This place in Los Feliz Ought to Be in Pictures
Since we can't have movies, might as well be in one
I love the movies, but even more than whatever it is projected on the screen, I'm obsessed with the theaters themselves.
From the very first flick that I can remember—Grease in the balcony of Bakersfield's Fox Theater. Even four-year-old me realized the absolute treat in watching people in a world not too unlike ours singing and dancing and gyrating their way through teen problems, glowing with innuendo, in a space that was distinctly—how should I put this?—not like any I’d known; comfortable but I wouldn't say exactly safe. The torn seat cushions, chunks of plaster missing from the walls, the smushed Junior Mints sticking my feet to the floor.
…This was the place I belonged.
From that day on, going to the movies always made me feel a little rebellious like I was getting away with something. And I was. It’s represented to me a moment where whatever was going on in life was suspended in midair.
Like the Twilight Zone episode "A Kind of Stopwatch" where the guy is given a stopwatch to freeze time and accidentally drops—left alone on Earth with all the time in the world and nobody to share it with. But for me, suspended in a dark room by myself, finally quiet but not quite alone with my own thoughts and those giant images of light is the most calming thing.
Submitted for your approval or at least your analysis: one Andrew J. Pridgen, who, at age forty-six, is the biggest bore on Earth. He holds a ten-year record for the most meaningless words spewed out during a coffee break. A dull, argumentative bigmouth who sets back the art of conversation a thousand years. I say he very likely would have except for something that will soon happen to him, something that will considerably alter his existence—and ours. He will be forever stuck—in a movie theater.
For some people, it's restaurants. For others, it's bars or museums or ballparks or airports. For me, it's the squishy red seat cushions of the Palm in San Luis Obispo.
The curated hieroglyphs at Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. The space-time continuum shattering transport back to the realm of possibility at the Cinerama Dome. The low-slung subterranean angle of the seats in the basement of the Park City Library theater. The middle of the seventh row of the Fox in Oakland. The self-important and campy splash of ‘90s megaplex neon at the Brendan Concord 14. The pom frond mural sway inside the Fox in Visalia. The wide aisles seventies monolith of the Regency in San Rafael.
Give me your movie theater as a true town center, or give me nothing at all. Let me go place to place and leave all my problems in the parking lot. I'll shut up and kneel at the alter of the sounds of candy wrappers being undone, low whispers during the previews, and unpopped popcorn kernels chipping a tooth.
No movies? Well, I'm afraid I don't have a lot for you then. We can talk around it, but I'm not much fun to be with unless it can be in the dark, laughing at a fleeting tale which finds its way (preferably in under two hours) to an end with characters who are flawed like me and change only enough to satisfy the need for credits.
The day the pandemic set down, and the movies died was the day my watch broke, my escape hatch vanished.
Nothing more to see here, nothing more to say. Thats' a wrap.
2515 N Catalina St Los Angeles, CA 90027 Los Feliz
You know what, why not?
This place in the Los Feliz hills is what I'd normally call a cautionary tale. A pure joy-filled precariously designed relic from the early '60s contemporaried to death from the gutting of the anterior part of the home's frontal lobes via remodel.
Megan Draper's aspirational space to compensate for a stagnating career and a disappearing marriage turned into an airport Hilton.
The old libidinous wood paneling, absent. The double yellow oven, in landfill. Replaced with the wine mom-approved marble waterfall kitchen countertop. (The conspicuous side that goes floor-to-cutting-surface always makes me pause. Maybe it's in case the place falls off its perch and does a couple of rolls; you can still slice up a kiwi as you take your final gulps of smoggy air.)
The dumb task rabbit-built Wayfair barstools, impossible to sit in for more than a text at a time. The faux animal fur rug. The chair in the corner that becomes a default semi-clean (at least worthy of wearing at least one more time) clothes hamper. The trade show hotel-inspired bathrooms with the Mork from Ork spaceship eggshell tub and the yoga studio on Ocean Park Boulevard flooring.
But you know what? It's fine. It's fine because of the direct sightline views of where Jim first got into some bad business at Griffith Observatory. It’s fine because the ceilings are intact. It's fine because the earthquake or the fire or the mudslide's going to take it all down in a half-decade or less anyway.
In the meantime, buy yourself an old-looking drink cart. Mix one up and sit outside and watch the sunset, there—just slightly over your right shoulder, to the West. Look for a real restored Hi-Fi down on Melrose, play some old records, and wait for the house lights to dim. Here you are, where all those dreams were made—with your very own projection room.
Isn't it even grander—for once—in real life?