By George L. O'Brien
For months it has seemed as if we had replaced "Waiting for Godot" with "Waiting for Rula Bula." But finally, there was a hugely successful grand opening of this restaurant pub August 24 through 26th. Perhaps too successful.
As promised, Rula Bula is beautiful. The decorations were brought in directly from Ireland and the results are wonderful. The lighting is warm and the atmosphere is comfortable. At the same time, the food is very very good and they pour an extremely fine Guinness.
Unfortunately, the place is way too small. It does not take a terribly big crowd to fill the place. Even when partially filled, the brick walls lead to a fairly high noise level that drowns out the recorded background music on the sound system.
The built in sound system is totally inadequate for live music. In order for the music to be heard, it is necessary to increase the volume to the point of distortion. What is worse, the sound is much louder coming out of some speakers than out of others resulting in a continual problem with setting the controls.
In addition, the internal system produces a "muddy" sound even when used as PA system. The difference was extremely dramatic on Thursday when Seanachie played through the internal system for the first half of their performance and used The Clare Voyants speakers for the second half. Marty Manning from radio KEZ 99.9 commented on it when he was announcing raffle winners. Live performers will have to bring their own systems.
In any case, the real "problem" created by the small size of Rula Bula is that the live music was "too" successful. Seanachie and The Clare Voyants had the placed packed with patrons - clapping, singing, and dancing to music. It got so crowded people could barely move. (The same thing happened Saturday night when The Clare Voyants played).
Ordinarily we would think of this as a good thing. Most pub owners like having large numbers of people standing around singing, clapping, dancing, and most of all - drinking. However, the management at Rula Bula imagined a more sedate environment better suited to an upscale supper house than a Mill Avenue pub.
Clearly the large crowds make it harder to serve dinner. The wait staff really struggled to get through the crowd standing in front of the stage. There was frustration on the part of diners who could not get a table because they were occupied by people who were there to see the band.
It might be thought that this was just an anomaly caused by the grand opening. Actually, the strong drawing power of live Irish music at Rula Bula was evident from pre-opening performances. Mill Avenue is one of the few areas in the area where there is a significant number of people likely to walk by in the evening in search of entertainment. Venues such as O'Connor's and the Dubliner require people to drive to their locations directly and to know where they are going. The attendance at the Blarney Stone has picked up since another place was built next door, thereby increasing the walk by traffic, but hardly to the level of Mill Avenue.
From a format standpoint, the management of Rula Bula has aspired to be more like Mulligan's Restaurant (which closed about a year and a half ago). Mulligans was a somewhat upscale restaurant that had Irish music. Compared to Rula Bula, it was huge. Mulligans was located in a somewhat obscure part of North Scottsdale and was not even on a major street. (Not only was there no walk by traffic, it was very hard to get there by car during the construction of the Pima freeway).
The architecture and location of Rula Bula make this approach very unlikely to work. Live Irish music will tend to draw noisy crowds. One might think that selling Guinness and other drinks would be more profitable than focusing primarily on food sales after 9:00 PM on weekends, but that is a management decision.
Perhaps this issue will be resolved once it becomes cool enough to play outside on the patio. It would be a shame if we miss the incredible potential of this location for promoting Irish music just because it was too successful.