Ninja party is canceled this year

[mfreeck]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Just to rehash the camelbak idea because I like it.

I don't see why people are talking about *organizing* people with camelbaks. We are all self sufficient people, there's no reason people can't byob in a non-alcohol container. Don't or can't buy booze? Great! BYOMixer. I'd also like to point out that a decent sized camelbak should support 2 bladders (more if you put them inside, but it's not as graceful and more hose confusion). It just makes more sense to me not to make one mix, but to have one for booze (more capacity) and have the mixer separate (in my case, one for booze, one for water and trade for mixers).

I understand the ninjas can't take a chance on a big organized party this year, but I predict with the slap down put on organized parties, the party will just metastisize.

Really the Riv should be thinking about what happens when the party is every defcon attendee wandering the hotel. Is it easier to deal with 500 drunken people in one room, or 4000 mobile bartenders?

[[Syntax]]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Im good with whatever people decide to do. I have no problem with the BYOB thing, but the whole situation is disturbing. I want to say I never imagined a hotel in Vegas would be so anal about things, but then I think about how many things went unnoticed or at least noticed without confrontation at the AP.

Last year many people were harassed for simply loitering in the main hallway downstairs, that is rather ridiculous. These are paying guests of a hotel, convention or not, and the hotel is going to yell at them rudely to move out of the hallway. If they think Im going to loiter at their bar they are mistaken.

I encountered security being total asses without any respect for guests, multiple times when people were doing absolutely nothing wrong.

[Wing]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

It's the Riviera. If the management had a clue, people would at least remember to mention it when talking about the north end of the strip. The construction sites have more appeal (Indeed, if management had a clue, the Riviera would probably BE a construction site)

[converge]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Thats the strange thing though, isn't it? Businessmen love guaranteed money. You find a way of maximizing the profit and you take it ... it seems that some hotels have a hard time figuring that out and would prefer $0. Car dealerships are odd like this too, where they won't sell a volume of their vehicles at a low profit margin to an educated buyer but would rather take the risk of sitting on them until an unsuspecting dope walks up saying 'i think i need a new car'

[astcell]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Sounds like if you DID agree to their terms, the terms may just be changed again if they smell money, like with Icetre.

I bet the mob hates the competition!

[barkode]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

I see simple math. Let's say that we ask the hotel to provide the bartenders and booze. Now let's say we get 4 bartenders and they can make a drink a minute. This is fast for them, I have seen how slow they move.

Now we have 4 drinks a minute, or 240 an hour. A four hour party means 960 drinks. At $6 a drink they get $5,760. Subtract their expenses, wages, dishes, maybe they net $5,000. Max. So someone ought to figure out what they get for a profit and that ought to be their corkage fee, Any more is literally robbery. Let them work for it and regret it.

This was essentially what the hotel wanted to do - but the math is a little off.

There's also bar-setup fees, and the drink costs could be anywhere from $6 to $8. We also calculated out about 6 hours (9pm to 3am, roughly). The cost comes out to just north of $10k for drinks, then add setup fees + tips + cleanup + etc, which ends up being more like $13k-$15k.

This versus $2,000 for booze and setup from Lee's Discount Liquor, and running our own bar at the Alexis Park.

Or alternatively, paying a $2500 corkage fee (more than the entire booze cost) to the Riviera, and leaving our total booze-related costs at $4500, already high but something we could -consider- if we essentially gave them the profits from the Ninjagear table.

I understand that the food and beverage people need to make money, but they also need to reasonably compromise when they're dealing with sub-events at existing, large events. There's a middle ground where everyone can be happy, and they're just not willing to meet us there.

[barkode]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

i strongly support a Camelback party.

I'd like to publicly ask... Barkode, what would it take for you and the Ninjas to participate in some sort of party this year? There was just so much work that it seems like you did, pre-planning and all. If we told the hotel that there was going to be a skybox party but that it was without any bar service at all.. i think that would be a good thing. Tell them that they are free to setup bars out in the hallways in the corners (they've done that in the past) but to just stay outta the skyboxes (the argument could be made that we don't want to get hit with additional like you were last year)

The overall vibe we are getting from the hotel is "we are going to fuck with you this year unless you do this our way, period."

