21 Grand: Right Behind God’s Gym

The real challenge, okay challenges, with updating people on what’s going on with 21 Grand is translating the bureaucratic issues (and there are multiple bureaucracies at play with different, yet some overlapping, issues) into simple statements. The other challenge is that things are still up in the air.

After unintentionally managing to escape attention from the authorities for several months, we came back under scrutiny a couple weeks ago. It was the same story as 7 months ago - we need the building department and fire department to agree that our building is “safe” enough to have events. Not just one event, but regular events. This was the real challenge. After many hours of emails, office visits, and inspections, we got the fire department and building department to agree to let us have the 12 or so shows we had scheduled through August 17th … with no more than 49 people in the building.

What happens after that? We’re not sure yet. They want us to show progress towards bringing the building up to code. Some of these things will be expensive. One of these things, that they just determined we would need to do is install fire sprinklers. We will need to do some upgrading of the building for seismic (earthquake) purposes. This might be expensive, this might be not-too-expensive.

However, we cannot afford to pay for all of this ourselves. We would need the building owner to pay for some of it. The building owner could say no. He is not required to do this work. These upgrades would not be necessary if we were operating an auto garage. If the building owner says no to paying for some of the upgrades, then 21 Grand would either a)move again or b)close.

Obviously this is a major decision, and we (Sarah and Darren and our board of directors) don’t take it lightly. We want to know what people think. We want your feedback. You can email me (Sarah) at 21grand at 21grand dot org.

We may have a more formal poll or survey to send out, if that makes it easier to respond/organize your thoughts.

Thanks for reading.