FUDCon: Tempe FUDPub options, round 2 (I am an endless pit of ideas!)

[Paul Frields]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 8:25 PM, Robyn Bergeron
<robyn.bergeron at gmail.com> wrote:
> inode0 reminded me today that there is a nice student area with pool
> tables and such that can be rented out.
>
> So, I looked into it *a bit*: From what I can see, Sparky's Den,
> located in the Memorial Union, can be fully rented out for $155 an
> hour (or $195 if we weren't affiliated with a student group).
>
> They have 8 lanes of bowling, 14 billiards tables, 2 table tennis
> tables, foosball, 4 tvs, and an arcade.  (Spot will be pleased to hear
> that he can spend quarters on Simpsons pinball *all night long.*)
>
> Now, of course, there are a few catches:
>
> * We have to use University Catering for food. I don't know if this
> includes rules about donated food, donated beverage, approved caterer
> list, or what.

At every recent FUDPub we've always paid for some sort of food spread,
so this is very reasonable, and I'm sure the prices will be OK given
those we're seeing for breakfast fare.

> * Alcohol would require a permit that has to be approved by Campus PD,
> and we would have to have servers. I can't imagine this to be
> incredibly complicated, but who knows.

Just for the info of the list, due to liability reasons the Unversity
probably has to use servers who've received training (like cutting off
rowdies, it is college after all). Also reasonable.

> * It may only be possible to rent it on Sunday. I've already requested
> information on this.  If this is the case, would we be interested in
> doing FUDPub on Sunday instead of Saturday?

Hm. Saturday would definitely be better from my perspective, but we
can certainly consider Sunday if that's all that's available.

I'd also like to investigate the option of renting some school buses
for the night and taking people somewhere like Dave & Busters or the
Gameworks.  Either one is just a few miles away, but it's too far to
make people walk after a long day. I tried to find some bus rental
places on Thursday but I was in a rush and there was nothing that
jumped out other than an aggregation site whose prices I'm not sure
were accurate.

Can anyone other than Robyn do some research on this and present some
options next week?

> I've put in an email (as I said) with our contact for booking stuff in
> the MU.  I also asked her for some pointers / info on the other stuff
> (catering, alcohol, you know, the important things, plus the other
> catering questions I had for her anyhow). If she can't answer the
> questions, she can at least point me in the right direction and we can
> see if this is doable within budget.  It might be a decent option from
> the perspective of being probably the right amount of space for all of
> us with plenty to do, being able to have some space for the
> world-famous FPL speech, etc.

I think it's a great option to consider -- thanks for looking into this Robyn.

Paul