I'd understand if it'd be a club
but not a restaurant

A club would make most sense, yes. Not sure if other things would.

We aren't really in a jungle or anarchy. As long as the place would be legal, and not promoting any offensive culture like Nazism, it should be fine. If anyone is that dumb to try anything because they don't like furries, they'll respond in front of the law like they would for damaging any property.

Depends a lot on the place, but yeah. Obviously I wouldn't advice building such a place in a gang controlled city... it will indeed get burned to the ground in a matter of weeks / months. But in a normal place where order is respected, I don't see why not.

I think it would be a bad sales idea to be honest since talking to a few store owners they have enough trouble keeping a regular business open somestimes. It would be very possible to open a place like that, but apart from advertising it on furry places (which might draw some) I don't think it would draw enough business.

Yeah... sadly there might be too few furs out there to make such an idea reliable Maybe someday...

I wish there was a place like a furry themed social club as well. But as was mentioned, I believe the problem of lack of enough local patronage currently stops someone from trying. But I do believe there is hope for it. I can remember a time when there was only TWO furry websites on the whole internet and NO such thing as a furry con.. NOW look at what has been achieved. So I'm confident that I'll see some furry themed places opening at some point in my life. :)

There just aren't enough of us. This is the same reason why you can't make video games aimed at furries (at least if you want to make any money). Even in a giant metropolis there are usually only a handful of furries.

I've lived in a furry house share before now, that was alright but we sometimes had less in common than would keep tempers from fraying.

As for getting a proper furry club house or somesuch going, your best bet will be in Manchester I think. Nevertheless, the cost of rent or buying a place to set up will be difficult, most furries are skint.

What Flixard said.

Furry meetups in Denver can easily exceed 20-30 people, but those are once in a blue moon. Having a club dedicated to that genre simply would not have enough customers. Jazz is a sub-genre of music that's been around for over a century, fairly well embraced early on, and really came of age in the 50s. In its current incarnation, Furry is a sub-culture of the scifi/fantasy sub-culture of geekdom, and has only been around a few decades, and is still commonly regarded as a fetish fandom.

Now, one could argue that the 20-30 people who show up to Denver furmeets represent only a small portion of people who might go to a furry club, since if it's done well, it might attract the more casual furries, or even just the fur-curious. A fur-oriented club might do well to simply be softly animal-themed rather than "for furries/by furries" -- make it more generally appealing, and it would get a nice mix of folks in and out of the fandom.

The problem is population density. There simply isn't a high enough density of furries in a given area to support that kind of establishment.

Yeah, everyone pointed this out and it's a very valid point. It's sad... but maybe one day there will be, who knows!

I think from a social point of view it's a great idea. From a business point of view not so great. Furries are a very niche market, and as mentioned, just being a furry doesn't always mean you're the same, just as two 14 year old people can be extremely different in terms of gender, sexuality, beliefs, tempers, etc.

Then you would need an incredibly dense customer population for this to be successful. Not to mention the security concerns, vandalism, harassment. Sometimes picking a shop put to meet regularly would just show where to strike...

So I don't know of any places like this, and if they were to be created I worry that they wouldn't be sustainable.

It's a lovely thought though!

Seeing the history of  NY_Furs, this type of thing ain't easy.

There aren't nearly enough furries to create mostly furry oriented business models outside of the web. Also being furry isn't an ethnicity so dedicated establishments like restaurants don't make much sense although you could dedicate a restaurant to a specific theme. But "Furry" is to much of a special interest to become sucessful. For example if you open up a bar for fursuiters and attract general cosplayers as customers who would be frowned upon by fursuiters because they don't necessarily represent anthropomorphic animals you would just lose customers because they might have a hard time to grasp such oddly specific limitations.

Or take a look at comic shops. There are shops that sell furry stuff as well as other stuff, but it wouldn't make any sense to create a furry only comic shop, as well as it wouldn't make any sense to open a scifi-only, fantasy-only or superheroes-only comic shop since it would narrow down the customer base needlessly.

Also furries don't just only have conventions, they also have smaller, local meetups and events they organize online but visit offline. No one stops furries from gathering in public places, so there isn't any need to provide furry specific meeting points. Also, furries mostly should be able to blend right in with their environment as long as they don't wear any fursuits which would of course attract attention to them. So I don't exactly get why there should be special furry meeting places in the first place, unless you want furries to explore their sexuality in their own special darkroom clubs or for them to express their emotions with cuddle orgies that might look inappropriate and outlandish to most non furries and even some more conservative furries. Of course, those are extreme examples, but those would be the only examples I could think of where a special club building would make sense. In any other case furries are just one of many fandoms that are already represented in different areas, like most fandoms are.

