Booch Bar Owners Open Rainbow Room to Boost Hilo Nightlife

Brendan Roberts and Kela Cosgrave have opened the Rainbow Room, a roughly 2,000-square-foot music venue that represents the second expansion of their 12-year-old restaurant, The Booch Bar. The space, taken over from a neighboring storefront and renovated with significant investment, began hosting shows this past November and now runs live programming six to seven nights a week.

The new room includes a professionally installed sound system and stage lighting, signaling a move from occasional performance nights to a full-time performance venue. Programming spans Kanakapila nights, open mic, DJs and regular live music sets featuring local singers and bands. Management has deliberately structured ticketing to balance accessibility with fair pay for performers - many shows are free or low-cost with a suggested-donation model designed to create predictable musician income while keeping the door open to all community members.

For downtown Hilo, the Rainbow Room is intended as a multiplier for evening activity. Expanding Booch Bar’s footprint and shifting to near-nightly programming increases late-day foot traffic, lengthens customer visits and creates secondary spending opportunities for nearby restaurants, stores and taxis. The investment in sound and lighting represents a capital expenditure on local cultural infrastructure and a signal of confidence from small-business owners who have sustained The Booch Bar for more than a decade.

The venue also addresses a longstanding gap in consistent, reliable performance space on the island. By providing nightly slots for singers and bands and institutionalizing Kanakapila and open mic formats, the Rainbow Room aims to reduce gig volatility that many local musicians face. A suggested-donation model can smooth revenue flows for performers without raising barriers for audiences, a tradeoff that matters in a market where both tourist seasonality and resident incomes shape demand.

Operationally, near-daily programming raises ongoing costs: staffing, utilities, equipment maintenance and artist payment. Those costs will determine whether the Rainbow Room produces sustained evening economic lift or requires complementary measures - for example coordinated promotion with downtown merchants, adjusted public safety resources during peak hours, or scheduling that dovetails with inter-island and visitor calendars.

The Rainbow Room’s launch is a practical test of downtown Hilo’s capacity to rebuild an evening economy centered on local culture. If programming keeps crowds coming and musicians earn steady pay, the venue could inspire similar investments and make downtown evenings more vibrant and economically resilient. For residents, the immediate takeaway is concrete: more live music nights, more reasons to stay downtown after dark, and a new performance home for the island’s artists as the community watches how the venue’s suggested-donation approach balances access with fair compensation.