I think if a few hundred people were suddenly drinking from matching camelbacks that quite obviously were *intended* to bust up their monopoly on booze, they're most certainly going to shut it down and are also going to flip out on DT, Charel, etc.

So do we throw an event knowing that there's a moderate chance the hotel will just arbitrarily shut it down? For instance, they look inside and see a bunch of people with drinks, accuse us of breaking the rules, and just shut it down?

The hell with that. We've got a vote of no-confidence on these people, so no matter how good the plan is, we can't throw an event at the Riv. It's not worth the risk of an arbitrary shut-down. Not with the amount of work we put into it.

If we were to do something it would be offsite and it would be big as hell and probably paid for by a sponsor. But that's probably not going to happen this year, as we're not actively courting sponsors.

We're really just bitter about the whole thing.

[TheCotMan]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

From Oct, 2007:

Las Vegas will become a modern ghost town. Costs of electricity, transportation of goods, access to water, and more will cause it to become too expensive to keep it running while other gambling locations like tribal gaming, Lake Tahoe, or Reno are available and closer to access people from LA and Orange County.

Seems many people would love to have our population in Las Vegas.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...as-860513.html...

I don't think *this* down-turn is going to be the one that turns Vegas into a Ghost town, but it is a shadow from the future. This down-turn isn't enough, by itself, to kill Las Vegas -- far from it. however the same weapons used in its future suicide are in plain sight right now.

[astcell]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Barkode --

I was never invited to your fine party, though I heard many good words about it. This is a travesty. Your alls party is a DefCon treat! How does this get fixed going forward? Or does it get fixed at all? Seems the folks in LV don't love us any more. OOOOO! I have an idea! Let's transplant Con to Tejas! It's hot, dry and there is a lake near by. Sounds like LV to me!

Regards,

valkyrie

I see simple math. Let's say that we ask the hotel to provide the bartenders and booze. Now let's say we get 4 bartenders and they can make a drink a minute. This is fast for them, I have seen how slow they move.

Now we have 4 drinks a minute, or 240 an hour. A four hour party means 960 drinks. At $6 a drink they get $5,760. Subtract their expenses, wages, dishes, maybe they net $5,000. Max. So someone ought to figure out what they get for a profit and that ought to be their corkage fee, Any more is literally robbery. Let them work for it and regret it.

Have their bartenders there. Riviera bartenders are as useful to me as a kotex dispenser. I'll just walk right by and go get my own damn drink. Who is to say they cannot be at the party? We just won't use them.

I am on the fence about tipping them. Does it go to the bartender or into a big coffer? What if the Ninjas set up the party an no one bought from the hotel bar staff in the party skybox?

Another sad thing is the way they treat us, as if we have already done something wrong. The AP eventually decided that defcon will simply buy them new walkway lights every year. No one was concerned. No guns were draw or warrants served over a walkway light. They got over it very fast. AS for their guards, chalk up their antics to ignorance.

We were told (warned) years ago that things were very different at hotels that have casinos in them. And indeed they are. Security sees anyone not dressed like them as a potential threat. That is their job. I am sure they watched Oceans Eleven 157 times and figured out how they can stop the bad guys and they are itching for the day they can strut their stuff. And if we act like idiots we hand then their headline on a silver platter.

The worst part for ALL concerned (including the hotel) is the lack of commo. Icetre had a deal with one person that was soon worthless. Security can say "This party is shut down because ______" and make up the rest of the blank. Their left and right hands don't talk. Their left hand is in our till and their right hand is on the trigger. Almost makes one want to hire the mob for protection and alcohol.

Rest assured, cooncon will never have this issue!

[astcell]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Seems many people would love to have our population in Las Vegas.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...as-860513.html

Down and out in Las Vegas

The good-time capital of the US has hit a losing streak. Guy Adams reports on an epidemic of bankruptcies, foreclosures and mass lay-offs

Saturday, 5 July 2008

Since the day Las Vegas was created in the shimmering Nevada desert, visitors have been drawn by one simple promise: "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas". The motto adorns the city's road signs, and has inspired everything from its souvenir T-shirts to the local tourist board's seductive advertising campaigns.

