Karaoke Forums

This law has been in place for a month now. I just got off the phone with the manager of the Elks lodge that I host two Fridays a month. He wants to cancel one of them in February because they are running out of money.

Bar sales are off but aren't the problem. It's the gambling revenue. They're used to taking in around $12,000 a week in from the poker and slot machines. That has fallen to around $4000. For those of you who don't have lines of these machines in their bars, players are mostly chain smokers who are used to playing and smoking at the same time. And they're just not showing up!

To complicate things even more, since January 1st Oregon reduced the club's take from (I think) 28% to 23%.

But it can be even worse. I ran into a bartender from an Eagles lodge last week and she said their gaming revenue was off a whopping 80%! And because drinks in these private rooms are so cheap they really rely on those machines to keep the doors open.

My home room is doing better. The manager has told me that revenue from the machines is off "some" but said they're doing all right because bar sales are holding up. Plus somehow, and I don't know how they pulled this one off, their line of machines is right next to the front entrance. They're supposed to be in a separate area, and they usually are... way in the back where it's hard to get out for a smoke.

Like the shutoff of analog TV this law should have been delayed due to the economic circumstances we're in. It would have made a lot more sense to have it kick in during the summer anyway.

Anyway I'm just wondering how the rest of you who work and sing in Oregon are doing. Hopefully better than here. And any other comments from people in states that have gone through this transition would be appreciated.

Bill, this could NOT have hit at a worse time for Oregon, I agree. Timing is everything. I don't think the tribal casinos around here are suffering much - two highly addictive activities in smoking and gambling - but everyone else is down now, too, without the introduction of no-smoking laws. We rebounded well from the smoking laws - and probably if that was all you were facing you might come out unscathed but to add economy to the spin makes it almost an impossibility. The fraternal organizations in Washington fought hard and long to have an exception to the law established for them as they are considered 'private' clubs but were never able to do that. Sadly attendance at fraternal organizations is down, too, and the members who pass away are not being replaced by new members. We used to do a show at a local Elks club during the time that the no smoking ban came into being and it really was a death knell. Cheap drinks don't make up for low attendance, and they cut the once-monthly karaoke show not long after that.

In a western lit class a required reading was Mountain Man. I remember one comment "whaddya mean I cant bring my gun and knife into the bar?" when he came down in the spring. Us oldtimers rebel against yearly laws that are trying to be passed for public safety and actually are another source of revenue for a government that wants to tell you how to live. I come from that generation when 2 drunks woul go out in the alley give each other a bloody nose then sit at the bar all night buying each other drinks.

When they started their campaign on underage smoking, car breakins rose considerably, if you dont believe leave a pack of cigs on the seat. This law closed bars here that were 100 years old.In some cities you cant smoke in the bars but heavy traffic will give you a headache. Its just like the bailout. The poor working slob will bear all the blame and pay higher taxes for a lifetime.

The last call that a cop wants to respond to is domestic violence. I wonder why these calls have doubled and tripled or more in the last 20 years. Cig tax and casinos are two of their biggest revenues. Cleaning chemicals under your sink are more hazardous than second hand smoke not to mention what comes out of exhausts. Lets get real. What the hell is this cell phone and driving mania all about? They live in a flippin fantasy land and are too good to come in our bars and dont have a clue what goes on in here. Whos turn to buy the round? Its Joe but he is outside..

The next law is if you are 50 pounds overwight your health insurance is cancelled..

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

Having gone through this same sceenario several years ago, I can tell you that the news is not good.
BC became smoke free for all bars and restaruants several years ago and I ccan honestly say that they still haven't recovered to where they were before. And I doubt they will.
Literally, the NEXT day, the bars were dead.
And on many nights, they still are.
In our area, we used to get A circuit bands in two bars every week. Now we get NONE.
First, they cut back the bands from 5 days of the week to 3. Then they went to B circuit bands. Now they mostly get locals with a smattering of B circuits, but only in one bar. The other bar did away with bands altogether.
Now with the economy the way it is, I can expect more bad news to come. I can only hope that the venues I'm at will be able to weather the storm (I'm confident they can) and won't be one of the causualties. If they can do it, they will be in all the better a position, because there will be fewer bars to go to, hence more business in the ones that are left!

Well I'm sorry that all the bars are having trouble but if smoking is what is bringing in customers then they have other problems. You can't tell me that someone that is addicted to gambling will stay home just to smoke

Come on now. I know that I would visit many more bars, clubs, and the such if it were non smoking but pass up some really good ones cuz I just can't stand the smoke anymore and I was a smoker at one time. When they passed the segregated smoking law here all the restaurants thought they loose their shirts but just the opposite happened and now many of those segregated restaurants have gone to total non smoking.

