FAQ
If you're parked near the Village Store's truck, you're probably parked in the wrong place!
Parking
Parking on any street in downtown Brookline for any event at the Loft at the Grange is no problem.
Just make sure not to park in the lot in front of the Brookline Village Store; customers of the store need to be able to run in quickly, make a purchase, and drive right back out of the lot quickly and easily.
Bill, the Village Store’s proprietor, asks that this rule be strictly followed, as it has a big impact on his business.
Why the cover charge?
A few folks have asked, so…here’s the answer.
- We list the Loft’s events on Meetup.com, a site which helps people use the internet to meet together offline. Meetup charges its organizers for the privilege, to the tune of $72 every six months.
- Studio 99, the Loft’s affiliated music venue in Nashua, has an extremely detailed web presence which costs money each month to run. Much of the promotion for the Loft’s events come from Studio 99′s site.
- Because some of the songs performed are covers (i.e., not composed by the musicians performing them,) copyright enforcement organizations insist on our buying a blanket license so that the composers of the material are paid for their work. Fail to comply, and you’ll get hauled into court; the best way to avoid an expensive, time-consuming legal situation is to just comply, up front. That takes money.
- Further, most of the other places you’d go for an Open Mic are bars and pubs. While they might not charge a cover, they do charge a 300% to 400% markup on the alcohol they sell (in other words, they’re clearing a lot more than $3.00 per person in profits, per night.) We don’t have that money to work with (the Brookline Village Store sells snacks and beverages before and during our events, but all of the money stays with the store — none of it comes to the Loft.) Fortunately, we don’t have to deal with the noisy, sometimes unsupportive atmosphere that comes with performances at many pubs and bars, either. We hope that the Loft’s performers and audience alike will appreciate the difference.
- Lastly, we pay for our own liability insurance. The Store’s owner does not cover our events.
