IamWarehouseSteve

1: Borrow as much money as you can
2: Sell everything you own
3: Clean out your bank account 4: Convert it all to cash
5: Take all of that cash and make a very large pile, and saturate it in gasoline.
6: Ignite and save yourself from yourself.

Oftentimes. We got a rider request a few weeks ago that was over 10 pages long, so I contacted the road manager. Turned out that the band hated that stuff so much that they made up a ridiculously long rider so that they'd never have to do it again. They basically said "cross off everything but the water".
But there have been some other weird ones. Sherwood asked for "1 (one) well greased goat", the Poster Children asked that they be introduced by a retired astronaut, and letlive wanted three small, three medium, and four large pairs of boxer briefs, and 24 pairs of black socks (which they did not insist on at all).
Tube socks are one of the most common rider requests/"necessities". Lots of time to wank on the road, little time for laundry.
And then there were The Dead Milkmen. They were one of our first big shows and at the time I didn't understand that the venue could cross things off of the rider. We had a whole buffet, deli trays, big bowls of candy, and two dozen long stemmed red roses, which they put to use at the end of their set. After they got done, they grabbed the roses, ran down to the door, and handed them out to pretty girls as they left the venue.

First: Our city is dense with bars. some would say overly so.
Second: In our city, you have to have a special permit to allow alcohol and minors, and it's only allowed in very specific type establishments like "performing arts centers".
Third: It's so much more pleasant for fans to see a band not surrounded by complete sloppy drunks, and this place has always been about the music experience first.
Fourth: It wasn't my intention to get rich, I didn't know what I was doing, I just wanted a place for bands to play. I didn't have a business plan, much investment capital, or any idea what I was doing. I just did stuff.

David Yow almost cut his head off?
He was drinking beer out of his boot in the dressing room because we didnt have any cups. Yow was prone to climbing things. During the show, the crowd was so dense, he walked across the top of the people to one of the big ceiling support pillars like some punk god Paul Hogan. He started to scale the pillar, mic in hand, crowd surrounding him, and did not notice the giant (flat black painted) barn fan on the ceiling that he was about to climb into. One of the house guys saw it and literally did a monkey crawl over the top of the crowd and pulled him down just inches before he flayed his own scalp.

It doesn't right now. Owning the venue doesn't even make enough money to make a venue get by. I'm a grown man. I live with my mom (who still bakes cookies for some of the bands that return to the venue from ages ago).
To the extent of the money that comes out of the venue for me: It's gas and food. My truck's got over a quarter million miles on it. I don't really do anything else but The Warehouse (with the exception of the occasional movie). I basically live here. I'm a stupid musical martyr.