Movie Theaters are Dead and COVID isn’t to Blame
J.J. Hernandez
I can’t lie, I was excited. The last time I had been to a movie theater was February 26,
2020 when I went with my family to watch Elizabeth Moss battle her ex in The Invisible
Man. Now, after having spent a week getting sunburned on the beaches of Miami, I was
ready to spend the last few hours of my vacation watching Vin Diesel go ktoe to toe with
John Cena.
Like most people in the world, I stayed away from extended and unnecessary visits to
enclosed places during the pandemic. Which, unfortunately, included movie theaters.
So, now with the CDC, WHO, USDA, ASPCA and every other agency with a cool acronym
and thinly veiled agenda saying it’s okay to return to theaters, I was like “Why the hell
not?”
I love movies. And when I say I love movies, I mean I loooove movies. Old movies, new
movies, black and white or color, I love em all. So, naturally I love movie theaters. Or at
least I loved movie theaters.
It breaks my heart to write those words, believe me it does. Once upon a time, movie
theaters were my sanctuary. No matter how bad I felt, I knew I could go sit in a theater
for a few hours and come out feeling just a little bit better. But now? Now, I feel
comfortable using the word “love” in its past tense, cause man oh man do movie
theaters suck now.
It’s not so much the theaters, as it is the people that frequent them. Boorish, rude,
entitled, selfish - pick whichever pejorative term you like best, they all work. I’m not an
idiot, I know the “Tale of the Obnoxious Movie Theater Jerk” is as old and frequently told
as Don Quixote. And this most recent experience was not my first encounter with The
OMTJ (Yes, like a child naming their monsters I have named mine, and it is called The
OMTJ).
What’s that? You want an example of The OMTJ’s dastardly deeds? Ok, how about this:
one half of the couple that sat directly behind me spent the entire movie providing their
partner with a complete oral history of the Fast and Furious franchise. Let me say that
another way, they spent the entire two hours and twenty-five minute running time
speaking about the trials and tribulations of Dom, Letty, and Brian at a volume well
above a whisper. Not enough you say? Ok, how about this: Three seats down from the
folks from Mystery Science Theater, a not so polite gentleman decided to use the top of
our friends’ seat as a footrest. What’s that? That’s not quite bad enough for you? How
about if I told you he was barefoot? Is that something that might interest you?
Well before COVID shut everything down, the movie theater going experience had
devolved into a ninth season episode of The Office, a painfully sad reminder of a once
great franchise. According to Statista.com, a survey conducted in June 2019 (about
nine months before the world shutdown) found that just 14 percent of U.S. adults visited
a movie theater one or more times per month, but 46 percent stated that they went to
the movies once a year or less. Not very promising numbers if you ask me.
There are thousands of articles on this subject. A lot of them do a really good job of
litigating the issues threatening movie theaters. Some reasons often cited: the rise of
streaming services, advanced and affordable home theater technology, and studios’
pushing for shorter exhibition windows to take advantage of home viewing habits. The
truth is, stakeholders can debate the issues all they want. The bottom line is this, until
we find a way to trap and kill The OMTJ, it ain’t looking too good for your favorite
multiplex. Somebody get Peter Vincent on the line.
Angel Guerra’s bodega was on Jefferson Avenue, between Throop Avenue and Marcus Garvey Boulevard in Bedford-Stuyvesant. It made up the bottom floor of a four-story building, the top three floors consisting of six walk-up apartments.
From the outside, the bottom half of the store’s windows were covered with pictures of
deli sandwiches and various grocery items they had for sale inside the store. Maria’s Deli Grocery, named after his mother and the store’s official owner, was printed in light-blue lettering on the dark red awning that covered the top of the store’s windows.
Angel used the store as a front for his real business. He cleaned his money through the store, and since he unofficially owned the entire building, he used the apartments to clean some of his cash too. Paid himself rent for six unoccupied apartments. He even kept them furnished and the names on the leases were legit in case someone came asking. Angel didn’t do any business inside the building and the only people he let in were some members of his crew. He liked where his store was located. A few years back, Brooklyn started to change. The Nets moved into town, the Barclays Center opened, and everywhere west of Clinton Hill saw an influx of million-dollar real estate properties, billion-dollar companies, and hipsters.
Rich people liked to see that their investments are being looked after, so the NYPD
always made a point of having a lot of cops patrolling that area. An area that in the past wouldn’t see a cop unless they were called. Angel’s bodega was smack dab in the middle—between the flourishing and the forgotten. Just close enough to where his shop got a taste of the new money, but not so close that he had to worry about more cops in the neighborhood.
His spot was across the street from a Popeyes and T-Mobile Store. There used to be an Associated Supermarket where those stores now stood. He remembered when Carlos Paz and Artie Weisman tried to rob the supermarket before it went out of business and the building’s owner converted one space to two spaces.
Artie and Carlos got themselves gunned down for their trouble. It was just one of the
many memories Angel had of the old neighborhood, and he liked to tell it. Especially when he had younger members of his crew around as he did now.
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The book sounds very interesting. I like the cover, too!
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