Coming Along

Things are coming along nicely.  There have been a few additional surprise delays that have the potential to throw off our carefully constructed schedule.  Mainly delays that could cause our inspections to take a day or two longer than expected.  We're trying to get it right the first time now rather than doing what we think will pass and correct it later if asked.

The light fixutres are up and the A/C registers are in and the walls are mostly painted.  It really is starting to look like a bar!  And our LED pool table light looks quite nice!

The insurance adjuster has been out for the vandalism and I believe we're only waiting for a final determination which I expect to be favorable.

This weekend, we have friends coming by to help paint the rest of the place.

Next week, there's more clean up work to do and orders to place and inspectors to call and a bunch of small touches to finish up the job.  And I think you'll find all the diamond plate you see on our sites will begin to make a little more sense.  (It looks pretty darn cool if ya ask me!)

(And, ya know what?  I kinda envy you guys (and gals) who will walk into the bar and get the impact of all these changes all at once.  I've (obviously) been living with it for months and months so I've seen it change over time.  We really think what we've done with the place will impress you.  At least we hope it does.)

Amazing People

We know some truly amazing people.

We're less than two weeks away from our planned opening (and still on track) and more and more friends are popping out of the woodwork to help us!

There's a guy we know who is going beyond the call of duty to help us change the look of the bar itself to something that's going to be really, really cool.  (We think.)  And it'll make the background of our website make a little more sense, too.

There're others who are helping just do "whatever we need".  Yesterday, our ceiling got painted by one such of these.  Our fence has been strengthened. A toilet was fixed (it was broken by one of two of our contractors but everybody denies it was them.  Patches have been made for stucco.  There are many, many examples; these are just a couple that I can think of right now.

Frankly, we could not even think about meeting our June 20 deadline without these people.

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Now, back to work.  The electrical and A/C guys are at the bar today finishing their work and should be done by early afternoon.  Our refrigeration guy is coming tomorrow and he'll be done with his stuff tomorrow.  Then, we think we're ready for our final building inspection on Friday.

(We did have a vandalism "issue" again this past Thursday night/Friday morning and again Monday night/Tuesday morning.  Some donkey--and by donkey, I mean jackass--broke into the back yard and destroyed the old walk-in refrigeration roof unit as it was waiting to be put onto the roof.  It should be covered by insurance (adjuster arriving this morning to check into it) but it has caused a bit of a delay; and that delay shouldn't be too bad.)

Lovely Sky Light

Now that the roof structure has been replaced and the building is once again as secure as it used to be, I think we can start showing what it was like with no roof on.

This is a lovely panorama of the "interior" from the front door.  (Notice the grafitti on the mirror from the guy who doesn't know how to spell the things he hates so much.)  This image was captured one week ago today.

(I'm starting to really like the panorama mode on the smartphone...)

Tomorrow's post deals with the sheer pain and suffering of not having a roof on the bar in the middle of rain storms and assorted, well, BS.  It will go a long way to explaining why last week really, really sucked so badly.

Spray on "Hate" in the News!

It's been a surprising couple of days.

On Wednesday, we posted the picture of the "homo faget" graffiti that the bar was tagged with the day before.  I added links to it on our Facebook page.  That Facebook posting was shared by Michael Esswein to ABC 30 news.  And, yesterday, Tommy Tran came out and interviewed Karl on camera and talked to both of us about the vandalism and the bar itself.  He did an excellent piece.  (Here's a link to the video: Gay bar vandalized in Fresno.)

He contacted Police Chief Jerry Dyer for comment.  And Mr. Dyer apparently sent a couple of squad cars out to investigate the incident.  The cops who showed up were, quite frankly, wonderful to deal with.  We got assurances from them that, yes, they do care a great deal about the graffiti (regardless of what it says), and that they are, indeed, interested in helping to stop, what I'm going to call "Blight Crime" (Graffiti, prostitution, vandalism, etc.), in the area.  Turned out to be an excellent introduction to the local officers.  Both Karl and I look forward to working with them.

And, on top of the tremendous response, the roof trusses were installed and sheathing all put on, too.  (Pictures of that in another post.)

All in all, it was a near perfect ending to one of the most imperfect weeks I've ever experienced.