3000-6000 BTC loan - Hookah Lounge - 9/18/12 Update

[Monster-Ant]

Is there really regulations about the number of toilets a place must have?  I said I'm not preparing foods, only prepackaged.

All right, Dank, you expect to be taken seriously when you ask a question like that? And yes, you have to buy REAL toilet, you can't just build them yourself. And the handicap stall has to meet certain criteria also. Oh, and you'll want surveillance in the bathrooms if your local laws allow it, so you can catch whoever it is stealing your decorations, chess pieces, hookas, cushions, and the screws to your seats. Plus, there's even regulations on GASP whether or not you have to have separate employee bathrooms from customer bathrooms.

But you need to separate your employee bathrooms from your customer bathrooms, otherwise Brandi's going to find herself waking up with her panties around her ankles and her ass in the air in the handicapped stall and you'll be shutting down while Stabler and Benson yell at you in a dark room.

Yes, serving prepackaged foods eliminates the need for anything but a microwave and some trash-cans, but did you know that there are REGULATIONS dealing with the selling of pre-packaged foods, as well as allowing pre-packaged foods to be devoured on the premises?

Plus, you'll need to have enough staff that you can pull someone off the floor at any given moment to clean those bathrooms. Depending on the mess, they might only be gone for 5 minutes, but I've seen bathrooms bad enough they might be gone for an hour while they clean all the shit off the walls, the tampons whipped against the ceiling, and the vomit in the sink and on the ceiling.

Additionally, you will have to clean those bathrooms every night, with bleach. Lots and lots of bleach. Because customers are terrible people. Who do terrible things.

You'll want preventative pest spraying since you're allowing food to be eaten on the premises. Otherwise you might as well hang up a sign saying: "Dank's Hookah & Cockroach Lounge! Free cockroach with every hookah!" The first time a cockroach climbs out of your hookah all bets are off. Unless maybe some people might pay for the priveldge of smoking a cockroach. Who knows. Customers will throw food on the floor, stuff it into the cushions, leave it in the bathrooms (after they shit on the wall, whip a tampon on the wall, and leave a used condom on top of the toilet paper dispenser), trample into the carpet, and all kinds of fun stuff.



With hardwood floors you better find out the security deposit fast. Depending on where you live, a hardwood floor can get ripped to shreds in no time flat and you'll be out thousands of dollars to replace it when the owner sees it gouged up, abraded, and stained. Find out if you're allowed to wax the floor, and if so, put a nice thick coat of wax down. Or just cover it in carpet. Hell, cheap carpet will still run you $0.95 a sq foot, take 1,000 sf out of the floorplan for employee areas, and you're STILL looking at $5K just for the carpet alone, not to mention the pad, the plastic, and installation.

Yes, installation, NOT carpet you installed yourself, but with a pad, sound baffling, everything.

Ever heard 30 people tromp across a hardwood floor? It's LOUD.

You still need to think about exactly how you're going to partition things off, how you're going to handle sound baffling, how high the stage will be and what the stage will be made of. A stage is NOT just a box. It has to meet certain standards, and Great White ruined it for everyone, so you're going to have to have fireproofing to make sure that Wild Boyz and the Cockroach Experience don't burn down your fucking hookah bar trying to breathe fire.

Oh, and throwing tomatoes at the band? I hope to God that was a joke. Otherwise you'll be shelling out money for lawsuits that first weekend when Spiffy the Drummer catches a tomatoe in the eye and has to go to the ER.

You also need to find out exactly what the occupancy laws are for a 6,000 sqft building. Not to mention the lovely regulations surrounding live performances, exotic dancers, and donkey shows. What's the maximum occupancy you're allowed based on the available customer floor space in that area? Do you meet the airflow and recirculation standards? (A fucking FAN isn't going to do it. Are you planning on cooling the place during the summer by dumping liquid nitrogen on the floor?)

