Dreampepper

So except for the number bits, which Stephen Elliot is doing, and a spit polish, and some formatting, the business plan is done.

However, what with the sudden vanishment of my deposit into someone's American medical bills, we need to raise 35,000$CAN by December 8th. (Between Scott and I, we have 14,000). That's when my option on the building runs out. It's a good chance we've got this if we can put down the deposit, but seven days isn't enough time to finish the deal.

I'm going to look into selling shares this week. Likely at $200 each. That means if 175 people buy a share, we've got the deposit, and so, it looks likely, the theatre.


So, who wants to come with to a show?

I fall in love with these people. It rains outside and I fall in love with them. The sun fights off the morning clouds like it's kicked itself free of thick dreary blankets and I fall in love with them. This is the future. Every day this week I have shared thoughts with another country, written across an ocean, explained very carefully to a tiny video camera how I think I can make this work. I'm not chasing a shadow, I'm chasing a dream. It's like I'm that metaphorical one girl army, one that's fought its way off the page to actually stand. The screen in front of me is a window, as is the screen in front of you. It's alive in the same way that mythology used to be, in the same way that thousands of people carry a cross around their neck. Slowly, we are building the next town with wires. Last time I heard, fifty percent of the human population had never made a phone call. Last time I heard, tribesmen in Africa were climbing trees to get better cell-phone reception in the middle of the bush. We can't lock them out.

It's because of these things, I don't want to fail. It's because of the choices we hold in our hands. I want to change something, not raise a glossy flag then look away. I'm tired of people being scared of the dark, deciding that because it's not their concrete back yard that they don't have to care.

Vancouver has a water warning on right now. Tumultuous weather has thrown an avalanche into the water supply, bringing with it possible gasto-intestinal parasites. The number of people who don't seem to understand that we're still obscenely rich in natural luxury in spite of this is staggering. They have to boil it first, but it won't kill them, and they still have access to it. Compare that to the number of people in the world who have, on average, a bucket of water a day to live with. Maybe it's too late for us to see outside ourselves, but I'd like to think that the recent inconvenience here might force some sacred hearts into flame.

Volunteers: you need to find out if an environmental study has been done, if there are any 24 hour businesses in the area, and what the official capacity is according to fire code.

Ahmet Zappa is developing Fraggle Rock into a full-length feature film.


It is maddening to be able to write clearly and concisely about the frustrations attached to writing a business plan without having the instant skill to apply the same to the business plan itself. The language is entirely different, if not, possibly, the entire vocabulary. It's like how I don't know Dutch, though the alphabet is the same.

Mostly thanks to Warren, Foxtongue.com hits are already nearing 2000 and we've only been up for a little over 24 hours. (I expect it to hit 2000 by the time I get up in the morning for work). Thanks to the popularity of the website, we seem to have added a lawyer to the mix of volunteers, a few film-makers, and a neuro-scientist. I'm not sure what we're going to do with the last one, but I'm more than certain I want to know her anyway. Over the course of yesterday and today, I broke both my mail-boxes with the sheer volume of letters going in and out. I would be amazed, except that I'm more annoyed with myself for not remembering that I kill them every time I'm working on something serious. A mailing list will be set up next, hopefully available as of tomorrow. A nice, handy, not-going-to-count-against-my-limit mailing list.

Also, I need some press releases. Also, still an artist sketch rendition of what the place will look like once we shiny it up and info and archival materials on the New York Theatre.


There's an english language trailer for "Perfume" available.

THE WEBSITE FOR HEART OF THE WORLD HAS GONE LIVE!

It's rough still, but I'm continuing to build on it. There should be be more sections by the end of the day. If you've got suggestions, lay them on, but keep in mind I have an obscene amount of writing ahead of me, so any suggestions will have to be the sort I can implement within the existing structure.


I still need artist sketches, representations of what the place will look like when we're up and running. Here's a good shot of the exterior as it presently stands. I want it shiny - gray exterior, red highlights, keep the brass.


