He still must deal with a gay clientele, however, and according to some of the bar owners I talked to, they present a continuing challenge. Stoner's bar pays homage to the gay-bar tradition while taking advantage of the opportunities bars of a previous generation didn't have. To make a lot of money, you need a much larger bar where you can get huge volumes." Running a very small bar is not what you'd want to get into to make a lot of money. (Stoner pays thousands of dollars a year to ASCAP and BMI just to play music in the bar.) He says the profits are "enough to live on but no more. Architect (and former Slate intern) Mark Stoner, who devoted a year of full-time labor, 18 months of part-time work, and around $200,000 to opening Seattle's Pony, told me the bar brings in around $350,000 in annual revenue, but the fixed costs-labor, insurance, utilities, advertising-are surprisingly high. The contemporary bar owners I talked with did not describe their profits as "huge and quickly gathered." Today's bar owners run their businesses at a time when gays feel more comfortable spending time in all kinds of places, when the AIDS crisis has made backroom hookups far less common, and when gays are as likely to meet on an iPhone app as at a bar.
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