These days, that motto is imbued with a worrying sense of irony. Because America's most outrageous city is facing a growing multitude of problems, and they all boil down to a single, unavoidable point: right now, far too little happens in Vegas, because not enough people are actually staying there.

The onset of global slowdown, high petrol prices, and a nation-wide housing slump is spelling disaster for a town that owes every aspect of its wealth – from that gaudy replica of the Eiffel Tower to those scale models of Venetian canals and the Pyramids of Egypt – to its ability to inspire free-spending hedonism.

With Americans cutting back on luxuries, and the price of transport rocketing, the so-called "Vegas vacation" is facing the axe. This week, as the nation celebrated Independence Day, major hotels were taking stock of a fall in all-important room occupancy rates from their usually impressive 95 per cent levels to nearer 80 per cent.

More worryingly, new figures showed gambling revenue has also dropped – a further 3 per cent this month – starting a price war between worried firms anxious to lure punters back. Hotel rooms, which last year averaged $130 each, now go for less than $100 (£50).

At the vast Planet Hollywood resort, the clatter of fruit machines and poker chips was this week replaced by an uneasy – and, for Vegas, very unusual – calm. A large if slightly tatty double room could be found for less than $80.

No tourist resort can afford to lose its buzz. Yet the slump now runs so deep it's starting to hurt even the town's Elvis impersonators, wedding chapels, and sex industry. When money's tight, the prospect of stuffing another $20 bill into a lap-dancer's gyrating stocking-top somehow doesn't seem quite so enticing.

"This year already we've seen the Minx closing, the Mensa club closing, and the Crazy Horse closing," says Dolores Eliades, owner of the OG, the second biggest "adult cabaret" venue in the world. "By another 12 months from now, I expect another two or three major venues will have gone.

"We've seen a drop in custom here too: maybe 180 people coming in when before we got 200. It's a difficult business, but the girls still have to make a living. We will survive because we own our own premises, we have a good name and location, we don't buy on credit, and we've been around for a long time. But we're very lucky in that respect."

To quantify the Vegas slump, look to the stock market. Shares in casino operators, the engine room of an economy reliant on its liberal attitude to public morality, have been haemmoraging value like a down-on-his-luck gambler.

Las Vegas Sands, which controls the Venetian and Palazzo resorts on the famous neon-lit Strip that runs through a "miracle mile," has dropped below $50 a share, a third of its value last September. MGM is at $28, from over $100 a year ago. Wynn resorts, owned by the ebullient billionaire Steve Wynn – a Texan version of Donald Trump – neared $70, from almost $180 last year.

This week, in an attempt to prevent financial meltdown, Nevada's Tourism Alliance convened an "Air Crisis Briefing" in an effort to prevent airline plans to halve the number of flights to the resort. The city's gut-busting "eat all you can" buffets are also being scaled back to account for the US's 4 per cent food inflation. Where a long queue of obesity once trailed across The Bellagio hotel restaurant's ornate carpets, demand for its famous (but now pricey) lunch buffet had on Thursday slowed to a trickle. In what sounds suspiciously like a panic measure, the Golden Gate Hotel this month even said it was doubling the price of its signature 99 cent shrimp cocktail.

For the inhabitants of the desert resort, which was founded in 1905 and became prosperous after gambling was legalised in 1931, it's no joking matter. The growing unemployment crisis (MGM just axed another 400 middle-managers), plus a downturn in the tips that form a significant portion of the Vegas economy, has a human cost, too.

Local bankruptcies have quadrupled. The property market, which rode the wave of a boom for most of the past decade is now below its peak by anything from a quarter to a third (depending on whose figures you believe), while Nevada now boasts, if that is the right word, the nation's highest foreclosure rate.

The number of empty homes has caused a health scare after it emerged that mosquitoes – possibly carrying the killer West Nile virus – are breeding in abandoned swimming pools. "We've had crews pumping out pools every day this week," Devin Smith, who manages the city's Neighborhood Response Division, told the Las Vegas Review Journal. "Two years ago, we may have pumped six pools in a season. Now we're probably pumping that a week."

Other sectors of Las Vegas aren't looking too healthy, either. Attendance at conventions, which account for roughly a quarter of the city's income, dropped by 7 per cent this year as impoverished firms cut back on their delegations to recession-hit events such as the Homebuilders Convention.

