In 2009, Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara was hanging out with his business manager Tim Blum in the Manhattan bar Niagrara. Nara pulled out a marker and drew some of his fantastic figures on the walls. (Later that night, he did the same thing at a subway station and was promptly arrested.) Last week, one of Nara's paintings sold in a Sotheby's auction for $24.9 million, driving up the value of his other work including this graffiti. According to Blum though, Nara doesn't want anyone to pull out the bar walls and sell his graffiti. Fortunately, the bar owners seem to agree. For now anyway. From CNN:
"The (drawings at the bar are) quite in keeping with his style," said David Schrader, head of private sales at Sotheby's. "My guess is it's probably worth hundreds of thousands. For sure, when an artist gets a record-selling price, it elevates them in the market. My gut is there are definitely people who would want to own this or the multiple pieces individually..."
The Niagara's management declined to comment, but a bartender told CNN that the artwork "has been a part of the bar for a long time and will stay that way." The drawings are safeguarded by a thin layer of plastic that was installed by the bar's ownership.
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Open Concept is a new bar in St. Louis, Missouri where patrons make an appointment to visit and then pay by the hour to drink as much (or as little) as you'd like. The per-hour price is $10 but if you want top shelf booze, it jumps to $20/hour.
"At our bar we don't sell drinks, we sell time," states their website.
From St. Louis magazine:
Proprietor Michael Butler, the city's current recorder of deeds, got the idea from fundraising parties while running for office. “I would hold events where we charged by the hour for admission and have an open bar,” he recalls. “We got a lot of presale tickets online, and we created large-batch drinks in order to cut costs.” After a series of successful events, he imagined the same model could be applied to a business. He believes the price is "what the market can afford and will feel is a good value...."
When patrons book their time at Open Concept, they create a profile and are assigned a confirmation code, which is used to place drink orders at the bar. Bartenders will only serve one drink per person at a time, and a proprietary point-of-sale system will track consumption. Butler says the system will scan driver’s licenses and use a patron’s height and weight to assign a number of drinks per hour to keep the bar in compliance with legal limits.
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The City of Victoria, British Columbia rolls out public "peeosks," essentially urinal-shaped garbage cans, on weekend nights near downtown bars. From
CHEK:
The six “peeosk” urinals are part of the City of Victoria’s Late Night Program to help ensure “that everyone has a safe and enjoyable night out....”
(Kyle Massey, owner of a new vape shop,) worries the open-air urinal not far from the store’s entrance will hurt his business.
“If they’re going to do it, maybe they should have an enclosed outhouse instead of a urinal like that,” he said.
The City also seems to be unaware that women urinate. Read the rest
My daughter competes in the Jr Olympics gymnastics program and loves every minute of it. This video is the kind of shenanigans she can appreciate. Read the rest
To celebrate Cherry Blossom season in Washington DC, Southern Efficiency created a Japanese-themed pop-up bar. Cute video is starting to emerge of people who braved the long lines. Read the rest
