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Of every room we work, the Staaten is the one we're in most. Sweet 16s, proms, school nights, milestone birthdays — and the occasional wedding. Here's what we've learned about it.
Our booking history is blunt about this: LiGreci's Staaten is the venue we work more than any other. Fourteen events and counting — sweet sixteens, proms, school nights, graduations, engagement parties, milestone birthdays, a cheer banquet, and weddings.
That matters more than it sounds. When you have loaded into the same building that many times, the afternoon stops being a problem to solve. We know where the power is, where the maitre d' wants the booth, which doors work for load-in and how long the room takes to turn. Nothing about your night depends on us figuring the building out.
The Staaten is family-run, and the floor is managed tightly. The rhythm of the night is coordinated rather than improvised, and our job is to fit that rhythm without the evening feeling administrative — which is MC work far more than it is DJ work.
Most of what we do here is not a wedding, and that is a different job rather than an easier one.
A sweet sixteen or a prom has a room full of people who will tell you immediately and honestly whether the music is right. There is no polite clapping. The floor either fills in the first ten minutes or it does not, and recovering from a bad opening twenty minutes is much harder than starting well.
It also has two audiences at once. The guest of honour and their friends want one thing; the parents, grandparents and teachers in the room want something they recognise. Playing only to the teenagers empties half the room. Playing only to the adults means the birthday girl remembers a party that was not hers. The skill is moving between them without either group noticing the handover.
School events add a third constraint: what is actually playable. We work from clean edits and we check the list against the school rather than finding out mid-set that a track was a problem.
The Imperial Room seats up to 350, and a room that size has one recurring failure: a single pair of speakers at the front. The floor gets hammered while the tables at the back hear a thin, slightly late version — and speeches, which is the one moment everyone genuinely needs to hear, suffer most.
We run distributed sound instead: several smaller sources placed through the room rather than one loud source aimed down it. Speech stays clear at the far tables, the floor gets its energy from proximity rather than volume, and nobody spends the night shouting.
Uplighting scales the same way — enough fixtures to build a rhythm around the actual wall run, not a handful spread thin.
The Staaten runs the Imperial Room and the Lounge, and on a busy Saturday both are in use. Two parties in one building means sound has somewhere to go that is not your room.
The answer is not to run quietly — it is to aim properly. We orient the system into your room rather than at the shared walls and keep the low end controlled, because bass travels through structure far more readily than anything else. Done right, neither party knows the other exists.
If you are in the Lounge rather than the Imperial Room, the specification changes completely. A hundred guests do not need a 350-guest rig, and we would tell you so.
Most of them. Sweet sixteens, proms, school events, graduations, engagement parties, milestone birthdays and weddings - it's the room we work more than any other on Staten Island.
Yes, and they're a large part of what we do here. A sweet sixteen has a room that tells you honestly and immediately whether the music is right, and two audiences to keep on the floor at once.
Yes. We work from clean edits and check the playlist against the school in advance rather than discovering a problem mid-set.
Yes, if the sound is designed for the room rather than aimed down it. Several distributed sources keep speech clear at the far tables without punishing the dance floor.
Not if the systems are aimed and controlled properly. We orient into your room rather than at the shared walls and keep the low end in check.
Also looking at other Staten Island rooms? We work most of them.
“Quality, professionalism and most importantly fun.”
Nick & Allison McAleerSend your date and what you're planning — we'll confirm availability and what the room actually needs.
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