Year 3, Day 97: Shakespeare Institute -- I've had an idea, I just can't tell you about it yet.

I've been writing my PhD thesis.  I haven't had much to say here because I've been writing over there, which is a good thing I suppose.  I've tried writing over here several times, but my editing brain has deleted all those posts.  I can't post anything of my topic online as I am afraid of people (read: other academics) sniping my ideas.  It's a paranoid thing to think, I know, but it wouldn't be the first time that I got an idea... and then had it taken away from me.  You want a story?  Good thing I'm a storyteller.

In the spring of 2002, New York City's economy was still reeling from 9/11.  I was a dance teacher at Dance Manhattan, and I was poor but still going out as much as I could to keep up with my social dance habit.  I was like a drug dealer addicted to what I was selling.  I spent most of my time at Swing 46 in those days, as I was one of their dance teachers who had gotten a life time 'get in for free' card... so, I got in for free every night of the week.  One night at the bar, I was talking to one of the owners who was looking for a way to increase business on his Tuesday nights.  Swing 46, on 46th street between 9th and 10th Ave, in New York City is a 7 night a week swing-band-and-dance supper club.  He wasn't having trouble booking the bands, there were lots of them, he was having trouble paying them when nobody came through the door on Tuesdays.  Maybe twenty to thirty people all night.  He and his wife, who co-owned the joint, were paying live musicians every night to entertain their guests.  This was one of the good places.  Keeping artists and musicians employed.  I said I could help with that, and he said he would pay me to be their arts director for a month to figure out how to make Tuesday nights a good night for them again.  I would get paid to do this.  I was not in a position to say 'no.'

Two weeks into the job and I hadn't produced a thing.  In fact I spent most of my time online in the Swing 46 offices reading swing-dancer chat rooms (popular in those days) to see if I couldn't discover what they were all looking for.  One in particular, Yehoodi.com, was, at the time, the most popular website for the New York City swing dance scene.  What I gleaned from these two weeks in the office, was that all Lindy Hoppers were poor, the website was having trouble with its funding, every place that had dance nights always hosted a lesson that wasted good social dancing time (lessons usually lasted an hour at the beginning of the night), and there was no where to dance that was cheap.  The door charges for anyplace that had good dance floors and good bands (it was mostly live music in those days) was $10 to $15 at least.  Since I was sitting right next to two dance promoters I asked them, what did they think about running a dance night with just deejay-ed music (no band to pay), no lesson (no teacher to pay), and a cheap door charge.  They said that getting dancers wasn't their problem, they'd always had three or four couples on their dance floor for the bands.  They needed people buying dinner, ordering drinks, and spending money.  I said the people who do that, follow the crowds.  Give dancers a cheap place to dance on Tuesday nights with no bands, no lessons, just social dancing... and the crowds will follow.  A "If you build it, they will come" selling point.  They agreed.

The biggest problem they had was the promotion.  I said, 'what if we post on Yehoodi?'  They said they'd had bad experiences with people on that website complaining about their club (this was at the beginning of online trolls, and the owners did not like them).  I asked, 'what if Yehoodi is involved directly?'  They said, 'what do you mean?'  I explained that Yehoodi was having problems funding their servers, and that if the club shared their door cost with the website, the guys who ran the website would promote the hell out of this place.  They asked me to call and arrange a meeting.

It was an afternoon, sometime in spring (I wasn't paying attention to specific dates in those days), where the owners of Swing 46, Frank (one of the owners of Yehoodi), and I sat down at the bar.  I only remember this because I was sitting down to a business deal, at a bar, in the middle of the morning.  It was a first for me, and the visual is etched into my head.  I was asked to lay out the plan to everyone involved and be a mediator between the two companies as they negotiated.  They both wanted their concessions, and they both wanted to make money.  Tuesday night was a dead night for Swing 46 anyway, so any more people in the club was a good thing.  Yehoodi was reliant completely on monetary donations from a group of people who were habitually broke, it was currently in a downward financial spiral.

I don't resent what happened next.  Far from it.  Yehoodi.com started a deejay-ed night in a club and a city that was all about live music.  The dancers had a great cheap place to dance, and the waning dance scene of NYC was revitalized a bit.  The Frim Fram Jam was born, and expensive dance nights with bands started to die off (there are not nearly as many dance bands in NYC anymore).  Though the club and Yehoodi eventually had a falling out, and the Frim Fram Jam moved elsewhere, this dance evening was a brain child of mine (combining social media/chat website with social dance) which had not been attempted before.  Swing 46 and Yehoodi.com's Frim Fram Jam are both still going strong, and I can still get in for free at both of these joints, though it is much harder to make the commute from England.  I helped make that happen... though I don't think even the current organizers of the Frim Fram Jam know why I am still on the guest list (Frank lives in San Francisco), and when I flash my 'get in for free' card at Swing 46 I get some really strange looks (most of the people watching the door there had never seen that card before.)

I don't say all of this because I want credit for the Frim Fram Jam, or for helping out Swing 46 and Yehoodi.  That ship has sailed and I am really fine with the idea taking off and having a life of its own.  I say all of this because I'd really like the credit for my next idea, and the next, and the next.  I'd like to make a living off of them.  I know I'll never be famous for them, because who is famous for having an idea anymore?  I'd just like to be able to make a small living from them, those ideas of mine.  I will eventually release these ideas into the wild, with my brand clearly seared into their backside, and someone somewhere will pay me large (read: modest) ridiculous (read: modest) stacks of cash (read: direct deposit) for my incredibly ingenious (read: slightly applicable) revelatory (read: more original than the other guy's) ideas for theatrical design.  I've moved on from dancing to theatre design of Shakespeare and I've already said too much.  I hope you enjoyed the story.  I'd never written the whole thing down before, until just now.

I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fearful porpentine. -- Hamlet (I.v)

Year 3, Day 97 - Words Written: 15,000+