LionsLair

Hi All, Thought I'd just mention regarding the 'Is Lions even gay' comments etc... I find it amusing that people are making statements along these lines, surely it is only our place to say whether it's gay or not, as the owners?! I hate the term gay friendly, it kind of insinuates that if somewhere doesn't say they aren't gay friendly that any gays will get bashed on entry! Maybe that's just my wappy mind thinking too much! Lions is advertising in both the lgbt magazines and the main student mags too. We are also going to be heavily involved in Pride again this year - for the third year in a row. Do any other bars aside from Dempseys, Affinity or Xes do this? We also host the lgbt joint uni social every week offering free food and £1 drinks, to which we have been getting a steady 60 attendees this academic year. So we are definitely more gay than not! Anyway, think what you will, we are what we are, and we get a lot of gay guys and girls in. Just because we don't have a rainbow flag up, play camp music and shout from the rooftops saying we are gay doesn't make us not gay! We hope you have enjoyed the new look if you've been down, we've had a lot of compliments about it all and have been getting busier and busier week on week since our reopening four weeks ago. If you haven't been down yet why not try it and spend loads of dosh?! Yeaaahhhhhhh!! Cheers all Graham :-) P.s. some people take this forum wayyyy too seriously and need to take a reality check, others need to move on from their past! P.p.s. Whoops, the signature below is wrong, just change it but our opening times are actually: Fri & Sat: 8pm - 6am Sunday: Midday - Midnight Mon - Thurs: 8pm - Midnight

Hi All, Bit of an update for you, we've now just about completed our refurbishment, we're due to reopen this Friday (23rd Sept). We scaled back on the original proposal, everything has been kept downstairs, mainly due to financial restrictions but also down to trying to not be too lavish with cash in this climate. Everything is new, we gutted the place (it needed it I know!), so if you're interested pop down! We, as always, welcome any open minded people out for a good night. We are not an outright gay bar, nor are we outrightly straight. As stated before, I'm gay but my business partner isn't, we have had a very mixed and friendly crowd for the last couple of years and fully intend to keep it that way. If any of you are on facebook, the event is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=149457531814147 Cheers Graham P.s. no, there are no real ales on at this point, but I never say never!

Ah well... I'll get over it!

Hi All, I know this thread isn't for advertising, but in the case of a Pride fund raiser, I've chose to make an exception! This Sunday, we at Le Lair are putting on an afternoon BBQ to raise money for Sheffield Pride. It starts at 1pm at Lions, and continues on throughout the night, although the food is just at lunchtime. All profits on the food go to them, it's £5 in which covers all your food - so we should be able to make them a reasonable amount of money. John Dixon, our resident DJ, is spinning some old school funky house for the afternoon - lets just hope the heat wave continues! The details are on the facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=229785097047281 Before anyone starts stating it, yes we will make money on the bar, but we have all the costs of the event to incur, like staff, venue, electric, clean up etc! So if you can, get down and join in the fun! Cheers Graham

Cheers Adam, yeah I have chosen to ignore said little boy. I think we all realise what he is about. Graham

Hahahahaha!!!!

Exactly. Well said. I'm going to be the bigger man and forget about it, I have bigger fish to fry! Anyway, it's Revolution at plug on Friday, and tickets are just £3 this time round. Available at Lions Thursday and Friday night - see you there maybe!

And I care what you think?!

Do you really think I'm going to post the finances of the bar on a public forum?!

Aaron, get a grip and enter the real world.

Oooo I get you! *penny drops* - Yes that's mine now, although it's currently storing various rubbish and old furniture ready for the skip!

We do indeed have the beer garden still, it's not on the roof though! It's small ish, probably 4mx8m, but very private. We are in talks with the Heineken brewery for them to part-fund the refurb of the beer garden under one of their brands, like Bulmers.

I'm not in anyway doubting you run a legit operation, or that any other people don't do it, it's just I don't like the idea of entrapment using bait! Surveillance I am fine with.

Ha! How much exactly do you think it takes then?! Because anything less than £4k/week and it wouldn't even be open! We were taking that some weekends 2 1/2 years ago when James was involved, and we're taking more now!

You simply don't know what you're talking about Aaron. I do hope I never have the misfortune of meeting you.

Re the value, if I bought a brand new PS3 for £10, would that makes its value £10? No, no it would not. It would merely mean the person selling it was desperate. The figure the council is talking about re the CPO will easily cover what we paid and the refurb cost, so its a win win situation for us. The CPO runs out in July for your info. "Same old crowd go to the same place" I recognise about 30% of the crowd in here most of the time, and I have a photographic memory for faces, so shoosh! "it seems a lot of people don't bother buying drinks in there or perhaps just lounge about" I'm not even going to dignify this with an answer... are you on some form of stimulant?! How do you think we make thousands of pounds a week, from renting out seat space?! The only thing that irritates me about you, is that you voice derogatory comments publicly about LL which are blatantly untrue! Had you ever considered speaking to the manager on the night that you constantly refer to, if this night even existed? I doubt it, as that would require a face to face chat. But I think most of the people on here seem intelligent enough to realise most of your posts are consistently negative, which says a lot about you. Maybe when you're a bit older you will take a more adult approach to this site. T.I.C UK - that is utterly ridiculous! I can understand to a certain degree a private investigator - seeing if someone is actually currently cheating. But to entrap them with a 'honey pot' is absurd, and horrible. I would dispute that 'everyone is happy'!!