"The current rate of overall unemployment in this state is 6.2 per cent, the highest since May 1994," said Jered McDonald, an economist with the Nevada Employment, Training and Rehabilitation Department. "Las Vegas seems to be getting the worst of it. Other parts [of the state] aren't so bad; in fact the gold-mining industry is booming, so the drop in employment in big metropolitan areas is actually bigger than that figure suggests.

"With the high oil prices, people don't have much disposable income to spend on gaming and entertainment. So we are looking at a short-term slump, certainly. In the longer term, everything depends on what's going to happen to oil prices."

But the biggest threat of all is that Las Vegas might somehow be perceived to have lost its buzz. Like any tourist economy, the city's fortunes depend squarely on being seen as a "hot" destination, a tag that becomes difficult to justify if potential visitors hear reports that the place is struggling.

As a result, no major strip operators are publicly advertising their new low room rates. None would be interviewed for this article, regardless of the concerns shareholders might have for their fortunes. A spokesman for Wynn Las Vegas, for example, said "Respectfully, we must decline" the opportunity to discuss trading conditions.

And on the horizon is further strife. As a hangover from the frenzied growth of two years ago, Las Vegas is also in the grip of a speculative building boom, with dozens of cranes towering over the Strip.

Wynn Resorts is building a $2.2bn hotel, and Encore and MGM are spending $9.2bn on a 76-acre project called CityCenter. More than 40,000 new rooms will exist in four years, in a city that has 7 per cent of America'shotel beds. The prevailing emotion among business leaders is a mixture of optimism and denial. The Association of Greater Las Vegas Realtors, for example, claims the housing market is finally turning the corner after a "correction" to the long-running bull market that had made Vegas America's hottest location for almost a decade. Rick Shelton, the association's vice- president, insists that the long-term future is rosy and, to illustrate his point, draws a diagram on a napkin in a local cocktail bar. It consists of a circle with the initials "BLM" written outside it.

"This is the map of Vegas," he said. "Inside that circle is the city. Outside it, everything is owned by the Bureau of Land Management. So there's really nowhere else for the city to expand. And yet, the census bureau has forecast that the population of Vegas will grow from two million now to three million by 2016. There's nowhere for those people to go. So this town is another Tokyo, with land as a commodity. You fly in here and you see desert and you think, 'Building, building, building'. But it can't be built on, so prices must go up. And all those Harvard economists are missing that key component when doing their prognosis of our market. The way I see it, we have been in check, and are now aligned for the next spurt, and I'm talking a power arc that's got between seven and 10 years to run."

Dolores Eliades says the history of Las Vegas shows it will find a way to adapt and survive. "Historically, Las Vegas is able to withstand the problems of the rest of the country. When people face hard economic times, they come here to get away from their problems. In the US, people are escape artists, and they deal with problems a little differently from the rest of the world. I believe the history of this town proves I'm right, I really do."

[Dallas]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Out of Curiosity, it seemed to work well last year at some parties to have the Riv on one side, and the Defcon bar outside in the seats or at the 2nd bar (in the larger rooms).. I know we paid one bartender a $ 200 tip to go with it.

- Dallas

i strongly support a Camelback party.

I'd like to publicly ask... Barkode, what would it take for you and the Ninjas to participate in some sort of party this year? There was just so much work that it seems like you did, pre-planning and all. If we told the hotel that there was going to be a skybox party but that it was without any bar service at all.. i think that would be a good thing. Tell them that they are free to setup bars out in the hallways in the corners (they've done that in the past) but to just stay outta the skyboxes (the argument could be made that we don't want to get hit with additional like you were last year)

I would personally contribute as much of my time and resources possible to see camelbacks go to many, many interested people. How about a system that invovles colored glow bracelets and/or necklaces? Red == fruity rum cocktail, Orange = Vodka screwdriver, Yellow = Gin and Tonic with Lemon, etc etc. Then that actually encourages people to seek out other partygoers and so forth until the free drinks run out. I just imagine the fun of people sidling up, asking for a quick fix like deadheads trying to score one toke out of a bowl. When anyone's Camelback goes dry... they just take off their glow necklace.

