Jacob Patterson

THINGS I HAVE LEARNED WHILE (SEMI-LEGALLY AT TIMES) RUNNING AN ART GALLERY AND MUSIC VENUE WITH FRIENDS

The following are some tricks I have learned while trying to do something I have no business trying to do but of which I am damn proud to have learned. Obviously enough to be sharing them with you to use in your own lives. Many of these lessons are learned through friends and not direct experience. 

• Do you have something that you know will impress someone rich or famous if you can only get it in front of their eyes? Put it in a watch-sized box - or better yet in a rolex box. Emails, letters, and even some parcels are screened out by assistants, but a gift-wrapped box often serves as a thank you gift to celebrities and will get through directly to their hands. Instead of a watch in the box, an extremely-well-thought-out and hand-designed card or letter is inside, proving how much you really believe in your idea. Bands used to send boomboxes with their tapes already in them ready to press play and listen, just to stand out from the crowd. Heather in advertising at deviantART taught me this.
• Are the fire inspectors coming to look at your sprinkler system and fire escapes but you can’t afford to make the fixes you know they are going to require of you? Find something smaller that they can fix - or break something a little bit (even better, find a way to blame it on someone else and sound rather upset about it) - and start the conversation off by asking them about a topical building code. If you’re lucky, you can distract them enough to just fix the… ladder crank that’s dented or whatever you have invented, and they will completely ignore the illegal wall you just built between the sprinkler systems. Of course when you can afford to fix that, make it a priority. Any amount of time spent with dangerously illegal alterations is an irresponsibly immoral one.
• Need a liquor license but you can’t get the permit in your ghetto building? Beer and wine one night licenses are only $200-250. But you need to prove you’re safe enough to serve drinks. Instead, skip the $200 a night and do whatever you can to make sure you don’t get busted (more about that in the next tip) with the risk of taking the fine - which is only $1,000. If you average six events without getting busted, you saved money. Beer and wine only, though; liquor offenses raise exponentially.
• Vice can only shut down your party. If they don’t have a warrant, they can’t come into your business to see if you are selling drinks. Make sure the drinks stay inside, make sure each party has an RSVP list, and the cops aren’t allowed in your private party. They can shut you down, but if you play your cards perfectly right, they can’t - and hopefully won’t want to if you are polite and concise with your story, with as much truth in it as possible, prepared in advance - take your alcohol and fine you.
• Video content is really valuable. If you can valuably promote a major brand, they are infinitely more likely to give you a chance through sponsorship. Under shoot yourself financially and put a little bit of money in on your own, over deliver, and watch the client list stack up. Once your audience is large, and your body of work is impressive, you will be much more lucrative for these companies to look at. Keep in mind that it is very hard to satisfy at this level consistently, so make sure you have the proper time and energy to dedicate to these ventures before starting any of them. Ruining your own reputation comes hard and fast. I’ve dabbled and it’s not fun so I avoid it where I can.
• Going to an event at night? First find out everyone you’ve heard is important that will be there. Google the names, remember the faces, and find one or two things they have worked on to talk about. Run into them at the party and pull one of those, “hey didn’t you work on?” People love to talk about their own work. You’ll probably get their number and they’ll remember you like, “oh yeah I liked that guy…” Works wayyyyyy better if you’re a hot chick. Almost enough to just bring a hot chick with you.
• Have a nice camera? Bring it everywhere. Take pictures of everyone. Cool photos where it looks like they are having hella fun. Make a dude spit whiskey into the mouth of the model he brought with him. They will be dying to see the pictures so just give them a card and introduce yourself. If you see them again, maybe take a picture with them. They will hit you up in the next few days with a “hey dude I checked out your blog. Cool shit. I know someone that… can I see those pics?” If you’re lucky you can meet like three people just through them.
• Don’t miss your friends’ shows. They’ll be famous one day - if you pick the right friends - and you dont want them to remember you as a tool. You need to be the cool, supportive, artsy friend in their memories. You’ll thank yourself for it if one of them blows the hell up and stays friends with you. Or if they turn into an internet king with hella pull.
• Need to find emails from a private institution like a school but they’re not listed? Try to find at least two of them. Often the names of faculty are listed, and you can google them until you find two people that have contact emails. If the emails match in format, say Allison Drewbeck becomes dallison@schoolname, and Greg Olivar into ogreg@schoolname, you can assume that they are all like that. Go down the list and hit every single one of the faculty up asking if they have a general direction you could go. If you’re lucky a couple will say they appreciate your cleverness and help out cuz they see something in you or some cool crap like that. Then you just follow your leads.