Since I’ll be starting an internship at Community Recycling and Renewables (CRR) in a few weeks, my days at the Castle are coming to an end.  It’s been awesome, and I’m going to miss the money a lot…I don’t know if you knew this, but there is quite a pay differential between bartending and interning!

kings-court.jpgIt’ll actually work out all right, because starting in January, the Castle will be undergoing some renovation and expansion into the adjacent store.  Because of that, a large part of the bar will be unavailable, so they are cutting back on the number of people working every night.  I will miss it though, and I might try to start working there a few nights a week again after the semester’s over.  By then all the work will be done, so they’ll definitely be in need of people.

And I have to admit, I’m a little proud of myself–one of the main reasons that the owner decided to expand was to increase the capacity of the theatre and stage, and that’s largely due to the overwhelming success of the Rocky Horror night back on Halloween (my idea!).  The owner is planning on sponsoring an Indie movie night at least every week and also booking some bigger local bands as well as national acts to come play when the new and improved stage is done.

If you ask me, that’s something that Oakland desperately needs.  The South Side, Lawrenceville, the North Side and other neighborhoods already have big venues, but Oakland hasn’t had anything since Laga closed over 20 years ago (at least that’s what my Dad said).  He told me a story about sneaking in there to see P-Funk play when he was 16 or something…that must have been fun.