By comparing fictional furry establishments with rock, jazz, music in general and even gay clubs you imply that furries have a similar impact on society as music or sexuality has. And while furry indeed could also be consideres a lifestyle it's still mostly unknown to outsiders of the fandom. Even as a specifically established furry association or society furries would still be spread to thin to even fill such establishments on a regular base to survive.

There is a reason why furries thrive so well on the web, because here they can form communities a little bit like a closed circle where they can just be themselfes without judgement. And considering most furry drama it shows how different members of this "furry community" really are, not to mention that language barriers sometimes separate furries from each other and invite to form local groups, so furries aren't just one community but many communities coexisting on the web alongside each other. Some furries are here on FA, some are on other art sites, some are exclusively on the IRC, some never even heard of the IRC before, they all belong to the same broad and always vaguely described fandom that is simply called the "furry fandom", but furries are really very different in appreciation of furry art and interaction with the community they belong to and other aspects of the fandom. So creating a place that appeals to furries and the general populace is mind-bogglingly difficult because there is a possibility you couldn't even create a place that would appeal to all furries in the same manner.

Basically that's the problem with an unspecialized fandom like the furry fandom. If you try to appeal to fans of a certain franchise it's easy to find something they all would enjoy. But all furries just have the "fans of anthropomorphic animals" part in common and most furries have a different taste in the the grade of anthropomorphisation. Some like it almost entirely humanlike like "catgirls" for example, some even like something like a human having four ears, two human ears and two animal ears on the top of the head as well (which I loathe by the way), some like a humanoid build with animal features, like a human covered in fur with a humanoid, furry head and tail, some would like to put a proper animal head on the shoulder, but sometimes still retaining human hair as well as human hairstyles, some like it more like a parallel evolution in a way an animal looks like it learned to walk on it's hindlegs, some like it entirely feral in appearence with the anthropomorphic part being that those animals still retain sapience. Some like it more cartoony, some like it more realistic. It's hard to please everyone because the fandom contains many different people with many different views and tastes and sometimes with nothing much in common except an interest in anthropomorphic animals.

And that's not even something exclusive to the furry fandom, even cave men have created artwork containing anthropomorphic animals and anthropomorphic animals are spread throughout all ages and civilisations, they always have been a part of human culture. So yeah, you could say "There is the impact on society", but is it, really? It's hardly an impact if it always was there in the first place. Also it hardly shaped human cultures in recent times. Also, anthropomorphic animals are a fantasy product, so to create an establishment for those things would seem random and chaotic. In the end, when it comes down to anthropomorphic animals you would have to pick something specific you would like your establishmen to represent. Would it be furry art? A place where artists could meet and collaborate on their works together? Would that have to be furry exclusive? Would it be furry music? A place where musicians could meet and jam together? And again, would thate have to be furry exclusive? Would it be something for fursuiters? How would that be different from any place dedicated to cosplayers that also include fursuiters?

I guess in the end it all boils down to one simple truth: There is not that one and only furry community. There are many communities out there, operating under the same lable but being as different to each other as they are similar. I know that you probably meant to have a place where you could meet furries any time a day and be absolutely 100% sure they are furries and would share your interests. But that's basically the reason furries organize their own little, local meetups in already existing public places that include everyone, even furries, without being exclusive. So I still don't get why there should be a furry bar for example that would also be open and appealing to the general populace, when there already are bars for the general populace that won't exclude furries from their guest lists. I guess you want a furry friendly environment but I guess you could view all of them as furry friendly except in those instances where you know they aren't furry friendly. And it should be easy to avoid such places. Also I don't see why furries need special places when in public, unless they actually don't want to be in public in the first place. But even if they act as a very closed circle there is nothing much stopping them from meeting anywhere they want. And if a special place would be intended as a place where you just could meet new like-minded people then how would that be different from most cons and meetups organized by furries for furries?

As time goes on, and more peace endues, times are better around people to unfold their interrests, thus creating fandoms as these, to expand the imaginations and freedom to be one self. More and more furries will appear, untill, at some point, a market can be established and create these normal places you talk about, its allready seen in the east, how small cafe's for certain persons of interrests can go, such as for cosplay and so. Just give it time.

Thank you. I will keep in mind and hope so.