The Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia has an old-fashioned neon sign. (Credit: Scot Ehardt/Wikipedia) Was it only two months ago I spent a sweet week in Jacksonville? Sunday, mid-June. The river then was nowhere near the bottom of the bridge I crossed over in my rental car, eager to find and photograph The Florida, an elegant 1,900-seat Moorish-themed movie palace and live theater. It opened, with around 2,200 seats, in 1927, and has one of the sweetest marquees going, all script letters in neon. I parked and talked my way in, the way I’ve done in so many other cities and towns that have surviving theaters. They’re like charms on my bracelet: The venerable newly-rescued Victory in Holyoke, Mass., the 1,100-seat Rapp & Rapp Paramount in Charlottesville, which I spotted on the town square after glimpsing its striking vertical marquee. And of course, the Niantic Cinema in Connecticut, a shoreline treasure; theaters that have survived, theaters to write about. The Florida had (and I hope still has) the coolest built-in concession stand, all done out in dark-veined green marble, first thing you encounter before entering the nobly-ornate Spanish lobby. My particular fondness for The Florida may have something to do with the fact that its decor reminds me of the theater I co-managed for a year in 1976, The 2672-seat St. George Theatre in Staten Island, also Spanish-themed, with bullfight scenes and wrought-iron fake balconies over the lobby. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I’m a fool for old theaters.
The day I walked in, The Florida’s lobby was full of kids waiting to perform in a dance recital, eating pizza on the steps. Hard to imagine that same lobby a wading pool, with Hurricane Irma and the St. John’s River its only guests. Of course that’s nothing compared to all the condos, trailer homes, houses, libraries, hospitals and even shelters filling up all over the wracked state of Florida and its neighboring states.The river in Jacksonville crested yesterday at historic levels, almost covering the bridge I took last June.
Theatre demolition is generally something you can blame on (developers’) greed and (citizens’) lack of imagination, or both. Well, wait a minute. What, after all, causes mega-hurricanes? — among other things, greed and lack of imagination! Wrecker’s ball? Or series of gigantic hurricanes brought on by overheated oceans? — wreckage is wreckage. And If this storm has switched off or changed the lives of millions of people, then a treasured movie palace — even if it is the one where Elvis caused hundreds to pray for his soul merely by threatening to gyrate his famous pelvis — is still relatively small potatoes. So I send all good thoughts to each and every resident of Florida, as well as all the states affected directly or indirectly by Irma and her companion storms: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama,Texas, even Virginia, according to some sources. And to my friends in California, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, and other western states, surrounded by yet one more of the four elements, fire.
Finally, here’s to the Florida Theatre on East Forsythe Street, a street I fear might be a canal today, with waist-high water. Hope I’m wrong.
This is what fantasy does to a writer. It was the same with my overactive imagination for years after we ran the St. George Theatre in Staten Island, where I live. The theater was shuttered for the better part of the 1980’s, its marquee depositing rust stains on the sidewalk. I used to walk under that marquee (or even around it, because I was afraid it would fall on me!) and wonder when the wrecker’s ball would come. But despite the fact that greed and lack of imagination (frequent causes of theater demolition) are hardly in short supply in my borough, the St. George still stands, and has become a post-millennium working theater. New York Harbor is right down the hill; but in that we are lucky as well, because the storm that climbs high enough to flood our theater probably will not happen in our time. If you want to read further on that topic, read Ian Frazier’s excellent New Yorker piece written in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. Or don’t, if you’re not in an apocalyptic mood!
Here’s a more comforting solution: go to a movie! No, not in your living room, but somewhere with a nice high and dry concession stand --eat popcorn! -- and seats facing a shared screen. It’s what our ancestors did, gather around the hearth. It’s what we all need to do right now.
The day I walked in, The Florida’s lobby was full of kids waiting to perform in a dance recital, eating pizza on the steps. Hard to imagine that same lobby a wading pool, with Hurricane Irma and the St. John’s River its only guests. Of course that’s nothing compared to all the condos, trailer homes, houses, libraries, hospitals and even shelters filling up all over the wracked state of Florida and its neighboring states.The river in Jacksonville crested yesterday at historic levels, almost covering the bridge I took last June.
Theatre demolition is generally something you can blame on (developers’) greed and (citizens’) lack of imagination, or both. Well, wait a minute. What, after all, causes mega-hurricanes? — among other things, greed and lack of imagination! Wrecker’s ball? Or series of gigantic hurricanes brought on by overheated oceans? — wreckage is wreckage. And If this storm has switched off or changed the lives of millions of people, then a treasured movie palace — even if it is the one where Elvis caused hundreds to pray for his soul merely by threatening to gyrate his famous pelvis — is still relatively small potatoes. So I send all good thoughts to each and every resident of Florida, as well as all the states affected directly or indirectly by Irma and her companion storms: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama,Texas, even Virginia, according to some sources. And to my friends in California, Oregon, Montana, Colorado, and other western states, surrounded by yet one more of the four elements, fire.
Finally, here’s to the Florida Theatre on East Forsythe Street, a street I fear might be a canal today, with waist-high water. Hope I’m wrong.
This is what fantasy does to a writer. It was the same with my overactive imagination for years after we ran the St. George Theatre in Staten Island, where I live. The theater was shuttered for the better part of the 1980’s, its marquee depositing rust stains on the sidewalk. I used to walk under that marquee (or even around it, because I was afraid it would fall on me!) and wonder when the wrecker’s ball would come. But despite the fact that greed and lack of imagination (frequent causes of theater demolition) are hardly in short supply in my borough, the St. George still stands, and has become a post-millennium working theater. New York Harbor is right down the hill; but in that we are lucky as well, because the storm that climbs high enough to flood our theater probably will not happen in our time. If you want to read further on that topic, read Ian Frazier’s excellent New Yorker piece written in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. Or don’t, if you’re not in an apocalyptic mood!
Here’s a more comforting solution: go to a movie! No, not in your living room, but somewhere with a nice high and dry concession stand --eat popcorn! -- and seats facing a shared screen. It’s what our ancestors did, gather around the hearth. It’s what we all need to do right now.
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