One of the pages I want to have started by the end of the day is one of Potential Clients. I want letters of support, laying claim to time in the theatre, wanting to show in the gallery, whatever. Just apply to book the space, basically, and do so professionally, and I'll toss it up.


"Jhayne's trying to do something incredible here. If you've got some spare change, go ahead and donate a little to her cause. If you'd perform at a venue like Heart of the World, write up a little paragraph saying what your artform is, and where you'd come from to work on or perform/exhibit in Heart of the World, and e-mail Jhayne with your endorsement. It'll help persuade investors. At very least? Check out her site and see what she's trying to do." via inktea

The owner of the property turned down my offer of $900,000, insisting on $935,000. It's $20,000 less than advertised. I've signed papers agreeing. This means they want $48,000 by December 8th as a deposit, which leaves us until January 15th to raise a mimimum down-payment of approximately $450,000.

While reading over the contract which I'm going to sign with the realtor this morning, I've discovered that they're asking a minimum down-payment of $48,000.00. A number, I was surprised to realize, that with swingland's offer and my "escape the country" savings of $10,000, we've already got half of. It says, farther down, that will mean paying $3,500 a month in payments, with brings monthly rent/bills to something close to $6000. A number I'd already had assumed and was working the maths for. I'm surprised, I was expecting them to be insisting on more. This is good news. This is manageable. Even if we don't find a patron before December 1st, in having the theatre, we'll have extended our fiscal time-limit considerably. We'll have time to fundraise seriously, hire a grant writer and apply to as much as we can. (Not only do I tend to fit 90% of the requirements for that sort of thing, being young, female, and starting my own business that's also a cultural venture, I hear NIKE and The Gap are trying to make up for past evils with social and cultural grants).

If the paperwork goes as quickly as the people at the Small Business Bureau promised, Heart of the World Productions Inc. will be making an appointment with a lawyer to properly set up share contracts and etceteras within the next week. Our website, being put together by the lovely and talented Adam Abrams, (the man in the grass skirt in this year's Fringe Festival advertising), should be up and running by then as well, giving everyone a place to gather and point interested parties to.

A final draft of the pitch will be hopefully finished tomorrow. Willing to send it to your entire address book? I'm hoping for it to be posted to blogs, websites, newsletters, forums, anything. The farther and stronger the word spreads, the more chance we have.

(Watch me wonder if they mis-placed a comma. They must have missed a zero, right? Right. Maybe. If I sign it does it mean they can't change it after?)

EDIT: Ah-hah. Turns out that the $48,000.00 is a deposit. This makes far more sense. The realtor didn't send the contract to me until five minutes before I had to leave the house to go meet him, so in my skimming, I missed a paragraph. Ah well, so it means we're close to the deposit - that's still pretty damned good for not having yet put out the business plan.

Inside of the theatre is a neglected microcosm, thoroughly dreamlike and unexpectedly specific. The foyer is much of what you would expect, rag painted light blue and carrying the dim scent of dropped-rail fluorescents, but farther in, however, are surprises. It's a 300 seat theatre, complete with a balcony with box seats, and though there's a very certain air of shabby mistreatment, everything's quite intact. The heavy velvet curtains still swing with a glorious weight and the stage, as much as we could see of it, seems undamaged.

Unfortunately, the realtor was astonishingly unhelpful on the matter of light-switches, which left significant portions of the building lost in a sinister darkness. Backstage, for example, an immense space, three stories tall. I tried to use my camera flash to see, only to discover a maze of chairs and miscellany piled a decade high, impossible to navigate without a steady light. Under the stage was more darkness, this time obscuring a suite of blank rooms I presume used to serve as the proper backstage area, the green room, and where the old caretaker used to live when it the The New York.

