Whenever a new club, rave or weekly event goes down in this city’s nightlife otherworld, its planners have to get the word out on a limited budget. The question is, how? There are the usual faves: word of mouth, print advertising and radio promotion. But most of the time, flyers form the core advertisement for these wee-hour excursions. And we’re not talking about those plain paper flyers that are printed at Kinko’s and left on the windshields of cars, usually in the parking lot of some soul food restaurant. This is the real multicolored deal, and if there aren’t a couple of guys walking the beat, passing out these smooth, double-sided stacks of card stock hand-to-hand, you can find them at the clubs themselves or at Montrose-area record stores like Soundwaves, Atomic Music and Chemistry Records. “It helps us tremendously on getting the word out,” says Jaysen Clark, general manager of Tonic (310 Main Street).
You wouldn’t believe how far some folks go to get the perfect, eye-catching flyer. If you’re a clever cat like DJ/event promoter Joe B., who still conceives the kitschy images that market his monthly “Starlight VIP” gig at Hyperia (2001 Commerce), you do the flyers yourself. But usually people in the nocturnal entertainment business have to call on outside assistance.
“We give the customer what they want, and we want to keep them happy,” says Ryan Hernandez, the guy who runs the three-year-old Industry Printing and Graphic Design. Hernandez and his design crew mainly run a classy, arty operation, opting to design flyers that are tastefully cool. This may explain why, when it comes to nightclub flyer distribution, he has downtown Houston completely locked down. He and his company have done up flyers for such central checkpoints as Hyperia, Spy (112 Travis), The Mercury Room (1008 Prairie), Rehab (711 Franklin) and the recently opened duo of Lotus Lounge (412 Main Street) and The Boaka Bar (1010 Prairie).
Recently Hernandez was setting up a flyer for the opening night of “The Gates,” a new weekly soiree over at that posh southwest Houston villa known as The Mansion (6303 Beverly Hill). His personal trainer gave him a photo of a chiseled dude holding a bikini-clad, possibly surgically enhanced woman on each arm, and told Hernandez it was just the thing for the Tori Amos-red flyer. Hernandez thought the pic was just too tawdry. But Mansion management got a look at the photo and said it was just what they wanted. “I thought we had done better work before, but that’s what the client requested,” says Hernandez. “So that’s how we went that direction.” (Since then, Hernandez has printed a more conservative flyer for the night, with a man in a suit holding a glass.)
In case you haven’t gotten the memo, sex sells. And if a club owner or party promoter wants a little cleavage action on their flyers, then the customer is always right. Sometimes even the talent is taken aback by what the higher-ups have in mind when it comes to promoting their events. DJ Gov. Good Grief was a little surprised when he saw a pair of exotically tan, bikini-covered love mountains take front and center in the flyer for his new Tuesday-night reggae fest at The Hub (312 Main Street), fittingly enough called T.I.T.S. (Taking It to the Streets). Says the Governor: “It’s something that gets your eyes, youknowhamsayin?”
But it’s not about sex all the time. Sometimes alternative events call for alternative people to craft an alternative way to bring in alternative folks who are looking for, well, something different. When local underground dance event crews like Bigtyme Productionz need a stack of flyers, they go to the kids at Automatik Design/Printing/Newmedia. The company (formerly Flux Studios) has been producing quirky flyers for offbeat clubs, weeklies, monthlies and once-in-a-whiles for two years now. “Generally I like to go after a little bit crazier stuff,” says head man Mike Moore (a.k.a. Mike Frost — long story). His company handles flyer promotion for two of the city’s most uninhibited, unpredictable club weeklies: the bawdy “Trippin’ the Love,” which is now breaking commandments at Rich’s, and “Friday Night Karma,” which has finally broken in its new location (799 St. Emanuel). Although Moore has established an anything-goes philosophy for his company, other staffers, like Automatik designer Jeff Fleischmann, still prefer the subdued approach. “I don’t like to do anything that has a pornographic or any overly sexual connotations,” says Fleischmann, who does the “Karma” flyers (Karma host DJ Kung Fu Pimp is Fleischmann’s roommate). “It’s not really in my best interest, nor is it my want, to do stuff like that.”
Industry and Automatik aren’t the only crews night people flock to for print hype. Indie collectives like Noise Design Lab, Joshone Media, Next Media and others are also flyer designers-for-hire. And even though flyer design and distribution is only a small part of their multimedia scheme (both Industry and Automatik also do Web design and hip-hop album covers), it does take time and effort, and the designers would like more people to appreciate that. As Moore says, “It’s almost like controlled chaos when you’re trying to put that stuff together.”
Last Call
As mentioned earlier, The Boaka Bar, brought to you by the same cats who run The Mercury Room, is a new nightspot looking to bring Houstonians in from the cruel, cruel cold. It opened last weekend, and the folks behind Boaka (pronounced “boca”) are hoping people will be wowed by its palatial, theatrical decor. “If you don’t give people something to get excited about,” asks general manager Mark Sansoucy, “then why even do it?” Although the bar does sport a Lenin-era Russian theme, don’t expect the place to battle it out with the Czar Bar (910 Prairie) for the title of Best Downtown Vodka Bar That Reminds You of the Great October Socialist Revolution. Says Czar owner David Edwards: “Theirs is a nice place, but we spent close to a million dollars building something that you feel good in.”
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2001.