The Thin Black Line: Venues Fight To Survive

December 3, 2020

“It’s nowhere near the money I need to sustain, but I was lucky,” says Travis Ragan.

Ragan was a partner in the Roxy Theater in Denver and the Mesa Theater in Grand Junction, booking shows in 15 different markets. Now he hauls equipment for his brother, a construction manager out of Colorado Springs.

“I know venues are closing down, and yet, we have no leadership backing us and supporting us. We have no one telling us what we should do as opposed to what we shouldn’t do,” Ragan says.

“The place is not made to be at a 250 person capacity,” Renee Jelenik says of The Lincoln Theater in Cheyenne, “and even then, it’s not like we sold out those shows. People just aren’t coming out.”

“We’ve been asked to shut down, or told to shut down, for months now,” says Ely Corliss of The Moxi Theater in Greeley. “We’ve done that, and where are we now?”

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Who Gives A Scrap About Your Art? Blasti Does

January 3, 2020

One look around Blast N Scrap and the authenticity is palpable. A new Fort Collins DIY performance art venue located inside the art reuse center called Who Gives a SCRAP, Blast N Scrap finds itself with the right combination of quirky and weird for a unique line-blurring artistic experience that the people of Fort Collins didn’t even know they needed. At its helm is Blasti, a scrappy 36 year old New Yorker with a vision for an all-ages punk rock art space for everyone. “How are you going to tell teenagers they can’t go to shows?” Blasti says. “They invented rock and roll.”

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