Cleaning chemicals under your sink may be more hazardous to your health but I don't have someone blowing it in my face

Cell phones and driving, Texas is trying to pass a law on that right now, and I hope it does because there is nothing worse than flying down the highway at 70 just to come up on some idiot in the fast lane talking on his cell phone driving 50 cuz he can't do two things at once at least they could do is get into the slow lane but oh no they gotta stay in the fast lane and talk or text, and I'm not talking young people, I'm talking about someone that has been driving for years (by their looks) but can't seem to talk and drive at the same time.

Give it time people who really want to go out and have a good time will get off their butts and leave their smokes in the car so they can feed their other addictions like gambling, drinking, karaoke and other things.

Lone Wolf

We in NY have some of the toughest anti-smoking regulations. When the ban on bars and restaurants went into effect, it was met with much opposition at first with many people vowing to stay away and they did for a short time. They complained and protested and soon realized that things weren't going to change. After a couple of months, things started getting back to normal and the smokers just had to modify their habit and step outside to smoke. Now it just seems normal and nobody really says much about it anymore.

Actually, and this is what people are telling me, they stay home to gamble online so they can also smoke. The way they always have gambled.

All I'm doing is reporting conditions on the ground here. As non-smoker myself it's kind of nice to be able to actually see the other side of the bar from my station. But I'd rather have it back the way it was.

If it comes to working in smoke or not working, I'll take the smoke.

Bill's right...

When I lived in Portland, that's nearly all you saw at those machines... chain smokers!

Google bars closing.. You will find days of reading about regulations that are closing bars. These laws come from lawmakers that do not frequent bars but have some fantatsy about what goes down in bars. These laws are killing our business and if smaller bars get any more regulations then the only bars open will be owned by u no hu...

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

All of the gambling establishments in Nevada are down and they still allow smoking. Several casinos have closed and others are trying anything and everything to get people in. Many are advertising hourly cash drawings and things like that. There is even a move to lower the legal gambling age to 18. Things are just down everywhere.


Karaoke is down all around us (northern Nevada) and most of those places still have smoking. Many of the places that used to offer karaoke no longer have it including where the legendary KJ who made $400/night was. That casino went under shortly after he switched from the one he was at. The original one went back to using an employee to run it and word has it he insults the singers and attendance is dropping there. Two of the places that originally showed interest in hiring us have been putting it off. One was going to use the bartender instead but they haven't even started that. We thought we were doing well at our one show because we had brought up bar attendance from two to a minimum of 15 and growing but have learned that the patrons aren't spending any money and the bar owner is going to try live music instead of us this week. Bar owner panic involving sudden switches, cancellations, etc. seems to be going around with others and not just us. We know of one show that has run over a decade as karaoke two nights/week--same host--and now the bar owner wants to try a live band once a month. Past experience tells him that's a crowd-killer but he is trying it anyway.

Our main karaoke bar in Canby, OR is in a lounge section of a Denny's restaurant. There are quite a few bar/karaoke regulars that are smokers. So far they have not complained much about having to step outside on the patio for a smoke even in the cold temperatures. The biggest problem I've noticed is just trying to figure out exactly who's still at Denny's, who's outside, who's sitting where and who's gone home. The poker machine gamblers have their row of machines located about 15 ft. from the door. Actually it's about the first thing you see when you enter the door. Seems like that'd be close enough to take a smoking break if needed. But maybe they need to stay on a roll if they're raking in the points on their machine. I'll have to pay closer attention to the poker attendance there and see what's going on. The owner hasn't been complaining about a big drop off since the ban started. Trust me he would too!

From leopard lizard's comments it would seem that the non-smoking law may have little to do with the downturn... maybe it's just that internet gambling is way more convenient to the gambling addicts... the money they save on travelling to the bars could be used on gambling instead!

Bill, to me it seems the assumption that the non-smoking law is the sole cause of the downturn is somewhat of a biased opinion based on little-known fact and a sour-grapes desire for a scapegoat to pin the loss of a gig on.

The old bar dynamic is dying for a number of reasons. Smoking is one. But as big in this area, which hasn't given up smoking, is tough enforcement of tough DUI laws. The second DUI in Indiana and Ohio is a felony.

The backbone of a bars business is its heavy drinkers. If they worry about doing their drinking at a bar, because they fear driving home, they will think about doing it at home. When you combine that with not being able to smoke, it puts some of those heavy drinkers over the top and the ones that can stand the isolation figure out ways to stay home. This means across-the-board decreases in traffic at drinking establishments. Which is why I think early food-oriented karoake nights should be a growth area.

_________________
[color=#ffff55]Mickey J.[/color]
Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

From my experiences... The demise is due to several factors.

