By Caitlyn Holroyd

Rolly’s Garage needs your help!

Some haters have succeeded in shutting the creative venue down and now owner Robin Lacambra must deal with the bureaucracy of building codes if Rolly’s is to have a second chance. Despite the sudden bad news, Lacambra is confident and determined to reopen the doors as soon as possible, even if it comes with a price tag of $100,000.

“I was devastated/frustrated when I received the news at the end of September,” she said. “I was fully booked until the end of November, and all of the events were neighbour-friendly, i.e. not noisy at night—plays, art openings, all-ages daytime concerts.”

Since taking over the garage from her pop back in the summer of 2008, Lacambra has transformed Rolly’s from a mechanic shop into a haven for the artistic—providing a space for art installations, concerts, film screenings, and parties. While many were thrilled with the venue, it quickly made enemies with some of the residential neighbours who found it too noisy at night. Consequently, these neighbours decided to go to the city with their complaints.

For Lacambra, getting the news that she would have to shut down the venue was hard enough, let alone having to tell the artists that their shows were cancelled.

“I think I cried after every phone call…feeling like I was disempowering artists that I was trying to empower by having them in the garage,” she said. “They were all really understanding but really, really disappointed. I’m such a ‘good vibe fairy’ that when I’m the cause of disappointment, I get really hard on myself.”

Being the good vibe fairy that she is, Lacambra is eager to do everything in her power to save her beloved garage. She launched a fundraising series last Saturday with a night market at Parlour Salon and has entered the Aviva Community Fund competition, which, if she wins, will fund Rolly’s Garage. Obviously, this is where you come in by joining the Save Rolly’s movement and voting at http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf1875. Lacambra is hopeful that with enough votes, she’ll be back up and running by February or March of 2010.

Raising $100,000 ain’t cheap, so here’s our list of quick and easy (and sometimes risqué) ways to raise large sums of money:

1. Sell your valuables (or stuff you just don’t need anymore) on Craigslist or Ebay.

2. Make a porno (hey, it worked in Zack and Miri Make a Porno).

3. There’s more creative ways to work a street corner, so if you can dance, beatbox, or swallow fire, take it to the streets!

4. Customize Swine Flu masks.

5. Teach a new dance or exercise. Pole dancing classes have become immensely popular, so there must be a plethora of marketable opportunities out there.