Disappointing Friday Night Turn-Out

If you made it to our Gay.com Come Together Party last Friday night, thank you for coming over. This was something new for Gay.com...sponsoring a nightclub tour...and we were very disappointed. The Come Together Tour has been advertised on Gay.com for at least two months...the ads included our name and the date of our party...the parties were also advertised in national gay magazines...guests attending our Friday night party received bags of free stuff from Gay.com sponsors, got to see our Friday night Five Whore Drag Show, and to hear two DJ's...our own resident Beezwakz plus Greg Drescher from Hydrate in Chicago. Greg was here for Mardi Gras and everyone loved him. With all that, plus coupons on Gay.com good for free admission until 2 AM, we didn't even have an average Friday night crowd. Personally, it is disappointing....the time it took to stuff the gift bags...the time it took to plan the party....the money it took to bring in a guest DJ...pretty much reinforces something that we have said before...we see people in chat rooms and postings complaining about the nightlife in St. Louis...complaining about the bars...wishing that they lived someplace else...yet, time and again when we make the effort, spend the money, do something different...most of the complainers do not support us...we aren't alone in this....we hear from other bars that planned and advertised events only to be disappointed when the community support isn't there...it is frustrating...sometime heartbreaking...and the very reason that we ask you to help us motivate and communicate with your friends. Each time we or any other bar has an event that fails, it just means that bars will be less likely to try it again...less likely to gamble and spend the money when the support wasn't there last time. We are aware of straight bars (Velvet) that has been able to hold AFTERHOURS parties, reopening at 6 AM to crowds of several hundred people...with no advertising other then word of mouth spread face to face and by cell phone the night of the party. I don't know how to tap into that network...so we hope to build a new one....but it has to start with you...even if you can't go out...help us tell your friends about our events...from what we could tell, last Friday, the first dozen people through the door actually knew about the party...everyone else who came, just came because it was a Friday night and had no idea that we had an event. We need help getting the word out. When you read about our events, on our website, in our emails, in our EXP Magazine ads...pass the word on to your friends.