It's September 21, 2005, and Tim Hannum finds himself among the more than 500 patrons at the opening of one of the most anticipated adult entertainment spots (or "gentlemen's clubs") in Manhattan. Located in the former Paradise Club spot, the building alone cost $7.6 million, plus another $3 million to make it pole-worthy, and it's in the desirable spot between Madison Square Garden and the Empire State Building. It's the 10th club opened by Rick's, a publicly-traded company. "It was crazy, a zoo," Hannum says of the opening. In addition to being project director, Hannum was also the audio designer, and he was prowling the scene to make sure all was running well.
Luckily, it was–though owner and visionary Eric Langan was always on him about one thing: "He kept coming up to me going, 'Can you make it louder? Can you make it louder?'" Hannum laughs. "And I could and I did. I kept cranking it up, but only because it was a remarkable system."
"The Devil is in the Details"
When Hannum looks back on his career so far, he says he feels lucky to be here. "I started with McFadden Ventures, where I was lucky enough to work for Lance McFadden," Hannum says. For most of the 1980s, he traveled, finding lighting and audio for promotions of the confetti company. When the company was bought out in 1989, he went out on his own doing lighting installations for nightclubs and trendy bars. He ended up living a little too much of the rock-star life.
"After becoming a sober individual and responsible adult again, I founded Diavolo Systems," he says. The name of his company comes from his work philosophy– he was always hearing himself say that the "devil was in the details." Founded in 1996, the company has an impressive list of clients, so diverse as to include the seemingly contradictory church business in addition to his most recent stripper venture.
"I love old buildings," Hannum says of taking on the defunct Paradise. "It's what makes a job exciting and challenging. It's like this jigsaw puzzle that's thrown to the ground, and you have to put it together. You have the find the nooks and crannies for installing audio."
On the first floor of Rick's is the main stage and drinking area. The second floor features an upscale dining room plus private VIP rooms, and on the third floor, there are more VIP rooms.
"Rick's is a Houston-based company, like we are, and we've been working with Langan, the owner, on his other clubs for years," Hannum says. "He decided the old Paradise would be the place for his flagship New York project about a year and a half ago." First, the old building had to be completely redesigned, and Hannum credits Joe Kleinmann of the Kleinmann Group for taking the original concept of Rick's adult clubs in Houston, Minneapolis, New Orleans and Charlotte, and modifying it for the New York market.
Typically, sound is not a top priority for places like this, but Langan is not typical.
"I went to competing adult clubs only after I already spec'd out Rick's, because I do things a little differently," he says. "I know that Langan wanted it to be able to be a party place, and he wanted every area separately zoned." Generally preferring Martin Audio, he would end up using it almost exclusively. He says Martin's Rob Hofkamp was particularly key to the success of the sound installation.
"This was a great opportunity to be one of the first big installs of their new AQ series," he says.
Introduced just this past summer, the new integrated AQ Series of installation loudspeakers were designed to be architecturally unobtrusive. The main stage at Rick's features four AQ15 two-way passive loudspeakers and with its 400-watt AES (1600-watt peak), 15-inch direct radiator and high-efficiency HF compression drive. It's the most powerful in the six-speaker series. At the other extreme, the ultracompact version, the AQ5, were installed in places like the entrance, dressing rooms and VIP rooms.
AQ10s, featuring wide 90º by 50º dispersion and rotatable HF horns, were placed in the house and bar areas. A Backline S18 Sub- Bass System, placed under the stage, is used as the main subwoofer. "The place rumbles," Hannum says.
While he uses and sells equipment other than Martin, and admits that they aren't "the cheapest speakers in the world," the variety of mounting devices that come with the speakers and the ever-important eye-pleasing nature of the cabinets were factors in his choice. Mostly, though, "they sound really good–and Langan likes to be able to crank the music. Everything is a tight, clean sound with this system. He's a hands-on owner, playing with everything," Hannum says.
Apparently, the folks at Martin's London headquarters got a laugh when Hannum sent them the paint chip that the speakers were to match. "The speakers needed to match the color of the wall exactly, and they thought it was funny to be painting them this very specific Ralph Lauren Balmoral Red color. They took to referring to it as 'Rick's red,'" he laughs. "But everything turned out beautiful."
Having the speakers match the walls was more critical than one would think. "Most people would have put in ceiling speakers, but we didn't want to do that, because the ceiling couldn't handle the abuse, and we couldn't have gotten speakers up there that would be loud enough," Hannum says. The larger speakers placed in the rooms might seem bigger than necessary to some engineers, but they really needed the horsepower everywhere, he says, and were interested in blanketing the room with sound. After that, they squeezed in the smaller AQs to fill out the sound.
The DJ booth features a Rane MP24Z Mixer and two Technics SL-DZ1200 CD/MP3 Players. The monitor is a single AQ10.
Time was an issue: "We never have enough time!" he laughs. "But that's another reason why people are hiring us. If you have to turn a place around in 60 or 90 days, we tend to get the call because we can get in there with a crew and start work immediately."
Despite the high growth of the adult entertainment industry, Hannum says he doesn't make it a habit going after such gigs. "Eric Langan is a great person to deal with–he's creative, hands-on and wants to know everything about what he's getting. He's also a team-builder and makes it fun. It's really a party atmosphere," he says.
A Growing Trend?
Strip club, gentlemen's club, adult entertainment venue–call it whatever you want, but what it really should be called is a money-printing press. Rick's Cabaret International, Inc., is just one of several prosperous publicly-held companies in the industry (NASDAQ: RICK). Their new club in Manhattan is projected to increase the company's revenue by 50% in fiscal 2006, and while fiscal 2005 figures are still coming in, fiscal 2004 numbers reveal that revenue was $16 million.
"It's hard to gauge, because it's essentially a cash industry," says Christopher Buttner, who writes and edits for adult entertainment trade magazines in addition to running his own firm, PR That Rocks. "Some think there are 3,000 adult clubs out there, some think 5,000. And while there are 60,000 nightclubs, this segment is by far the most lucrative."
He says the strip club cliché still exists: The woman on stage with three teeth gyrates to an old jukebox bellowing dirty tenor sax riffs while her three kids wait in the car. But now, as "pornography becomes more mainstream," these upscale high-tech joints are growing significantly, especially in major markets like New York, southeastern Florida, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
"In Vegas, some of these freestanding clubs have property values of $10 million alone, even before you put in any of the interior decorations," Buttner says. "Now, typically, the budget for the lights and sound makes up 10% of the venue's overall cost, so we're looking at some pretty impressive sound and lighting systems."
While Rick's seems to be an exception to this, the typical approach to sound is different in these clubs: "Conversation is king, as guys want to talk to these beautiful women. So while they can be loud, the speakers need to be smooth, and most importantly, blend into the architecture. They are designed to be transparent. You don't want it to look like a nightclub; you want it to look like a lounge," Buttner says.
Also, there is a lack of trussing and moving heads, elaborate pieces of lighting technology that get in the way of the comfort level. "You want a guy to think he's in his living room with his own sound system, only with four beautiful, scantily-clad babes there," he says.