The Facebook Fuel Sheffield group has Fuel Hull as an admin, so I assume the group is legit. They are being very quiet about the position of the venue and when it will open, so whether they've started anything I don't know. It would be nice to see them return, variety is the spice of life as they say!

Thanks admills, point taken on board. It's a bit of a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' thing, as the main room is so small, and we have to cater for a very mixed bunch. We try to keep it quietish until 10pm currently. When the work is done, where the gents toilet and pub kitchen are at the minute (the room next to the beer garden), they will not have any speakers in at all, so can be used as a chatting area / chill out when the music is loud. The kitchen will have glass doors out onto the decking. Although we are not allowed out on the decking after midnight, it will remain lit, as it will be nice to look out on to. Graham

Haha crookesey, very true! Yes, the building went for £160k, it was in the market for £250k. Just because it sold for £150k doesn't mean that's what it's worth. It never had a for sale sign outside as they kept mysteriously disappearing, so unless you looked on the Punch or Cristies (Leeds) websites, you wouldn't have know it was for sale! Punch, the previous owner had it on their disposal list, and pretty much took what we offered for it, they are in a desperate position as they have over £4 billion worth of debt. How much do you think a refurb costs? To put things in perspective, we are spending £20k on the toilets and new stairway alone. The total budget for the refurb is between £80k-£100k. Yes, the 'owner' company is listed in Somerset, although financially it is owned by Charlie and myself. I'm not going to explain the details of it to a bitter ex-manager and a 21yr old boy with a chip on his shoulder! Re illegal activities. I think it's pretty obvious that a large number of people who stay out post midnight, especially till 6am, are usually very drunk, or on some form of stimulant. I've been in what are considered posh bars down Ecclesall road before late evening and seen people snorting white powder. If you think that Lions is the only bar in town where some people might have taken stimulants, then you are more naive than I thought! The Police are very happy with our procedures to control these activities, aside from putting a camera above each toilet, which some people may frown upon, what more can we do? Yes, we do have new door staff and a large percentage of new bar staff. I can assure you that none of our door staff would tolerate drug dealing or use, if people are caught. In fact, we have a rule that if 2 males are caught in the cubicle together they are asked to leave immediately. Less so with women as they are always toileting together! Aaron, you've obviously not been in for ages, but still seem very wound up about Lions, I find to destress about things that linger in your mind, its good to rub your ear lobes between your thumb and index finger while saying woosaaaaa. Maybe you should try it?!

Aaron, Who decides what "needs" to be in a gay friendly venue?! Ive said what I think about magazines, and the policy is not changing. Why do you say the straight customers are the only decent ones?! Everyones money is as good as anyone elses, regardless of sex, sexuality or colour! No, we don't lease it, we own the building and the freehold. So for a bar with a 5 bedroom apartment above it in the city centre, its hundreds of thousands. For your info, we are having a major refurb in about 8 weeks time, so the tiredness you speak of will be no more. Rudeness? To people like you maybe! Illegal activities? We have a few policeman as good friends who come in when they're off duty, and have a very good relationship with the police in general and with licencing, I can assure you they are not dim and would be onto us if such activities were permitted to happen. I wouldn't say i stalk you, dont flatter yourself! I know exactly who you are.

I've had take away from there before, all very nice. The prices were so cheap that I assumed the portions would be small, so we ordered loads. The portions are not small! We were eating mexican for weeks haha!

Re the Shout magazine, we haven't ever ordered them, they just appear on the bar, not sure who drops them off! We haven't seen any for a while, anyone know who organises their distribution? Just been down to the mini-pride thing on Fargate, nice crowd, friendly atmosphere and good music - closes at 4pm so get down if you can!

Aaron, Re the magazines, I said "I wouldn't want to see them" not that I didn't see them. Also, I said "venues" not gay venues. If people want to read about sexual health they can do so on the net. We have a very mixed crowd here, probably 50/50 gay/straight overall, I don't want to make the people who don't want to read that type of stuff in public, which is probably a high percentage of them, feel uncomfortable. Also, at the end of the day, it's our choice, we are the ones with hundreds of thousands of pounds invested in the place, and we have to do what we feel will keep paying customers happy. Maybe if you left the mirror in your bedroom for all your facebook profile pictures for more than 5 minutes you would see the wider picture! Take insight from Tryanna? I think not.

What they said!

Yeah it does seem this is the case. We have Exposed magazine on our bar, even when they do have part naked models, they always seem to be done in a much more classy way. The gay health ones always seem to look like porn mags which is just odd. Graham