And by the way, that part of Uptown also has dozens of restaurants and the ratio of visitors/residents to coffee shops is low when compared to ratio for restaurants.

See all those people who arrive after Hurricane Katrina that made New Orleans population go up? Guess what, they came from places with even more corporate coffee shops and they had GOOD PAYING JOBS that can AFFORD what you call SUPER EXPENSIVE.

The reason why folks in NOLA think things are SUPER EXPENSIVE is because they have LOW PAYING JOBS and everything is super expensive to them

You may want to live in a city filled with corporate coffee shops, corporate, super expensive, live venues and all but that doesn’t mean it’s the way of life that other choose to follow here.

And, this include perfectly respectable people, despite what kind of cliche you use to describe them.

By the way, you can totally live in New Orleans and have tons of Starbucks around and the House of Blues nearby. Just go live in the CBD….

HOUSE of BLUES – Live Nation Entertainment (LYV – NYSE)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=lyv&ql=1
(Market Cap 1.9B)

And by the way, the “neighborhood” would probably be more open, as well as, prefer something along the lines of say, a coffee shop, which, by the way, appear to be far more profitable to the owners/investors, as well as good for the neighborhood and city from a tax dollars view. Starbucks also has one of of the best health care plans for both it’s full time and part time employees. How many bars and live music venues can even offer a health care plan? Dive bars can’t even fix the building. Do you really think they can even afford to offer a health care plan?

STAR BUCKS (SBUX – NASDAQ)
(Market Cap 41.2B)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=SBUX

FINANCIAL DISTRICTS:
Areas with Starbuck’s on every corner are typically in “financial” districts.

GHETTOS:
Areas with Live Music/Bars/Lounges on every corner (or where alcohol is primarily served) are typically in ghettos.

COSTS OF CROWD CONTROL:
Just so you know, Live Music Venue and Bars don’t really make money like they used. A lot of the tips and sales revenue is used to pay for “Bouncers”, Off-Duty Police, On-Duty Police, and security equipment and monitoring as compared to the 80′s and 90′s. Live Music Venues and Bars now spend a lot of money on Crowd Control; hence, that’s why many are broke, the buildings are run down (a.k.a. dive bars), or are looking to get out of the business.

ADVERTISING DOLLARS:
And LIVE MUSIC VENUES have to CONSTANTLY ADVERTISE their new acts, versus say Starbucks, PJ’s, Community Coffee, Seattle’s Best Coffee who DO NOT really need to advertise.

The cities also have to spend money on “rehab” and supporting single moms cause the father can’t hold a job cause he’s at the bar drinking with his friends.

From a financial perspective, Live Music Venues and Bars are all BIG TALK and small bank accounts. At the end of the day, the bouncers, police, crowd control, advertising, musicians’ fees, etc still need to be paid.
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When a Music Venue financially suffers, they do all sorts of things to make ends meet. i.e. more beer, loosen the rules, book any music act to bring in the crowd even if it’s the gangster or frat type crowd as they buy alcohol.

It says at the Jimmy’s Music Club website, that it was purchased from a run down “wino” paradise, Al’s Pool Hall in 1976. But some time
later, perhaps 2000 or after, it became the Frat House. The question is, “What really caused Jimmy’s to close in 2000?”

There are only so many MUSIC ACTS to go around and even the good music acts have only a couple of good years. Notice how all the New
Orleans musicians have to LEAVE New Orleans to make a living.(And could Jimmy’s really pay musicians more than say House of Blues and
if so, how much more?)

Adding another local music venue to New Orleans is IMO, financially ridiculous when even Tipitina’s can’t compete with those venues downtown.

You would think Tipitina’s could at least make their building look better from the outside, but they, after 30 years, appears they can’t
afford it. And it appears even though it says it’s smoke free, the employees and wait staff do not enforce the smoking ban and there’s
weed smoke during acts. (Typical New Orleans drug addicts and weed heads.)

Plus, the good musicians don’t need LOCAL or PHYSICAL VENUES like they did in the 80′s and 90′s to showcase their music. They now have iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, etc to get the word out and hence have better bargaining power with local music venues and even festivals. That means, music venues receive much LESS profit from acts than they did in the 80′s, 90′s etc.

52 WEEKS OUT OF THE YEAR
And in the overall yearly music view perspective, there are TOO many festivals in the New Orleans area that play live music. The public
audience, overall, needs and wants a break from LIVE music, festivals, sports events and have relaxing peace and quiet weekends. That’s
why music venues are suffering and resort to more alcohol and gangster, hip hop music acts to pay the bills.

Do you really think the public wants or can listen to LIVE music or watch football games, championships games, movies, Mardi Gras, attend festivals 52 weeks out of the year and AFFORD IT?

The House of Blues have been in New Orleans for a long time, but is the French Quarter a better place since they have been there? They may not cause many problems and are properly run a club with no complaints, but does it make New Orleans financially better? Hard to tell after 20 or more years.

Heck, the parent company of House of Blues, Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. (LYV – NYSE) appears to have taken a 163 million dollar loss the last 12 months.

The 80′s and 90′s had a totally different music environment than it does now. Music venues have to compete with festivals, iTunes, Facebook and Twitter and don’t near have the bargaining power with musicians like they did 20 years ago.

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You can still bookmark me on Twitter at
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