FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| NIGHTLIFE It wasn't long ago that to be considered a successful club owner your bar had to be big. Nightclubbers flocked to the big spaces to bump and grind with the masses. But success is being redefined as the trend shifts toward small bars. Small bars are a global reaction to the big boxes of the '70s and '80s. As we get close to the end of the decade, people are rediscovering the intimacy and sense of community a small venue can offer. "Asking people in New York about the places to see, never once did someone mention big nightclubs," reflects architect Walker McKinley about recent inspirational visits to the Big Apple. As the principle designer of the Mercury - the club that triggered Calgary's recent boom in small bars - who is currently working on two other projects on 17 avenue, he is an authority on the subject. McKinley, a regular at the Mercury, explains that Calgary's intimate spaces - which include Michelangelo's, Criterion and Ming - create a sense of community for their patrons which offers something a large, alienating super club can't. And like New York's "grills," most successful small spaces focus on good food as well as good drink. "In a huge space you're immediately asked to market to everyone," explains McKinley. "It has to be for someone 18 to 40, or at least that's what your client will always say. In the small space it's almost exactly the opposite - if we try to please everyone we'll fail. When we start out, say with Victor [Choy] and the Mercury, it's was like, name the five songs that you think would be the songs. Name the five people you have in mind, what's the food they'd be eating and what would they be drinking. "If you're doing a place the size of The Palace, you just couldn't do that. Who's going to be there? Everyone has got to be there or else it's not going to work." "When you're a designer you look at this in a bad way, but probably the great thing about small spaces is that people can do it themselves, they don't need us. I look at Ming as a great example. Clearly they saw the Mercury and said, 'Hey, we could do that,' and did. And it's worked for them. "Professionally it's the worst thing, because anyone can open their own place, and everyone thinks they're a designer and it's small enough that they can - and the resources are small so they can, and will. As a citizen, that's great. That's New York, that's any big city. You get three kids with an idea and a tub of paint opening their own place. I think you'll see a lot more of that." "I built the place with my dad and my brother in law, who are both carpenters," laughs Steven Ming of the intimate space that shares his name. "I came to Calgary and the first thing I noticed was big rooms," explains Ming, who moved to the city from Vancouver and opened his bar last year. "The liquor laws are different out here, too, so there's tons of places that were offering $3-triples or 25 cent-shooters, and I didn't want any of that. Obviously, I lived around the corner from the Mercury so I went in there and I like the little room, plus I used to hang out in little places in Vancouver; small little venues that were really nice." The small bar offers benefits to both client and owner. While patrons can call a place their own, owners can minimize their risk when opening by defining a niche for their space. With the ever-rising value of Calgary real estate, small bars may become the norm. While Ming and The Mercury have prospered by catering to a niche defined by age and location, Beat Niq Café has defined its niche around jazz. Located beneath Piq Niq Café in the Grain Exchange building, the ultra-cool basement bar has just finished renovations, expanding its seating from 58 to 107. Describing the original space as a "cellar dweller," proprietor Rob Young's face glows like a new father. "The response has been unbelievable. People can't believe the transformation from what it used to be," explains Young. "It's a full entertainment package. You don't have to get back in your car and scoot somewhere else. If you want to go out for dinner, you can have a great dinner upstairs for a couple of hours, and then scoot down here and the place is yours. "We want it to be a discreet club in some sense. It's probably the best kept secret in town, and I don't think you have to be a jazz fan to come down here because it just has a great feel." As a jazz bar, Beat Niq is a welcome addition to the live music scene, and its modest size makes it a perfect venue for Calgary's jazz lovers. And like other small bars, the space doesn't demand 100 people for the room to feel good. "Economically it works," says Ming about the size of small bars. "The advantage is with a room that holds 35 to 50 people, I can put 20 people in here and it's half-full and it looks good. It's great. People get a nice feeling when they walk into a room that's small and there's people in it. "I look at a place that holds 400 and you put 100 people in there and it looks empty. The first impression for people who walk into the room is that it's dead. "This is intimate. It's generally fairly dark, but you'll probably hear that from a lot of the owners at small places. Michelan-gelo's is dark, the Mercury is dark. It's nice, it's like my living room in here." |