How does the inside of that building smell? I've toured three properties that smelled like a dead hobo because one was a butcher shop for 50 years and the other, well, it probably had a dead hobo under the dirt basement. Speaking of the inside of the building, what's the electrical rated at? What's the plumbing like? What's UNDER than wood floor? How easily can you access the plumbing? How long ago was the plumbing inspected?

And deposit can be far far more than just a single months rent. Many business properties want deposits for if they have to completely rebuild the fucking place. And smoking? Oh, man, does that change your deposits.

Speaking of smoking: How does that change your fire insurance? How often are you planning to take down the decorations and clean them? How often are you going to wash the walls? What's the condesation like inside the building? Speaking as a smoker who now smokes outside, I've seen a summer's buildup of nicotine and smoke stain on the wall start to run when autumn condensation had beads of water running down the wall in my shop. Oh, and have you ever picked something up that's been in a smoker's house? It's got a sticky film on it, you might want to wash everything down 1x a week or so.

SEriously, Dank ,there are ALL kinds of things you need to think about and consider.

There's permits and fees, inspections, and expect the fire marshal to pay you a visit now and then to make sure you aren't over occupancy and you are handling your flammable products correctly.

I can't believe you didn't know there's regulations regarding bathroom facilities.

Seriously, this isn't a "make it up as I go along" project. This is the real adult world, where we have to have plans, do research, and abide by rules.

And you can say all you want about limitations, but if it's true, then I challenge you to record yourself running a mile in under 5 minutes by Monday. No limitations, right? No such thing as natural talent, with enough practice anyone can achieve what anyone else can achieve, right? Olympic athletes don't have natural talent and ability honed by years of training, they're just like everyone else, they just believe in themselves. Anyone can be a Navy SEAL or Army Ranger, they just have to believe in themselves. Everyone can achieve everything, right?

After all, in the last Olympics I watched a 125lb girl bench press 16,000 lbs and then run a marathon in 30 minutes and then do a high jump of 85 ft. No limitations, right?

[1714795666]

1714795666

[RurrayMothbard]

Just dropping in to (re)emphasize the fact that the advice in this thread given by Ant, repentance, etc. is pure gold. I've never started a business (and have never felt particularly inclined to do so), but the information in this thread is both fascinating and invaluable. And, as others have said, it's not the sort of advice that people usually give out for free, especially to people with such ramshackle business "plans."

I did work as an assistant manager at a retail store for several years, though, and I can confirm that customers are, indeed, sociopaths. We didn't have a public bathroom, and customers would often get huffy when we told them to release their bowels elsewhere. Sometimes, they'd even seek revenge. I can't tell you how many times I had to pick up pissed-on shirts from the back corner of the store, and on multiple occasions, we found turds wadded up in clothing, with other pieces of clothing used as butt-wipes. And yes, theft was endemic as well.

E: I should maybe add that sometimes, customers would just barge into the back room and try to sneak/force themselves into the bathroom. There was a lot of stuff laying around back there, especially on the weekends (it was a donation-driven thrift store, and Sat. was the big day for both shoppers and donations). In retrospect, I'm kind of surprised that a customer making a b-line to the bathroom never tripped on something, broke their back, and sued the fuck out of us. All they'd have to claim in court was that we were negligent in our duty to prevent customers from accessing the back room. (Added to this, of course, is the possibility to get customers like this: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ef_1346645520 ).

Since this was a thrift store, it's possible that we had more sociopathic customers than average (lots of poor, nutty people). But to reiterate what others have said, with this being a hookah bar in a college town, you're going to attract all sorts of people who have a taste for alcohol and more intensely mind-altering drugs, and you can be damn sure that some of them are going to go apeshit and damage either your property or themselves.

[Zhou Tonged]

Oh, by the way, regarding you're going to be a rockstar?

http://www.2shared.com/audio/384md7rW/Untitled__19_.html

Next time, try playing the guitar with your fingers, and not run your cock back and forth on the frets.

Protip: You play it with your fingers and a pick, not by setting it on the floor and rubbing your face on the strings.

REEEEEEEEEEEMIXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUUFs8_jELo

Dank, Zhou Tonged got your back!

[dank]

That was nice, it wasn't made of my mp3, was it?

[Zhou Tonged]

That was nice, it wasn't made of my mp3, was it?

It was. Listen to Untitled 19 and you'll hear how the beat was flipped.

[dank]

Impressive, keep it up.

[nebulus]

Nice... lol

[the_thing]

Dank, I think I would like to meet you some day over a beer.

~Goat~

[the_thing]

Yeah, it would be funny to meet other Bitcoiners in person (not just Dank, but Bitcoiners in general). It's a shame that most of the community lives in the US.

[Vod]

I think Monster-Ant is spending waaay too much time on an OP that has shown he isn't serious.

[dank]

I am serious.

[dank]

Dank Bank?  Why yes.

[Vod]

Dank Bank?  Why yes.

That means you are running an illegal Ponzi scheme.  Not that it really matters at this point; I doubt anyone takes you seriously.

[dank]

Dank Bank?  Why yes.

That means you are running an illegal Ponzi scheme.  Not that it really matters at this point; I doubt anyone takes you seriously.

No, it really is not structured as a ponzi, believe as you wish though.

I talked to a manager of a hookah bar and got his number, should be a valuable resource.  He said ~15k may be needed for air filtering equipment but not 60k worth.

By the way, the place was packed, there were no feces/aborted fetuses in the single bathroom, it was very clean.  For some reason, I feel like the average human has some form of common decency.

[Rarity]

He said ~15k may be needed for air filtering equipment but not 60k worth.

Did you tell him the size of your building?

By the way, the place was packed, there were no feces/aborted fetuses in the single bathroom, it was very clean.

Because they pay people to keep them clean.  Go work at a restaurant, it won't be more than a few weeks until someone is cleaning up shit.

[Vod]

No, it really is not structured as a ponzi, believe as you wish though.

I wouldn't really expect you to admit it was one.  You'd lose new money and your whole "bank" would collapse.

It's still a ponzi.

[dank]

I'm not too concerned on the air filtering, it's not like people will pass out due to lack of oxygen.  Even the college bathroom only had one instance of piss all over the seat, just saying the average person doesn't do that.

No, it really is not structured as a ponzi, believe as you wish though.

I wouldn't really expect you to admit it was one.  You'd lose new money and your whole "bank" would collapse.

It's still a ponzi.

I use my investors' funds within the specified time frame to make a positive return.  I don't just pay interest with new deposits.  I used 4 BTC of new deposits to repay Onichans 105 BTC principle, maybe you consider that a ponzi, but a real ponzi would have used 105 BTC.

[Vod]

I use my investors' funds within the specified time frame to make a positive return.  I don't just pay interest with new deposits.  I used 4 BTC of new deposits to repay Onichans 105 BTC principle, maybe you consider that a ponzi, but a real ponzi would have used 105 BTC.

Look up the definition of ponzi.... and stop calling yourself "intelligent".  It's an insult to those of us that really are.

[dank]

I use my investors' funds within the specified time frame to make a positive return.  I don't just pay interest with new deposits.  I used 4 BTC of new deposits to repay Onichans 105 BTC principle, maybe you consider that a ponzi, but a real ponzi would have used 105 BTC.

Look up the definition of ponzi.... and stop calling yourself "intelligent".  It's an insult to those of us that really are.

It's odd that Dank Bank is still running while most all of the 'legit' programs have failed.  Specially with the total 7 investors I've had.

[Vod]

It's odd that Dank Bank is still running while most all of the 'legit' programs have failed.  Specially with the total 7 investors I've had.

Not odd at all.  There are many reasons your ponzi could still be running after other ponzis have failed.  You simply haven't reached the point where you cannot afford to pay back those who are requesting it.  The more popular a ponzi, the more interest it pays, the faster it will collapse.

The fact is, you want us to believe you have a secret way no one else has discovered of making large amounts of money.  Yet you lack basic business and currency skills.