - from 10pm to 11:30pm at the new location. About a year and a half after that, Lisa found that the Brink had an opening on Wednesday nights we could use. This put the weekly dance in an ideal venue within walking distance of the campus/downtown area for the first time since 1999. Which brings us to the present.
Things are going OK at the Brink, for now ... BUT we don't come close (and probably never will come close) to matching the $15/person bar sales the Badger Bowl insists upon as a condition of letting anyone use their venue without paying rent for it. Right now, the way space is laid out at the Brink makes it possible for them to use their space for both live bands and DJ dances at the same time. That's probably the main reason we're still there.
Many of us here in Madison take weekly Lindy dances for granted. After all they've been going on continuously for more than a decade. But this hasn't happened without a lot of organizing and hard work. The Brink is the FOURTH venue that's been used for the main weekly lindy dance in Madison since it started in 1998. The only voluntary move this dance ever made during this time was the one from the Badger Bowl to the Brink.
Alan and the crew that puts on the Brink dances are very aware of the situation and have been making serious efforts to improve the dances, boost attendance, and encourage people to make food/beverage purchases so that these dances can continue - hopefully without a cover charge as they do now. But I think this is a time when everyone who attends these dances should make a special effort to keep informed, keep coming out, and keep supporting the venue with purchases and tips. |
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