2 Responses

1. YuksOnMe says:

   June 14, 2008 at 2:20 pm

   Maybe I can shed some light on the “full story.” You can read about it on my blog at http://www.myspace.com/rabidralph under the headings “Yesterday” and “Games People Play.” I think it makes for interesting reading.

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2. randycsz says:

   April 13, 2009 at 4:59 pm

   Heh. It hard to believe that I am commenting on this almost two years after the Buffalo Comix Cafe closed, but while doing a search on the name Comix Cafe for other reasons, I came across this post. I can’t speak for the owners of the Rochester Comix Cafe, but the Buffalo club DID close for business reasons. The comment that the club was always packed was simply not true, especially the last two years.Buffalo is a funny town, no pun intended. Buffalonians like to stay inside when it is cold, but as soon as it warms up, we want to spend our time outside. That is why during the summer months we would hemorrhage money. No one would come to the club when the weather got warm, because you never knew exactly how long the weather would last. Competition for the entertainment dollar would also increase in the summer, as outdoor festivals and event sprung up all over the place, from the Thursday in the Square which drew 5,000 every week, to the St. John’s Swedish Festival right next door to the club.To counter, we would make sure we set aside money in the cold months to make sure we had enough to get us through the summer season. We also would cut shows and staff in the summer to try and save expenses. Each year we would have to ADD $10-30,000 in the summer to stay open. Just because we did less shows doesn’t mean our rent or insurance decreased. Some summers we had to put our own money in if we ran short before the seasons turned.Then the weather got weird. First, the now infamous October storm of 2005 hit and we lost 2 weeks of shows….13 altogether. That was $24,000 of income we could never recover. Then the weather turned even weirder. After the storm, the weather stayed (for the most part) into the 60’s into JANUARY. Our crowds didn’t return in force until mid-January. Next year was no better. The weather got warm in April, we put all of our personal money into the club in the summer of 2006 to stay open, and once again the weather stayed warm and nice until after Christmas. Once the spring of 2007 rolled around and the weather turned warm again, we had nothing to get us through the summer of 2007, and we made the decision to close the club. A month later my then wife ran off with my then best friend, so 2007 was a crappy year all around.Once minimum wage and the price of gas (and therefore everything) started to creep up, we were at the point where we needed to take in $12000 a WEEK to break even. When we bought the club, our busy season was from October through May. Two years of a busy season of January through April drained our reserves, and it was just impossible to keep the club open. I am not sure if anyone even cares anymore, but that is the story behind the closing of the Buffalo Comix Cafe. Mother Nature mainly did us in, although I imagine there was a certain amount of incompetence involved, even though to this day I am not sure what I would have done different.Randy ReeseComix Cafe 2000-2007

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