So here's a weird little ritual we've found we need to go through: when we have a show in Above DNA, even if there's nothing going on in the big room, we can't let our staff ever go through the connecting door during load-in and sound-check, even though that would make things like stocking the bars and re-filling the ice wells easier. They have to go down and around.
This is because we've found that we need to basically hide the fact that the big room exists from most bands who are playing up there. That's the 250-capacity room, and if they get a look at the fact that we have an 800-capacity room, they tend to say, "Aw, man, what are you putting us in here for! That's bullshit!" and then they're cranky and hard to deal with all day.
As alegedly-professional performers, they should know better: they should realize that they're only going to get 50 people, and 50 people in the big room would be throwing a hot dog down a hallway. But they don't typically like to think of themselves as bands who only get 50 people, so we can't say to them, "Dude, you can play in that room when you're more popular", or they'd just be even crankier.
So we keep the doors closed and hope they don't notice it's there. So silly.
Hey look, photos: