Over 100 house venues in Fort Collins have shut down in the past month due to an oversaturation of the market. The local music scene scratches its head as house venue owners and musicians alike are confused by how this could have happened.

“I don’t know how this could have happened; with so many choices, we thought people would want to try them all,” said Skinny Flute, the owner of Sound Shack. “People here just don’t get it. You go to any other college town and they would beg to have over 100 house venues.”

The City of Fort Collins experienced a boom of house venues for a multitude of reasons but mainly because of a desire to be the most popular house venue. 

“So we thought instead of bands going to big venues or the other house venues, bands would come to us because we’re unique,” Flute said. “We have a leather couch, and the huge wall stain in our garage is a whiskey stain, not a beer stain like at other house venues.”

Some have taken it to the extreme and opened up venues for only their bands, which is exactly what local band Accidental WWE Summer Slam Crotchshot did. 

“I mean, sure, we were playing in a studio apartment, but people still came,” said Yodale Valhey, lead singer of Accidental WWE Summer Slam Crotchshot. “Well, some people came. … Mostly other bands and other venue owners and other bands we were a part of, and with all the equipment, they had to sit on the kitchen floor, but they still came.” 

With so many venues, people also became confused about which venue was which. Were you talking about Sound Shack or Sound Shanty? Some bands would even show up at certain venues when they were scheduled for another. 

“One time we were scheduled to play for Sound Shack, but we all ended up at separate houses,” said Frenchy Horn, lead singer of Reallylongbandnamebecausewecouldntthinkofsomethingclever. “So I went to Sound Shack, our drummer went to Sound Shed, our bassist went to Sound Shanty and our backup guitarist went to Sound Ship.”

To fight against the sea of house venues and the chaos, some venues even tried to band together and have members of a band play simultaneously all while at separate locations. 

“We tried to set it up so that each venue would have a live member, and then there would be TVs showing livestreams of the members at the other venues,” said Strummae Stirings, the bassist of Meme Reference to Something You Saw on Twitter at 2 a.m. “But people just stayed home and watched all of the livestreams. But it’s whatever. They missed the real experience of all of us being out of sync and members being delayed — the authentic experience.”

We asked an economics professor to shed light on the situation.

“How many!?” economics professor Tony Milton asked. “Over 100!? Jesus tap dancing Christ, isn’t that town only like five miles across? Yeah no sh*t they all closed down. Who thought opening that many house venues was a good idea?”

Ty Davis can be reached at entertainment@collegian.com or on Twitter @TyDavisACW.