So here I am again, down at Intelligentsia Coffeehouse (Broadway and Barry, in the Lakeview neighborhood), which has sort of become my home away from home the last several weeks, as I get the new version of my website ready to become official. (Intelligentsia is across the street from the internet cafe I frequent.) As I was mentioning yesterday, I've discovered a pleasant little side effect recently of being able to update my journal from my mobile device while out and about; namely, it's a lot more pleasant to do so, with the sun on your face and cute half-naked girls sitting around you, instead of cooped up in a dark apartment by yourself, hunched over a desktop computer. So for example, last week I mentioned that I was planning on attending a reading at Quimby's Bookstore called "The Secret Lives of Librarians" - and since I now have the ability to sit here at Intelligentsia this morning and tell you how it went if I want, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Yeah, I know, child's play for someone with a laptop and a WiFi card; but I don't have either, and am still amazed that I can now do the work of a full laptop from my mobile device while on the go, which is why I keep mentioning it.

Anyway. The event was certainly fun, but unfortunately worked better as a concept than as an actual event. That is, the idea of a reading featuring all youngish punk-rock librarians, who maintain racy blogs and zines, is a great one; but unfortunately they're all still librarians at the end, which meant a lot of on-stage mumbling and self-conscious behavior, stories that sometimes rambled and just in general not the most polished spoken-word event I've attended.

Oh, but good Lord, were there a lot of hot little nerdie girls packed into the store that night, man (along with a fair share of hot nerdie boys as well, of course). And this of course can often be the sole reason for attending a literary event at Quimby's, far removed from the naval-gazing author being featured or the horrifically amateurish performance they give; because Quimby's is guaranteed to have a bevy of hot, young punk-rockish people in attendance, no matter what the event. And this gets again into something I was talking about yesterday, about the sometimes subtle benefits that come from certain details at artistic events, and how even these subtle things are being factored in right now when it comes to my own arts center I'm trying to open these days. And since this is a good example of why I'm planning on doing certain things with my center that make some people scratch their heads in confusion (like never charging working artists a cover to attend events, for example), I think I'll go ahead and mention it.

Part of what makes a live artistic event generally satisfying or not is not only the artist or group being featured, and the quality of the material being performed, but also the mere social aspect of the live event itself, and the validity it may or may not bring to that event in our eyes. Let's say, for example, that you're in your mid-thirties (like me), used to be highly involved in the arts in school (like me), but are increasingly getting sucked into that salaried day job you now hold, and the domestic life you're now forging, and just don't have the time anymore for researching new underground artists as you did as an undergrdaduate (like...um, me). The increasingly rarer times, then, that you actually do drag your ass out to a live event, you judge the worthiness of dragging your ass out not only on what was performed, but also by who else felt it worthwhile to drag their ass out. Was the audience full of young working artists themselves? Were they all standing around after the show, talking about all the cool new projects they're working on, and the clubs and galleries you could never hope to simply discover on your harried 35-year-old own? Are they sexy and wearing funny clothes and make you kinda feel like you're still at least a little hip, just by the mere fact that you knew enough to attend the same event as them?

We take these things so much for granted when we're undergraduates, when we have 25 extra hours a week and an extra $200 to do nothing but listen to college radio, attend obscure concerts on a Tuesday night, really delve into underground culture not just as a hobby but almost a part-time job. But all of us in our thirties and older know how exponentially more difficult this becomes, as the trappings of adult life start filling more and more of both our free time and discretionary income. So this is why I have certain things in place for my center that make The Obvious People scratch their heads in confusion, like giving working artists free admission to all regular events. The Obvious People look at such a plan and immediately see the revenue I'm losing by not charging these artists admission; hell, if you just count the Monday night poetry slam alone, which I'm predicting will have an average of 50 Fellows in attendance each week once it's up and rolling, you're already talking about $12,500 per year in lost revenue. But see, I'm keeping a long-term view of it all, and am acknowledging that in order for my center to succeed under the marketing plan I'll be using, I need to create a perfect blend of artists and patrons as regular, passionate customers; those who supply the content we sell, in other words, and get paid for supplying it (either directly with money, or through benefits like free admissions), and those who consume the content (read it, listen to it, and otherwise enjoy it), who are happy to pay us a reasonable fee for our "middleman" job of pointing these artists out to them in the first place (by featuring them at live events, publishing their books, etc).

It's easy to keep the artists in this equation happy; just offer them money, free liquor, the respect they all want and that no one ever gives them, and a roomful of fellow attractive artists whom they have a realistic chance of fucking by the end of the night. Hey, I was an underground artist for ten years myself, so I know - offer these four things to a working artist, and they'll go lay down in front of tanks for you. With the consumers, though, it becomes a more complicated thing; like I demonstrated above, you need to not only provide great content to them, performances and books and photographs that they feel are worth the price we're charging for them, but also an authentic underground experience, which is the main reason they're hanging out at my place instead of the Art Institute or the Poetry Center. We would fail at our mission of being an underground-arts "middleman," if our events only drew the same 15 lower-middle-class young professionals who all saw each other at "Jazzin' at the Shedd" a couple of days' previous; much like I currently do with Quimby's, the actual events taking place at my future arts center will hopefully also be weighed with the question of how much fun they'll have, and what kind of fellow audience members will be in attendance. And so that's why I'll offer all my artist regulars free admission, and opportunities to make money and have drinks bought for them and maybe get laid by the end of the night; so that when someone like you or me randomly walks in on a Wednesday night for our beginner-friendly "Hump Night" open mic, we'll be confronted with 50 young, sexy, amazingly talented, half-lit poets, with everyone already very friendly and a very welcoming, drunken air to the entire event. And then we'll grab a drink and sit down and say to ourselves, "Man, was this a better idea than going down to 'Jazzin' at the Shedd.' This is exactly what I was hoping to find, when I decided earlier tonight to spend five bucks attending a live artistic event." And then The Obvious People will scratch their heads and ask, "Why is this arts center so damn popular, and why are their customers willing to lay down in front of tanks for them?" And you and I will have another drink and laugh and laugh and laugh.