Open Bar

The show premiered on August 22, 2005, whilst its sixth and final episode aired on September 26, 2005.

Filmed in West Hollywood, California, the series chronicled the daily activities of Tyler Robuck as he attempted to open a gay bar named ICandy.

One day while out for a run, he felt like God spoke to him, telling him to open a gay bar, so he moved to West Hollywood.

Tyler refinances his house and puts up his life savings for the first $200,000 of the one million dollars he needs to raise.

He discusses his plans with his mother and Richard Cooley, owner of West Hollywood gay bar The Abbey.

Both offer little encouragement and try to impress upon him the enormous amount of work opening and running a bar entails.

With 30 days left to open, general manager Yawar Charlie begins reviewing applications for bar staff.

With 25 days to go, staff interviews begin and Tyler has more items added to the menu, but the permit is still not approved.

With 14 days left before opening and $550,000 to raise, Tyler and Yawar hire 15 bartenders, 10 barbacks and 10 servers.

With three days to go before the opening, Tyler breaks away for his weekly charity work delivering meals for Project Angel Food.

With two days to go, Yawar is frustrated that he is unable to train the staff on the computer system because the bar is still so heavily under construction.

With two hours to open Yawar discovers that the phone lines are not working so the bar cannot accept credit cards.

With the opening past, the next morning work starts again to fix everything in anticipation of Gay Pride weekend, a week away.

Tyler explains that with there being such a rush to open there was not the opportunity to promote the bar and that he had counted on word of mouth.

Following the poor weekend he begins promotion efforts, including landing himself on the cover of Frontiers magazine.