Virginia Street Brewhouse — Restaurant in Reno

I am an avid musician and show goer. This is, without it a single doubt, the absolute worst, most horrifically managed venue I have EVER had the displeasure of paying to go to. I feel cheated, I feel scammed, and I am incredibly disappointed with how this venue operates.

The upstairs sound quality is abhorrent. You can't hear any clarity in instrumentals any further back than the balcony, and vocals are muddy, even at the balcony. I hope lyrics don't matter to you because you'll struggle to hear any.

This venue starts off great by marking all under 21's with X's, so they can't get drinks. This is a good policy, and standard in the industry. What isn't standard is that they lock all the under 21 crowds in the upstairs area. This causes significant overcrowding (and makes me worried that it breaks NEVADA FIRE CODE) and also prevents all but the 20 people at the balcony from seeing a single thing during the show. I provide a photo of the view of a 6'4" person wearing 2 INCH PLATFORMS, 2 people back from the balcony front. They have delayed (~1 second) TVs that shows what i'd say is 480p footage, but they stopped working for a portion of the show. I provided photo evidence. This was disappointing since 95% of the people upstairs have no view of the stage.

I hope that none of the musicians I like play this venue in the future, until management fixes their policies on age segregation. As a musician myself, I would feel so disappointed to know that i played a venue where half the attendees who payed the same price as those downstairs couldn't see a single second of my performance.

I would like to say that the hospitality here is great though. The staff is pleasant and the upstairs bartender on 8/19/24 was extremely friendly and accommodating and served me multiple waters, which were desperately needed to survive the extreme overcrowding due to their upstairs policy.

To the staff at the Brewhouse, service staff, security staff, thank you for the work that you do. I have no quarrel with and if you and appreciate the work you do as a fellow service industry worker. To the management, I hope this criticism is eye opening and leads to discussion on how to improve your customer satisfaction. I can name several dozen venues with very similar capacity and floor space as yours has, that have much more effective ways of making sure minors don't get drinks and avoiding overcrowding, which is made worse by the lack of stage visibility from the top...

I’m at a loss of words for how disappointed and disgusted I am with the security staff as well as the lack of medical staff at this venue. Unfortunately a friend of mine had a medical emergency at the venue, passing out twice in the crowd. Luckily we had a nurse and an EMT with us so we quickly brought her outside, where she gained consciousness. Yet, there was no EMT or medical staff on site for a large sold out show- only a very kind bartender who offered CPR services. If we didn’t have help from those we came with, I worry for anyone who may have a medical emergency in the future with no help from the establishment. In addition, while we took care of our friend outside, there was a drunk girl passed out on the side of the entrance. She was visibly intoxicated and can assume she was underage by the X’s on her hands. I had seen her friend check on her & left her for over 20 minutes. When I brought this to the attention of the security staff, they had blowed their vape smoke to the side & shrugged their shoulders. In the end, we found her friend outside & requested the security staff to move the guard rail to carry her friend to the car, only a few yards to the street. This girl was completely unable to walk by herself, and they said we would have to carry her through the alley, all the way around the block to the same street, only 20 feet away. If we hadn’t been there to help an intoxicated MINOR in an alley, I’m afraid of what would have happened. I am horrified by the Brew House’s unprofessionalism and gross negligence. I would suggest others stray from any contribution to this...

I go to a lot of shows. This is my least favorite place to go. I dread seeing even my favorite bands at this place. Just poorly operated and difficult to enjoy a show here. Overcrowded, narrow, and poor sound quality. Security are clearly just poorly trained and uneducated. They always look sloppy like they just found some guy in the alley outside and gave them a security shirt. When booking metal bands you should know what to do as a venue. Crowd surfers were getting dropped or pushed back onto the crowed and then being dropped because people could not hold them up anymore. I was at a show where the band had to tell security to grab the crowd surfers after people were dropped and then watched some guy in a dress shirt tell security to push them back into the crowd. That is so dangerous! Learn how to handle it! I have also been to a show where security was escorting people out of the show because a couple of girls were pointing at people they didn’t like. Security saw nothing, nothing happened, but these girls were just doing it because security would just kick out whoever they pointed at. The girls continued to do it for a couple of hours until they were eventually kicked out. Bartenders are not very pleasant, every time I go they just act absolutely annoyed you are talking to them. Avoid this...