Secrets of the City

88 large in 4 days is a serious chunk of change. I hope Pi can find it.

The Pi thing is a bummer, but what I haven’t heard in any of the stories is exactly what went wrong. My understanding was the place was pretty popular and in a location that probably had pretty low rent. How’d they get $100k in debt in one year? Seems like it would take effort.

I know I’m not going to get my facts exactly right, but they originally had some weird purchasing agreement with the owner of the place. Now the owner wants all their money, so Pi has to either come up with the cash or enough money for a down payment for a mortgage. Since mortgages aren’t the easiest to come by right now, they need to come up with the $100,000 so they can get the mortgage.

I like Pi and think it is a great place. But I’ve always thought it was too big for day to day. Sure it fills up during Pride and other times, but I’ve been there on a weekend night with a handful of people on the dance floor and lots of open tables.

took a few clicks around to links, but it appears that:

Yule obtained Pis building using a contract for deed with a balloon payment. By September, she owed $600,000. Because of the credit freeze, she was not able to refinance her loan, and Pi is currently set to lose possession of the building on November 29. Yule plans to close on November 15 in order to allow time to liquidate assets.

sucks for the community, but no matter how strongly I feel about gay pride, I’d have a hard time throwing good money after bad to bail out somebody who made such and egregiously bad business decision.

GLBTQAI
Every few months, this acronym grows, it seems.
What is the QAI?

I’d have a hard time throwing good money after bad to bail out somebody who made such and egregiously bad business decision.

Come on man, it’s the new rage. Bailouts are cool.

GLBTQIA = Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersexed and Ally

I had to look it up. I guess I’m a bad gay.

GLBTQIAWTFBBQ2009

Worst. Bad. Gay. Evar. Of all time.

bad gay = Omar

@g_rote: Egregiously bad decision … or just bad timing? Seems there are millions of others still holding mortgages or CFDs that also fell into the credit freeze black hole. I think we all still had rosy expectations a year ago that business-as-usual would continue for the time being.

FYI back in the dark days of the early-to-mid ’80s, when mortgage interest rates were peaking at 15-18% (1982), a lot of people had forthcoming balloon payments to worry about because that was the only way anyone middle-class could afford to buy property.

I’d have a hard time throwing good money after bad to bail out somebody who made such and egregiously bad business decision

To most people, it’s not about supporting someone who made a bad business decision. It’s about supporting someone who made the only deal they could because it was important to them to provide a service to an underserved community. The impact Pi has had in the community is not just providing a place for lesbians to get drunk and dance. It’s been so many things to so many between fundraisers and theme nights and space for other groups’ events. If it ultimately can’t be saved, is the community better for it having been there as opposed to there having been nothing at all for the last 1.5 years? Yes.

Is this the kind of mortgage that John McCain wanted to buy up?