from the start the club struggled to operate a large independent venue in san francisco. maritime hall had difficulty with bookings, advertising, and ticket sales, which it attributed to unfair competition from the city's premier music promoter, bill graham presents. for example, bass ticket outlet, the largest ticket retailer in the west coast, refused to carry their tickets. in response, 2b1 opened its own network of 24 service charge-free outlets, with a homemade bar code printing system considered the first for a venue. artists and talent agents who dealt with the club found themselves blacklisted from other venues. nevertheless they were able to attract such notable acts as the dixie dregs, lee 'scratch' perry, beastie boys, blackalicious, latyrx, james brown, willie nelson, merle haggard, herbie hancock, black uhuru, the chemical brothers, the crystal method, motörhead, los van van, jay-z, eminem, wu-tang clan, papa roach, incubus, vinyl, ozomatli, sublime, marty teboe group, bad religion, rammstein, front line assembly, the string cheese incident, sound tribe sector 9, wyclef jean, goodie mob, the roots, ol' dirty bastard, kool keith and galactic. the club also hosted raves, performance art, and charity benefits, and experimented with live internet broadcasts, and kept an archive of 24-track recordings and videotapes of nearly every performance.