wrong

The rumour is that my old room, known as 11Stones a year ago, will be reopening June 14. A project by Jeremy & Damien of Sugar notoriety.

How do I feel about this.

I think it sucks. A lot.

I’m officially asking my friends, associates and acquaintances to boycott the place. I hate the whole situation. Then again, it’s just rumour.

A few years ago a Victorian lad decided to open a club with his friends. He pulled together all the money he could from the family contracting business and he got all his friends to help build it. He’d been a frequenter of the local clubs all his young adult life and he wanted to get in the game, not to score massive blangers at our expense, but because he loves this town and wanted to bring something special to it.

He built the most gorgeous room this town has seen since the glamour days of ballrooms and dinner parties. He built it with honest money earned by his own hands, and he put all his friends to work there.

He assembled a crew of good people, and we loved that place like it deserved to be loved. And the town knew it. For a week & a half Fever was untouchable. The best ever.

Arson took it out. The owner can be seen in pictures the next morning in tears of rage and frustration, and heartbreak. So were many of the staff. Me- I was stunned. In shock. I mean, who does that? That’s just a bad movie plot tool. This is Victoria. A small city mostly full of decent people. So who torches a beautiful nightclub that hasn’t even seen its grand opening?

The people who said it was an inside job or an insurance scam are idiots. Sheer blind stupid idiots. Aside from the simple fact that honest money built an honest club run by really good people, there’s the obvious: insurance only pays out after you rebuild. AFTER, you idiots.

I went to Vancouver. Where do you work in this town after that?

A year later he tracked me down. That’s a whole story right there. He asked me to come back to Vic & open the club again. I don’t think he was expecting my answer so quickly. I respect him and more than that I like him. I want him to win and if I get to be part of it, so much the better. And he tracked me down. Reciprocity, I figure.

11Stones opened without any fanfare, half an hour late because we had to sweep away trash & sawdust a foot thick. Bigger, better, and more beautiful than Fever. We opened without any announcement or advertising or any official word of any kind.

We were packed with another 300 more in the lineup in an hour. Word gets around. That original week & a half as Fever was STILL being talked about over a year later, and they were hungry for more. We were doing something right.

Then arson. Again. The alarm company called the owner at the same time as the fire department and he beat them there by ten minutes. There’s security video of him in the middle of it, fighting a wall of fire with a hand-held extinguisher.

And again there were rumours of an inside job. Idiots.

There was enough damage to the roof to close us down for three weeks, at most: well within the time limit imposed in the contract with the building owner stating that if the club were closed more than thirty days due to fire the lease would revert to Herman, the owner of the building.

One week after the fire a second attempt was made which failed utterly. So much gasoline was used the saturated tar paper wouldn’t catch. It was a setback, but we’d still be open within the thirty day limit.

One day we showed up, tools in hand, to find the doors had been chained from the inside.

Of course, this violated the spirit of the lease and so began a very long and torturous (and screamingly wrong) legal battle. That in itself would make for a frustrating enough story, but the liquor was removed and construction begun in the space. Herman was going to build his own club. He’s that kind of stubborn old German. Bad enough? No. It gets better.

The trucks in front of the building changed. Now they belonged to Jeremy & Damien, the lads from Sugar. Yes, they own trucks now just like the one our guy used to have before he had to sell it to live & continue his legal battle. Seems they love everything about him & want to be just like him. (In some ways I hope they get what they wish for.)

So what the hell are they doing there? Would Herman be so completely stupid as to try to backdoor us in the middle of litigation? And what’s even more laughable- who would be stupid enough to go to the table with him?

I guess that sorta answers that, huh?

Anyway. They say it’s their club and they’ll be open mid-June. Other rumours say that no money has changed hands and that Herman is coming to his senses. Personally I think Herman’s lawyer should be taken out back & shot, because he’s living up to every lawyer joke there ever was. If not for him the whole issue would have been settled almost a year ago. Some people are idiots, and some people listen to them.

I have a very hard time going to Sugar at the best of times. If they open the 11Stones space you can bet I won’t be seen there. I’d go back to spinning commercially at another club just to smack them down. And I would hope I could count on the people that know us to do the same out of simple respect for our hero and the dream he built. Twice.