BUTTER, NC

The infamous BUTTER! This is one of my favorite night clubs in Charlotte. It’s located at the NC Music Factory. Butter is unique for Charlotte because it is the first club to be high end and modeled after Butter NY, which is a very famous club in New York City.

Butter is a multilevel club with a few different options for guests. When you first enter, guests can turn left and go outside on the deck. They always have DJ outside for the crowd and to entertain the line. Butter placed outside furniture against the railings outside. It creates an open dance floor and a nice seating area. Sometimes they have cocktail tables against the building for people who want to stand and drink.

Another option is walking straight into a small bar area. It is extremely well decorated with seating. It’s a nice place to go if you don’t want to dance. There are really cool light fixtures hanging from above. They really make the place look expensive and luxurious. I like the colors they chose. There are dark reds, purples, golds, and black. The bar is located against the back wall. It maximizes the floor space and gives guests enough bar space to order drinks.

The third option is turning right and heading downstairs to the main floor. The main floor is huge! It has 2 bars, plenty of VIP tables, but unfortunately it has a small dance floor. The staircase curves all the way down. It overlooks the bar and the dance floor. It’s a great view when you’re walking down into a crazy dance floor. The bars should have been bigger, along with the dance food. The bars can only fit about 2 to 3 bartenders at a time. It takes forever to get drinks and It’s always crowded. The dance floor is cut off by some VIP tables that surround the dance floor. This is in front of the DJ booth. The VIP tables sit about one step up from the floor. I with they would have just cut our those VIP tables and allowed the floor to reach the walls. There is a very nice VIP section parallel to the dance floor in it’s own room. The floor is raised and the seats are pushed back from the extremely loud speakers. It’s set up in an “L-shape,” giving guests plenty of room to dance, but also two entrances to the main room. Butter is a great venue. Go check it out!

 

Monroe Crossing Mall

I work for CBS radio and had to work a promotion’s event out at the Monroe Crossing Mall. It was pretty far from Charlotte and I had to sit in a lot of traffic on Independence blvd. Once I arrived, I wasn’t too impressed. The mall is just another local mall with nothing unique. They were doing some renovations on the larger department stores, but nothing inside the mall had been touched. We entered through a back entrance and took all the equipment in. We were setting up for a small concert. I wasn’t sure where we were setting up in the mall so people can hear and see it. When we walked in, we decided to set up next to Belk department store.

The location of the stage was outside the main entrance into the mall from Belk. The walking path in the mall was at it’s widest and have us a lot of room to work with. The first thing we did was set up our tent. I selected a corner that is at the entrance to Belk. I wanted to be able to capture everyone’s attention in the mall and in Belk. The location allowed for 2 sides of our tent to be useable space to interact with people. It was also visible from further down the mall. If we set it up in the middle, then the stage would have blocked the visibility of the tent.

As for the stage, it was in the middle of the walkway. We decided to have the performers face Belk and not the mall itself. The ceiling lowered in the opposite direction and the width of the walkways got smaller. Facing Belk allowed for the music to enter the store through their huge entrance. The music was loud enough for people to hear it from all directions. The stage was about 30ft away from the entrance. It have viewers standing room and other vendors space to set up on the edges of the room. This allowed viewers to walk around either side of the stage and interact with vendors. This space was usually used as a sitting area, but we turned it into a small concert area by just moving some furniture and setting up some equipment.

The mall is located at 2115-290 West Roosevelt Blvd., Monroe, NC 28110.