Rybak will have to kick out a few friends if all come to kickoff

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will kick off his gubernatorial campaign Sunday at Dinkytown’s Varsity Theater. Rybak announced the event via Facebook, but not all his 5,000-plus Facebook friends and supporters can come. His chosen venue has a current capacity of a little more than 800, and city officials have twice closed it for occupancy-load issues. 

First the theater opened almost five years ago without an official city occupancy permit, after proprietor Jason McLean, tired of waiting for one, guessed at a capacity: 450. Minneapolis inspectors shut him down only weeks into operation.

“Every single [venue I've opened] has been subjected to city conniptions involving delays and pre-emptive closings,” McLean told the Star Tribune in 2005. “Do you think that there might be a bug in the system?”

Then in 2007, a ticketing snafu resulted in nearly 500 people filling the theater — about 200 beyond its permitted capacity. The Minneapolis Fire Department pulled the plug in the middle of a concert by the band Storyhill, the Strib reported.

Early this year, a sprinkler upgrade raised capacity to 814, though the theater manager vowed to cap ticket sales at 650 to preserve elbow room.

Meanwhile, Rybak has had his own capacity problems — online. He asked Facebook last summer to raise his friend limit above the social-media site’s maximum of 5,000. Now he has two Facebook sites: the old one, stuck at 5,000 friends, and a new campaign site, where he has logged almost 6,500 supporters.

As of 2 p.m. Monday, 288 guests have confirmed and another 580 say they may come.

The Varsity is a onetime vaudeville house remodeled as a cinema in the 1930s by the acclaimed Art Deco design firm Liebenberg and Kaplan. That’s when it gained its landmark marquee, since renovated with city funds through the Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program. Other past uses have included a nightclub (short lived) and a photo studio (longer), before McLean revived it as a performance and event space.

Photo: Wikipedia