File Photo Kyle Kirkland

What’s life without a little entertainment?

People are starting to realize the luxury of simply being able to go out for nightlife and entertainment.

At the end of September, Fresno County entered the red tier of California’s four-tiered system called “Blueprint for a Safer Economy,” allowing for restaurants and bars to allow dine-in service, and for the reopening of gyms.

Depending on coronavirus rates in the county, bars and eateries are one of the few options that people have to count as an night out.

Though movie theaters are allowed to operate in the red tier, theaters in Fresno and across the Central Valley temporarily closed because of a lack of films to supply the movie market.

One popular draw are cardrooms such as Club One Casino in Downtown Fresno and the 500 Club Casino in Clovis.

Cardrooms in the county are allowed to operate outdoors only, and the 500 Club has set up an outdoor area with both dining and card tables.

Cardrooms can open for indoor activities at a 25% capacity in the orange tier, and at 50% capacity in the yellow tier, but that might not be enough to keep them a float.

We sat down with Kyle Kirkland, owner and CEO of Club One Casino, which has been a staple in Fresno for the last 25 years, to have a word on how Covid-19 restrictions have affected cardrooms, the local entertainment sphere, tribal issues regarding cardrooms and casinos, and how the pandemic is being handled in the legislative arena.

Q: Realistically, when do you think cardrooms will be able to viably open?

A: When we first went through it, I said, “I don’t think we can open until there is a vaccine.” Even for us to get to a 50% capacity, you’d have one case per 100,000 people in Fresno County, which is 10 people. I just don’t see how you can get to that sustainable level with clarity until there is a widespread vaccine. In our business, like a lot of bars and restaurants — it’s the night and weekend business.

Q: Would moving operations outdoors work for Club One?

A: First of all, I don’t want to open in the street or the alley. That doesn’t have appeal. I think it’s good news for some of these bars and restaurants to open up outside, but you still need to start to get everyone inside once the weather starts. If it’s raining, you can’t be eating on the street. We don’t really want to be outside in the rain with electrical cables. It’s going to be a while before we get into any sense of normalcy in our industry.

Q: What is your reaction to the state’s choice to decide what industries were allowed to stay open or temporarily close?

A: They didn’t really come up with good data to justify picking out the different groups like they did. I’m a health guy — I believe in limiting the spread. But on the other hand, when you’re closing down the economy by fiat, you really should have something other than a box of crayons tiers for color-coding things. The cardrooms that are open that I know of are doing it for subsistence at this point — pay rent, overhead, bringing back employees and staying in front of guests, but it’s expensive. It’s not the relaxed gaming escape environment people are used to. It’s more of a novelty for people, being able to go out and touch chips and cards, but it’s not the solution.

Q: From your vantage point, how do you think the club and nightlife sector of Fresno will come out of all this?

A: Fresno is not a big club or a nightlife town like other areas are. One of the things we found out when we were looking at clubs in Fresno is that there are a lot of labels attached to clubs. One is known as the Latin Club, the other is the Black Club. One is the Gay Club. We always felt like we need to cater to a broad section of people. From what I saw in Fresno, if you’re not really controlling what you’re doing and making sure that people understand that you are trying to maintain safety, it can get sideways pretty quickly. You see clubs degrade quickly, gang issues pop-up, people don’t feel safe and it spins out from there.

Q: So cardrooms have more restrictions than casinos on tribal land—where does this leave places like Club One?

A: An incredible source of frustration for cardrooms is that tribal casinos are allowed to operate unfettered, and I think it’s appalling and hypocritical. It’s a slap in the face to our industry, the public, bars, restaurants and entertainment venues that aren’t on tribal land. Sure, they try to wipe down machines, but it’s no different than what other bars and restaurants would do if they were allowed to operate.

Q: So what’s the next step for Club One?

A: We are trying to take this time to see what this opportunity is to press the reset button and figure out what we look like in a post-Covid world. Whether it’s space with a better footprint for what we do or serious reworking of the existing space — we’ve been there 25 years and we’ve never closed. It’s like remodeling an airplane that’s in the air. Maybe this is the opportunity, so we’ve been looking at remodeling. For the restaurant, 80% of our sales are from 20% of the items on the menu — do we need to sell everything 24/7? Probably not. We are looking at what the trends have been in gaming and the trends in our demographics. We are trying to look at the non-gaming parts that make money and make that better — looking more towards being an entertainment venue, not just for gambling.