Subpar Miniature Golf- Where we started.

I feel like I'm walking into a dusty old abandoned house.

Hello? Anybody here?
Anyone been on this blog in this calendar year?

Well, this is really the only place to post this sort of rant, so let's try to get this out in a few short hours and see if we can't get you all up to speed.

As you, a Facebook friend, are most likely aware, I am attempting to open a miniature golf course, here in the Bay Area of California. More specifically, Alameda, a city, island, municipality all of its own, just south of Oakland, and about five minutes from my apartment. Right now, we are on the precipice of the end, teetering, as my architect so plainly put it, between destruction and chaos, hoping, really to not tip either way, but the outlook is not great.

I'd like to commit to digital paper the whole story, so if you would rather not start from the VERY beginning, wait until my last post of the day, where I'll spell out the current situation in detail.

It all started with Jake, Martin, Paul and Chris, all neighbors of mine, discussing a way to get guests of our upcoming F3 event to make sure they visited all of the open studios in the building- what if there were a miniature golf hole in each place, and guests were encouraged to play a full round? An ambitious project to be sure, but definitely clever. We thought about the logistics of it, if it should be outside, whatever, and I began thinking about what we could do with all the holes at the end. There was certainly no room for them to stay in anyone's unit, storing them would be expensive, and destroying them would be wasteful. What about turning it into an actual course? Are there any miniature golf courses anywhere near here?

As it turns out, no. There isn't a single miniature golf course in Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, Alameda or anywhere in the western part of the bay, save for one in Marin County. The closest one to us was in Castro Valley, and that is about a 20 minute drive.

So I discussed my enthusiasm about this project and the potential market, with David, my neighbor and business start-up expert. He shared similar enthusiasm for the idea, and we started doing the research on business starting procedures. We filed as an LLC in the name of Subpar Entertainment LLC with the state of California, and started scouting properties.

There were many lots in Oakland that looked interesting, but an outdoor facility in Oakland would be prone to vandalism, and would require building a large and expensive fence and 24-hour security. We searched for indoor spaces large enough- warehouses, closed clubs, when I came upon a Craigslist listing for a space on Park Street in Alameda.

Alameda is a family-oriented city, not dense in the traditional city sense, but a nice place where there are a lot of kids, and a good police officer to citizen ratio. In other words, it is a bit of a safe haven from the cities that surround it on all sides. The good news for us is that we kept hearing was that while there were many families and young people in the area, there were few entertainment establishments, and a sore need for more.

We contacted the property manager of the space, arranged a visit of the space, and started negotiating rates. I'll admit I fell in love with it too quickly. I saw the potential in it, put not the pitfalls. I didn't have a structural engineer look at it, I didn't have a plumber or electrician inspect it, and I didn't check previous location work history. All sizable mistakes, in my own right.

But we knew, or thought we knew at the time, that this was the perfect location. When our other possible location said no, we focused our attention on 1511 Park Street, and figuring out the logistics of opening the business in that spot.