Wait, Bring all the balloons to the stage! - Band.

This goes way back to St. Louis Missouri. Another town, another crew, same style of clients. Clubs and nightlife. At 13th and Washington just on the edge of northern DMZ that is downtown St. Louis, is a strip of clubs in an up and coming loft district. One of these is where I set up shop over the course of Valentine's Day, Holloween, and of course New Year's Eve. The club hadn't done much with balloons - in fact not many of them did until I started wondering how this could be changed. I'm not one for cold-calls because they usually are a waste of time, and clubs are pretty much an evening business. No 9 to 5 here, just lots of people in understaffed watering holes that don't have time for sales pitches.

What's needed in these instances is an in. The ace of the sleeve in this case was one of the bartenders who was now side-lining her mixology for work in design and advertising who I introduced into one of the downtown offices. She got the job with a solid portfolio and because she's tennacious to say the least. She introduced me to the owners of Club Sanctuary. That was the in. The introduction was finding out when his birthday was - and that the people who worked at the club were collecting for a gift. Attached to the gift was a 14 foot high bouquet of 16 inch balloons within balloons, topped off with a 3 foot gumball all in the club's colors plus marble balloons. It made for quite a presentation, and the fact that the manager was offered 75 bucks from one of the patrons made for one hell of a foot in the door.

Well, the first trial was looking over the space with it's high celings, multiple rig points and a 10 telebeam lighting array. Good stuff all around. Next was to see where the traffic flow was between the dance area and the adjacent twin sub-nightclubs. One of them was a pool hall. Nothing doing there in terms of lighting or crowd interrest. The front sub-bar was a jazz lounge. Whatever went in there would have to be intimate. The main dance area was obviously the focus, for an all out lightshow presentation but it needed a bridge between the two clubs. That was solved by creating a pearl string arch that spanned over the entrances, as well as extra bouqets near the jazz club door. This complimented the more formal black and white imprinted 16 inch arrangements that were mounted into candles with tall eyebolts that allowed the candles to be used - without being a fire hazzard. Simple - but understated and didn't get in the way of people trying to watch the band. The dance area was also simple, but had some nice results with the available lighting system. A full scale balloon drop of 1000 nine inchers that spanned the entire dance area, plus an artifical wall created around the outside of it via some 11 inch columns mounted to 3 footers. All of these were clear to take advantage of the telebeam system which was more programmable than most. The entire system of columns reached within a foot of the ceiling which was 25 to 30 feet, tied to the railings surrounding the dance floor with paper and mechanics to hide the mounting points. Each tower was then leveled to insure the wall effect, and yet the balloons being clear didn't impede the crowd watchers at the party.

The lighting system of course was the payoff. With each wall spanning 30 odd feet, the beams could be set to sweep the entire span and then proceed on the next wall. The effect was akin to being in a vortex of color. It was even better when the strobes activated because it bascially then became the inside of a flashbulb with the balloons reflecting the light back at the dancers. Got a little worried there since the night vision was effectively killed for a few seconds. How this would mix with libations was anyone's guess. The logistics were tight considering that my crew wasn't going to be ready until the eve of the actual hang, nor would anyone be at the club, so the columns were assembled in advance in a storage area that was locked, and the drop was hung above the loading dock. If it was any bigger it would have been impossible to do in advance since the club couldn't get anyone down before 2pm and was opening at 5pm. But with everything but the pearl string arch, the front bouqets, and the 3 footers everything was set more than a day in advance.

There was some concern by the resident DJ who wasn't aware of the light transmission through the Jeweltone Clears, but ironically he wasn't working that night anyway. The lead programmer of the Telebeams was. He probably spent an hour running the system through it's paces and having a grand old time making the balloons do everything but turn into supernovae. That night, the drop was rigged to the DJ booth, the crowd wasn't screwing with the decorations (an odditiy given the early opening of the club), and the mindnight destucto fest began. I didn't care because the less I had to tear down the better - particularly since the ladders were sub-par and I was sub-sober. The funny thing is that only when the drop was complete did they tear into the columns. One party guest claimed it was like potato chips. Once you pop one, you gotta pop them all. I think in the span of 15 minutes everything but one single column was destroyed. That last column was in the hands of a group that was heading out the back door and was last seen securing it to the back bumper. I assumed they didn't have to take the highway.

The funny thing was that up-front, in the jazz bar, it was a totally different story. All the arrangements made it up on stage and were around the band. My agent behind the bar informed me that after a couple of pops the band requested additonal stage props and everyone immediately took their balloons forward and set them around the stage. Unexpected but certainly a compliment. It wasn't an earth shattering gig to say the least, but I got some insight into crowd dynamics, and how lighting systems can really make your work shine. This would prove usefull in the next few years. Why other decorators didn't make their trade with more clubs was still a mystery however. Hardly any clubs outside of one's attached with Hotels seemed to have diddly for balloons. The other decorators in town all seemed preoccupied with weddings and bar-mitzvahs as well as retail sales for Valentine's Day. Why they wanted to pass up a great time in a urban club with mega-watt support systems, I couldn't begin to fathom. It wasn't hard to do - and the perks were fantastic! What's even more mysterious is why the decorator set still overlooks this area of market focus - even nowadays.
-mgabrys

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