Wel...that's it... I am officially pissed off. On Tuesday I heard a rumor on a local message board for Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. hardcore venues that my favorite place for shows around here was shut down because the Fire Marshall found it unsafe. Well..the place is just a big room that this guy lets us use once a month... it has a stage and there's a $6 charge to get in and have awesome music for about 4 hours. Mostly local bands and stuff like that. The guy that does this is totally awesome..he's in his 40's and promotes all this. He owns the vintage clothing store right below the show and it doesn't get a whole lot of business, but when these shows come around, there are an easy 300 or more people to just have a good time. And now the Baltimore Fire Marshall shuts them down. I knew everyone that went there..from the side merchants that sold their stuff for money in the back of the big room, to the actual owner, to the guys what sit in the back and hand out sodas for a buck. All of them got together well, never any real problems in the shows, just good, clean fun with a nice decent mosh pit to all these bands. No one really got all that hurt..never had to take someone to the hospital. I'm really mad about this because for the past year I've been going there. I looked forward to it every month, just to see some friends of mine up there and just have a good time... I will miss it with a lot of me.. It has kept me sane for the past year and without it, I don't know what I'm gong to do. Sorry if I kind of mouthed off there. Has anything similr happened to any of you?
so, to get this straight... 1. there is a unsafe building (in terms of it catching fire) 2. there is a clothing shop right BELOW this fire-antiproof (?) beast! i tihnk id be more worried about going to a place which is unsafe (as it must be very hard to make it unsafe! even rock city is fire safe ) i tihnk you shouldnt be mad at the fire guy, be mad at the guy who cant fit smoke detectors
This happened a lot in the early 90's when I was really into the rave scene, you would be going to a place for months then suddenly the local authorities would have it closed for noise pollution or some other garbage. In the end this sort of attitude nearly killed the scene in our area, what was worse a big percentage of the bands were based in about a 10 mile radius from where I live.
Well yeah..actually it's sorta unsafe..being there's only 2 ways out..2 doors..one is really small and the other is at the bottom of lots of stairs... The fire marshall guy wants fire doors and carpeting put in for all this to come back..I'm going up there this evening to talk to shayne (owner) about how much this might cost....and nah..I can't be mad at shayne..He's been going strong with this for almost 8 years now. Edit: and ya'know..it kind of bothers me how these series of incidents have actually gotten the fire marshalls to enfore the guidelines for the first time, realy. (around here at least)
yeah, here one double fire door would add an extra 200 people capacity to the building. stairs seriously would reduce one doors amount of people.