Monopoly by power companies and utilities went thru the roof.
The real estate craze and rent went thru the roof.
Liquor license and regulations which put the burden and added severe costs to the operation.
Laws that were presented as public safety and are used as revenues and yes this includes DUI laws.
These are major and there are several more factors.

_________________
Join The Karaokle Singers Social Network. Upload Your Music!!

Gentlemen these revenues fell off a cliff the moment the new law took effect. It is the cause of the downturn!

Even I would not deny that there is usually an initial drop. We used to live in California and there were a lot of people who initially stayed away from anger or else went to those places that thwarted tha ban for as long as possible. But when they had no choices left they came back. I am a non-smoker who couldn't take the smoke and quit going out. When the smoking ban came into effect, I started attending karaoke two nights/week. Attendance climbed back up with a combination of smokers/nonsmokers. Then the town switched from city police to the county sheriff and they started stalking the bars and things went down by 25%, according to the bar owner.

The gambling makes a difference. In Nevada, the casinos were able to exampt themselves from the law so that gave smokers an alternative and some of the smaller bars that served food and thus couldn't allow smoking were at an unfair advantage because the smokers COULD go elsewhere. Don't know if that is Bill's case. People won't leave a machine to smoke and they won't play their machine without smoking so......but my point was that things are tough all over now, smoking or not and other factors have come into play.

I made a new topic about how CAN bars survive as I didn't want to hijack this topic but I see people are already covering that here so maybe my topic was unecessary. Our satellite is going on and off today so I missed a chunk of time when people were posting.

By the way, I'm a female. I would post a beautiful photo but it would have to be of someone else.

Casinos in this area of the PNW are HUGE places on tribal land, run by tribes. They are exempt from the normal laws. They are right alongside non-tribal land, and very easily accessible. Most of them have huge entertainment line-ups (Emerald Queen Casino and Snoqualmie); some have new resorts (Tulalip Casino and Resort, Little Creek) and entertainment; some are just smaller concerns with just good food and gambling. All allow smoking. Often entertaintment is just a WRITE OFF for them so they bring in big name acts and don't charge the people in the casino to see them.

You can drive between the northernmost one on the Interstate 5 corridor to the southernmost one in an hour and 15 minutes. These are not places that depend on people setting aside $1000 for a week of fun where they have to fly in, take cabs, stay in hotels, etc. They are NOT suffering at all.

So when I or anyone else in the PNW mentions casinos, this is the type of place we're talking about - not Reno/Tahoe or Vegas style casinos. I believe Washington and Oregon may have different laws (In Wa St, gambling is only allowed in casinos (tribal and private), not in restaurants or bars that are not designated as casinos.)

the three local casions here in Kansas City are exempt from the smoking law.

There's talk of making an exemption to "private" clubs. As of right now, they're in the same kinda grey area that the whole 2nd Amendment grants the rights to own a gun!

I know one of the managers at the EQC & they said their business is down quite a bit from what it was at this time last year. Mainly economics, people just aren't spending (blowing) as much as normal.

I don't know about Oregon, it seems there is alot of bars that rely on gambling? The bars up here that seem to have went under since the ban were hurting prior to it & it was inevitible. The blame was primarily smoking, but most of the bars were either poorly managed to begin with, bad reps and/or staff. We had a few that went down shortly after, but most of the places that were doing fine before hand bounced back & are doing fine still - at least around here.

_________________
LIKE Lonman on Facebook - Lonman Productions Karaoke & my main site via my profile!

Yes, bars here in Oregon are dropping. The state is opening up to listening on what bar owners are thinking. I have set up a special forum at [url]karaokeoregon.com[/url] to get to these law makers in two weeks from now. I don't think if it were any other time they would relly give a D** but they seem to be receptive especialy since revenues are down $20,000,000.00 in lottery sales To date. Typicaly the State of Oregon wouldn't care about the business owners as long as lottery had a minor adjustment but once it effects the State they will have to deal with the bars and lounges. Were only talking about 4,000 businesses in Oregon which have lottery.
My suggestion would be if the establishment is 21 and over only as regulated by olcc then the owner can decide if he want smoking or not, it should be a freedom to choose.
I think that since we are only talking about 4,000 locations in Oregon the lottery should set aside economic dollars for lost and displaced jobs for the food and hospitality industry. Oh... did I say there is a 10% unemployment rate here. What even hurts more is, it has reduced good karaoke hosts and companies in PDX to sell pirated HD's to make up for lost clubs. By the way Portland Oregon is the karaoke pirate capital of the US but that goes with my "economic extortion" theory and how weak the american karaoke business owner is to corruption.

_________________
[img]<img%20src="http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j288/miller2348/myspace/images/Funny_Pics/images/21.gif"[/img]

CHECK YOUR ATTITUDE AT THE DOOR, STICK AROUND YOU JUST MIGHT HAVE SOME FUN