Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Coronets and Kings
Hey, welcome back, me! I’ve had a dense but satisfying trip to LA, where I got to get some real quality time with my dad, my step-family (nephew scored a hat trick and two assists in his hockey game!), an old friend, and an old acquaintance who is now, whether he likes it or not, a new friend. I ate cholesterol, salt, and sugar; I got a Tommy’s Burgers t-shirt and an electric razor, and I got to drive up and down Ventura Boulevard a few times. Doing so, I couldn’t help but gawk at how much the place has changed. That’s a good enough intro for this first essay in my series, Damn, The Place Sure Is Changing. And now, back to your regularly scheduled blogging:
Palaces ain’t what they used to be back when I was a lad. I suppose that, even then, they weren’t what they used to be, but there were still enough left to set a tone. Growing up as I did in Cinema City, the real landmarks persevered - the Chinese, the Egyptian, the parvenue glitz of the Cinerama Dome - but even in my then-sleepy valley banlieu we still had the Studio and the Sherman and the La Reina, big classy movie houses lining the south side of Ventura Boulevard where everybody in line was waiting for the same show and elaborate terrazzo mosaics reflected gorgeous neon fantasies flickering above bijoux box offices. One big screen for one big movie. It felt special when you entered those storied portals, like you were visiting a realm that was part throwback and part fantasy. They were called “palaces” for a reason. Architecturally, decoratively, and in sheer bulk, they ruled.
But even as I was growing up, the palaces were being supplanted by bourgeois new multiplexes. Utilitarian, uninspired, more like waiting rooms at second-rate airports than worlds unto themselves, these outlet malls of the entertainment world efficiently slurped up the filmic crowds like a shop-vac clears stale popcorn from sticky theater floors. I always preferred the big fancy theaters but if a multiplex was showing what I wanted to see when I wanted to see it, I’d happily go there instead. So maybe I was part of the problem. I’d like to think it would be more accurate to say that I was just a little more grist for the evolving grindhouse mill.
The Sherman and Studio and La Reina all closed between my entering high school and my leaving college. I’d go out to Hollywood sometimes to see a big budget blockbuster on a football field screen, but frankly it was inconvenient. Those rare times I went to see a movie, I usually hit the ‘plex and I didn’t think twice about it.
Once I moved to San Francisco I figured I’d left the palaces behind, but I was sort of mistaken: the city still had a few big screens where cinema was king. One by one, these too closed up. The Moorish extravagances of the Alhambra were shuttered, eventually to become a fitness club. The pharonic fantasy of the Alexandria, already cut down to three screens, locked its curved portico and continues slowly to decompose even unto the present day. Meanwhile, multiplexes proliferated, even seeking some share of the elegance and cachet that once distinguished real movie palaces but achieving only a pre-fab Logan’s Run tawdriness. Even though the Metreon ‘plex boasts a massive IMAX screen, and the AMC 1000, cushy stadium seats, there was only one real first-run palace left in town - and it was just a few blocks from my home.
The Coronet wasn’t a beautiful palace, all brutal boxy angles and dumbed-down details, but lord love it, it was big. It filled half a block and held a natural crowd, and its screen was cinemax grand. It’s where Star Warses opened - all of them, with costumed hordes camping on the sidewalk for a week to ensure a premiere seat. It was a place where imagination still superseded reality. As a palace it left a lot to be desired, but it was still there, damn it, and it was a real destination.
The Coronet was where we’d go with friends to see the big new shows, Potters and Hobbits and such, where magnificent images flickered and loomed like 2-D gods above us. We’d always sit all the way down in front. Usually those aren’t the best seats, but the Coronet had old-school proportions: the front row was a good 40 yards from the screen and when we sat there we could stretch out our legs, slump comfortably on well-worn velour thrones, unpack a knapsack of tasty snacks and adult beverages, and have a fine old time. Fruit and cheese, bourbon and wine, all the tastiest sweetmeats accompanied us to Hogwarts, Mordor and Tattooine. The Coronet had its shortcomings but you never noticed them from the front row. I felt ownership. It felt right.
Two years ago the Coronet closed, another victim of market forces and cut-rate entertainment. Its one big screen just couldn’t bring in sufficiently consistent dollars to stay lit. Since then it’s stood shuttered, plywood sheets blocking the broad entry and tired old flags left to tatter and fade above the marquee in the cold foggy wind that whips along Geary. A sign has announced for 24 or more months that it’s the future site of a center on aging. Meanwhile, it’s atrophied and withered before my eyes, falling further into desuetude week by week. My bus takes me past it at least once a day, and every day I sensed the leaching of cinemagic from its stucco. Where we once lined up to escape into greatness, we now actively ignored while traffic rolled past. What was once a palace had become an empty shell.
How empty, I didn’t realize till recently. Now as my bus speeds past the erstwhile grandeur of what was once the Coronet, I see the front of the building, the east wall, the back – and the gaping, vacant interior, yawning with a vacuum that cannot be filled. The west wall has been entirely removed. Construction crews now crawl over the roofless, exposed hulk, ripping the sinews from a vast space where I once spent hours escaping my world - a world the Coronet itself could not escape. That vale of freedom where we once lounged and caroused in fabulous darkness is now exposed to the glare of the sun, the rubble of demolition, the unmitigated harshness of progressive reality. I can see where those front row seats once were, but are no more. The magic and majesty are drained entirely away. I miss the Coronet and all that it brought to my life, even if most of it was illusory. I’m sure it’ll be a fine senior center, but I could really use a palace sometimes.