They let him live there in exchange for janitorial services. Silva talked to him in 1986, when we lived in the building adjacent, and discovered that he used to be an architect, but blew his mind out when he took a tab of acid that turned out to be something else entirely. He said to her, "I remember when I used to be smart, but I'm not anymore."

I didn't brave many of those rooms, only the ones easiest to find lights in, as stepping so blindly into the darkness felt as perilous as it very likely was. I might have been the first person to explore them in years.

Upstairs was far more promising to investigate. The booth, though ridiculously cluttered with celluloid heaps of Bollywood spools, oddly shaped reel tins, and strange burlap covered boxes marked AIRMAIL MUMBAI, is entirely in working order. The equipment looks to be possibly from the fourties, which is modestly intimidating, but the bulb's been replaced recently enough to alleviate worries about sudden burnout. (What an annoying bill that would be. Ouch.) All in all, it looks to be perfect. (Even down to the fact that the bolt on the booth door is a screwdriver.)

My only concerns will likely be dealt with once I get my hands on both the floor-plans and the current owner's financial records form the last three months. That will let me A. find the damned lights, and B. finish a proper business plan to interest financers with.

In the meanwhile, this is the rough-draft of my blurb that I'm going to want everyone to whore around - if you have any suggestions to improve it, please don't hesitate to tell me:


Built in 1910, the Raja Theatre has recently come up for sale. When it was the New York - before it spent a decade as a Bollywood house - the theatre was a fabulous venue known for hosting an astonishing number of fantastic shows, diverse and interesting, such as Neil Young when he toured with Sonic Youth and Krispin Hellion Glover. It is my hope to buy the building and re-open it as the Heart of the World, a multi-arts cultural venue that recaptures and surpasses its previous glory.

Heart of the World is to be an art house repertory, showing everything from original work, (support your artists, people!), to old films where the copyright's run out, and double-bills like Marc Caro nights, (Amélie, Delicatessen, City of the Lost Children), everyone's favourite director they never knew the name of. It will also be available for both acoustic and amplified concerts, plays, short performances, and coffee house cabaret evenings. The stage is quite big, and once we dig it out from the decade high pile of uprooted chairs and miscellaneous boxes, it will be beautiful again. I'd also like to have podcasts of performances available on-line for download and use the foyer as a small art gallery of paintings and photography from artists both local and international.

I am attempting to find investors, and if you want to help, please contact me at Foxtongue@shaw.ca with your name and your specialties. Even if you think you've got nothing to offer, I'm sure we can find a place for you. Every bit of help is appreciated and work, depending on category, will be paid in shares.

If you think you could help with financing, either by a small donation or by a larger contribution, here's my plan:

An investor, which could be you or someone you know, buys the theatre outright under contract with me that I eventually pay them the full amount, but that I only end up owning a controlling share, just over half the property. I take care of the taxes, the etceteras, and I make the venue work. I run the place and ultimately we are both in the enviable position of making money with a good thing. The investor is guaranteed to make a profit no matter what happens - even if I default, they still own a considerable asset, one that will be worth more by then from all the work I'll have put in.

Basically the investor gets all their money back, I get the controlling share, and we both get a really awesome venue that not only enriches Vancouver culturally and opens space to artists, but which promises to provide a steady income.

I've made an appointment to look over the property tomorrow morning at 9. Silva, my godmother, (and possibly a realtor friend), are also coming. According to Mr. Dempsey, the realtor in charge of the sale, the property comes with all of its equipment, it won't be gutted. (Which is good, as that kind of thing is obscenely expensive, and would make the space exceptionally painful to get working as a cinema again).

