At any rate, hopefully the City can recoup the $8.40 defrauded them by the illegal shows at Rumors.

This sort of situation, the Rumors bust, has been happening in Richmond as long as I have been here. One of the effects is that it creates an atmosphere for promoters where you either operate totally off the record/illegal like and hope you get away with it, or you are a large corporate entity with enough money and political clout to not worry or act on any small problems that might jostle the status quo or revenue stream. Unless you are a large corporate entity, it does not pay to invest time and money into improving your operation, because you can be shut down at any time for almost anything.

This is very limiting and has held Richmond back. Its related to a regressive local tax code and a repressive educational, cultural, political structure marked by corporate hegemony and fear. I mean just look at this situation with Rumors accused of skimping on admission taxes, while Center Stage has committed all out fraud with our tax money! Yet who is shut down?

Until we start electing and recognizing different local leaders who are willing to stick their necks out, we are going to get the same ol’.

When I put on that show, I sold tickets at Plan 9 and at the door, and had the show promoted on the radio. Huge risk, but the cops weren’t scrounging for money then.

I don’t think it’s fair to make this a liberal vs. conservative thing, because these guys were just doing their jobs, and the laws have been on the books forever. I think that the liberal vs. conservative thing is more of a mindset that ensures that nothing will change. It does help lengthen comment threads though!

Much like the absurdity of stopping performances at a taxpaying business for not paying income tax on the revenue generated by their off hours shows (that ultimately would amount to a few measly dollars for the city), your comments are fundamentally flawed, civically disingenuous and indicative of someone with clearly misplaced priorities.

Exactly. More money was spent stopping the show than was probably brought in. Take Matt’s show for example. 120 bucks was made. 7% of 120 is a grand total of $8.40.

It simply is not worth the city’s time, money & effort to prevent Rumors from putting on shows.

@justin- I’m not a republican, I think the whole political class is a bunch of leeches

I don’t think they know or care about the effect that they have on small businesses trying to do these small fundraising efforts to either help their community or just try to keep their own businesses afloat.

Most often, their presence shuts down another organization trying to do positive things in the community.

There is an easier and more tactful way to approach an organization about lack of compliance, instead of scaring the sh*t out of the business owners with the approach that they probably exhibited at Rumors.

I know that they are only doing their job, which is good, especially for reason’s of safety and such. We would probably not be making a big deal about them busting an organization that has a crappy mission or do not belong to our demographic of people.

Even though it sucks and we know that Rumors has not made hardly anything from this outside of street cred, they are right in doing so especially since you guys are not set up to have shows.
I am just sorry that it had to happen anyway.

You don’t see it in the Ticketmaster B.S. fees or if you pay at the box office because the venues include it in the price. So if you sell out a show at the National and the door haul is 100,000, the City gets $7,000 of it.

Sucks.

Dear Richmond Police,
Thank you once again for keeping us safe. Thanks for wasting the tax money that it took to mobilize that many cops against a non-violent issue to secure tax funds that either don’t exist or wouldn’t be enough to pay for that one single mobilization. Thank you for never patrolling my neighborhood where there is REAL crime happening but managing to get my acoustic show at my favorite space canceled. You are so awesome.

Is that thing still there, or are we getting our rich person’s venue soon?