The Office/Bally Tuck Shop

This is where our staff members spend most of their time.  We started the Bally shop about a month after the studios opened, as we are about a 10 min walk away from the nearest shop.  We get new stock regularly, and always try to get retro snacks (Monster Munch, Wham Bars, Curley Wurleys, Frazzles, etc).   Cheap too, with all of the sweets/chocolates/soft drinks at 50p, and the Crisps at 40p.   Remember, we are mainly trying to cover our costs with the shop, and is more offered as a service to the bands, as opposed to something to make more profits from.  There are other rehearsal studios shops we have seen that are up to 60% more expensive than us (80p for a drink).  

Free Fruit Tea, up to 45 varieties at any one time (some of the boxes are variety packs)

Two things a rehearsal Studios should never be without.    Joss Sticks....

....and a huge collection of spare parts (Only 1 box shown, we've actually got about 12 of them like this)

Free Bally Badges

Our Retro old telephone

We donate 25p from each and every session (even a 1hr drum practice) to Guide Dogs.   We hope to raise £550 in 2011

Things bands never bring, but suddenly desperately need;  Cowbells, Tambourines and Gaffer Tape (all of them are free of charge)

Spare cables, in case any of yours break, or you forget yours

We even lend out umbrellas, in case any band doesn't bring one, and it starts to rain during your session.  How chivalrous of us!!  18 umbrellas lent out, all of them bought back the next session.   Such honest bands we have!!

Spare Snare Drums

Complimentary Bally Bottle Openers

Message/ Community Boards

Here are some photos of our community message board, which is situated just outside studios 1 and 5. As you can see, if you put flyers up on our board, we take it all pretty seriously here that your flyers are not strewn around the floor or put into the bin.  We started off with just the one message board in June 2009, and by mid 2010, due to demand, we not have 4 of them lined up in a row, measuring around 8 foot across, by about 4 foot vertically.  If you want to send us any flyers in the post, please feel free and we will make sure that they all go up on the message board, and  you might also be able to see in there photos some CD's on the shelves, as a lot of the bands that come to the studios leave CD's up on the shelf for other bands to pick up, so again, if you want to send us some Cd's for the bands to pick up here, (and remember, we can get up to 50 bands every week here), we'll make sure they're put somewhere where bands will see them.

The hardest working Kettle in London!!

We used to have an urn, which provided instant boiled water, but each day, we'd have to boils lots of water, and only use some.   So we got rid of the urn, and went back to the kettle.  We only ever boil what we need, to save electricity.

Our little Chill Out Area. 

There was once a time when we honestly thought about having a pool table. Then we decided to add an extra studio instead.   So now we have a very small communal area, but it does the job well.   Here are photos of the stairs that are just beside studios 1,3 and 5.    It has an amazing echo.   In the past, we've put a snare drum at the bottom of the stairs, put microphones 1 inch, 1 foot and 10 foot from it, then a microphone on the next floor, then another on the second floor.  The phasing was a bit mental (well, more than a bit.....) but we got some pretty cool sounds.