I picture the Minibosses going to town and a room full of people who feel special since they have "secret" knowledge while at the same time the hotel bar just outside in the hallway would still be doing some fair degree of business anyway, keeping them happy.

Hell... even if we can't do this in a skybox, this should totally be the plan for the B&W ball and have the minibosses play there. I don't know... i'm just trying to pull out any ideas possible that can involve us still having what is arguably the most important part of DEFCON for many people.

Anything I can do I will do to help.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Hmm.. maybe a BYOCB party? (Bring your own Camel Back).
I am sure the Riv staff would have a fun time trying to figure out why everyone is running around with 3 liter hydration packs on. And the bonus: you can drink while taking a piss and never have to touch your drink container! :-)

i strongly support a Camelback party.

I'd like to publicly ask... Barkode, what would it take for you and the Ninjas to participate in some sort of party this year? There was just so much work that it seems like you did, pre-planning and all. If we told the hotel that there was going to be a skybox party but that it was without any bar service at all.. i think that would be a good thing. Tell them that they are free to setup bars out in the hallways in the corners (they've done that in the past) but to just stay outta the skyboxes (the argument could be made that we don't want to get hit with additional like you were last year)

I would personally contribute as much of my time and resources possible to see camelbacks go to many, many interested people. How about a system that invovles colored glow bracelets and/or necklaces? Red == fruity rum cocktail, Orange = Vodka screwdriver, Yellow = Gin and Tonic with Lemon, etc etc. Then that actually encourages people to seek out other partygoers and so forth until the free drinks run out. I just imagine the fun of people sidling up, asking for a quick fix like deadheads trying to score one toke out of a bowl. When anyone's Camelback goes dry... they just take off their glow necklace.

I picture the Minibosses going to town and a room full of people who feel special since they have "secret" knowledge while at the same time the hotel bar just outside in the hallway would still be doing some fair degree of business anyway, keeping them happy.

Hell... even if we can't do this in a skybox, this should totally be the plan for the B&W ball and have the minibosses play there. I don't know... i'm just trying to pull out any ideas possible that can involve us still having what is arguably the most important part of DEFCON for many people.

Anything I can do I will do to help.

[Gadsden]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Hmm.. maybe a BYOCB party? (Bring your own Camel Back).
I am sure the Riv staff would have a fun time trying to figure out why everyone is running around with 3 liter hydration packs on. And the bonus: you can drink while taking a piss and never have to touch your drink container! :-)

[barkode]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

I would personally hold out hope that DT or someone can pressure the Riv into a better situation for us. Let it be no bar at all in the skybox (a pair of hallway bars would suffice, for the suckers not bringing their own booze) and people can just walk around carrying their own drinks in whatever cups or containers they wish. Let everyone be responsible for their own liquid entertainment (community ingenuity will win through on that one) and let the chips fall where they may.

Oh we could probably run the event dry, I'm sure the Riv would agree to that, and make people go fishing for booze elsewhere. But what's a party without a bar? In reality, people would spend half of their time on the mission to get a drink.

If there was to be another DEFCON at the Riv, what we need is simple - a waiver or substantial discount on corkage for sub-events, and a reasonable fee for bar setup assuming that we have to use Riviera bartenders. That's it. That would keep the "overhead" to under $1k per bar, and we could probably live with that.

I realize that Barkode and others have said that they are backing out now, and i understand the whole point of putting their foot down. But for god's sake... DEFCON without a Ninja party?

Yeah, Saturday night is going to be really weird. I guess I'll just go get dinner and go to bed? Also half of my July just became free (sans HOPE) as we no longer have to build all this stuff.

If all that's left is a couple small dj-in-a-room type things running cash bars, and other gatherings getting harassed and/or shut down by the hotel over booze, I get the feeling Saturday night is going to be pretty dead. People will probably just go their separate ways.

Pretty anti-climatic, and it really blows that we won't get everyone together again.

[lil_freak]

Re: Ninja party is canceled this year

Very sad indeed.

Who will attack me with ninja weapons in the hall after the party ends now? Barkode, you guys have always rocked in my book with your parties and memories of them or at least the parts we remember will live on.