Oliver's been helping me poke at the place as much as can be done on-line and tonight I got the realtor to confirm that the licenses are indeed weird. Instead of being zoned as a Commercial space, it's zoned for multi-family residential, which means the license is currently non-conforming, (this is so perfect is sort of hurts my brain). As long as I keep operating as a theatre without a break of more than 6 months the non-conforming use can continue indefinitely and I may get to legally live in it. Jack Dempsey says it's entirely likely I could just move in without the city being able to complain. Also, he thinks the building may have actually been built in the twenties, not the 50's as initially supposed, so there's a good chance that the building has been grandfathered enough that it doesn't have to be up to code. (Which is almost more exciting than legally-living-there VS illegally-living-there, 'cause we all know I will either way, right?). That last bit of information is a little too shaky for me to trust on faith, if only because it all sounds too good to be true, so I'm going to be looking more into that after I take my actual peek through the building tomorrow. I don't know about licenses for live performance yet, but I'll be asking. (Course, if you know, pipe up. "For a good time, call me").

More good news: The current owner of the building owns a string of other businesses and is selling this one because apparently he's simply too busy to keep a handle on it and his other theaters and his pharmacy. He's not sloughing off a bankrupting business because it's drowned under debt or liens. Tax, I'm told, is $1400, though I don't know enough to know what that means yet. I feel safe assuming it has nothing to do with the business and everything to do with the land. Hydro, operating costs, etcetera, he couldn't give me over the phone, as the owner of the property hasn't called him back yet, but the realtor says he can get them to me easily enough.I'm hoping to look at the place's last three months of numbers with an accountant who can tell me what they mean. (If anyone is or knows of a good accountant who can help, that would be grand, all I have are lawyers). Educated guesses are telling me that the cost will very likely be something akin to $5000 a month. However, the realtor tells me that there's some flexibility regarding the price, though not much. The property went up for sale about a year ago with a list price of over a million dollars. No one bit. This time, though, now that it's nominally cheaper, there's a few people looking interestedly, one of which who wants to do the similar things as I do, so now it's a bit of a race. If I can show up with a good bid before he can raise his financing, I'll win.

All of this essentially means one thing; I was right, my biggest hurdle will be the actual purchase.

However, with some help, I've found out how to do it.

Here's the trick: Find someone, (a personal investor, a corporation, whatever), with money and have them completely buy it, 100%, in agreement that I will pay them back for all of it, (slower than if it were through a large down-payment), but only end up owning a little over half. I take care of the taxes, the etceteras, and I make the venue work. I run the place and eventually pay them back. That way they're completely guaranteed. Even if I default and fail to pay them back, they still own a considerable asset, one that will be worth more by then from all the work I'll have put in. Me and, of course, all you lovely people who will have been paid in shares of the company. (I've been told that that's how a teenage fantasy artist in Seattle became a millionaire. She painted the original Magic Cards, you see, but the company was too tiny and broke to pay her in cash then, so they paid her in shares. Now, I'm not hoping to be as grand and lucky as all that, but hey, maybe they'll be worth box seats). As to cash-flow, I've got enough people lined up who're willing to perform pro bono or pay for the privilege of walking the boards at the old New York that I'm pretty sure I can run a month of entertainment for practically free. This, of course, tells me nothing about the numbers, but I guess I'll find out soon enough how much I'll have to make monthly to keep it viable. Until then, I don't want to plan too far ahead, if you know what I mean.

Basically the investor, they get all their money back, I get the controlling share, and we both get a really awesome venue which eventually should provide some income, which makes it more in their interest to help me out and keep me involved.

I was thinking of pitching that to someone like Electronic Arts, some Big Money that wants to be cool, though they're not, maybe, the best first choice. Alex Peake suggested Relic, as apparently they go in for the movie thing. That's the next step after tomorrow, finding appropriate money-lenders. That and writing out the business plan.

Happen to know anyone filthy rich and friendly to young, emerging arts types? Grants take too long to be useful now Those are for later, once I'm lucky enough to have scary gobs of debt to pay off.


Related: there's going to be a public hearing regarding the plan to turn the Vogue Theatre into a dinner club & bar.


On a lighter note, one less insane and probably more conversational, here's a Chapman Stick video I had on earlier.