Michelle B.
Yelp
This is my second review of the venue, which, after several recent visits in the last couple of years I find necessary.
The venue sold to the Forty5 trio about a year before Pandemic shut-downs. And upon reopening, a lot of crappy changes had taken place. Sure, we have Rock the Ruins now and a new app for ticket purchases. But the cool part of what was The Vogue experience itself is largely gone.
Even right before COVID hit, the venue policy for the bigger shows was to open the balcony to general seating. One could get there before or at "doors" and if among the first in to get seats along the edge of the balcony it, they were yours first-come, first-served at no additional cost. There were always the Reserved tables upstairs as well as downstairs. But often if tables weren't reserved, you could sit at the ones further away. Now you can't go upstairs at all without a wristband for their astronomical Premium seating, and no downstairs tables are available without also paying--as much as 6 times the admission on top of the ticket price itself.
Is this what the new ownership meant by "upgrades" to the venue? Because there's been none other that I can see. It still smells like a pukey dive bar when you first walk in, until your nose adjusts to the stink.
Tonight, though, some serious B.S. transpired the likes of which I've not seen. At a show with an 80's ska band--so an extremely chill audience with an avg age somewhere in their 50's--the bouncers got really aggressive. Anytime someone whipped out their phone to take a quick video clip to show their grandkids on FB, these jackals shined horrifically bright lights at the cameras and in doing so, in people's faces. They'd strobe them to get people's attention. It was confusing until people figured out what was happening, which took a while b/c... WTH... who bans people from taking 5-second videos on their phones these days?! If you didn't understand and comply right away, goons would get up in your face. It was obnoxious AF for anyone even remotely around them. And of course when most people pulled out their phones it was during all the best songs, which basically ruined the concert.
I'm really loving the irony that Yelp's
cover photo for this business right now is a shot of the act on stage through the "lens" of someone's smartphone screen. Hey Forty5, did the fat cats in the balcony get abused too or was that just reserved for us poors?