Lincoln Plaza Cinemas wasn’t a good movie theater, probably, depending on your definition of good. It lurked across the street from Lincoln Center and I had been going there since I was a pre-teen in the late nineties. When I moved back to this neighborhood in 2014 and took Thomas there it turned out to be essentially, almost spookily, unchanged. Little old women worked at the concessions counter, selling homemade baked goods and coffee in styrofoam cups and everyone, like me, thought it was the most natural thing in the world to want a cup of hot black coffee to go with an evening showing of a relatively mainstream art movie. The theaters were tiny and surprisingly comfortable and almost always full, and everyone heartily made the “look at me I know the reference” laugh-noise whenever a movie mentioned some esoteric thing. Most of the reason I liked it was that it was a form of time travel; its unlikely sameness made me believe I was still thirteen years old, and had convinced my parents to take me to see A Cool Movie, and all time was redeemable. Old places in New York, the places I went to as a kid, make me feel invisible, like a friend you’ve known so long that you can invite them over to your house instead of having to go out anywhere, opening the door wearing your house jeans, wearing all your secrets on the outside.
ghost towns
ghost towns
ghost towns
Lincoln Plaza Cinemas wasn’t a good movie theater, probably, depending on your definition of good. It lurked across the street from Lincoln Center and I had been going there since I was a pre-teen in the late nineties. When I moved back to this neighborhood in 2014 and took Thomas there it turned out to be essentially, almost spookily, unchanged. Little old women worked at the concessions counter, selling homemade baked goods and coffee in styrofoam cups and everyone, like me, thought it was the most natural thing in the world to want a cup of hot black coffee to go with an evening showing of a relatively mainstream art movie. The theaters were tiny and surprisingly comfortable and almost always full, and everyone heartily made the “look at me I know the reference” laugh-noise whenever a movie mentioned some esoteric thing. Most of the reason I liked it was that it was a form of time travel; its unlikely sameness made me believe I was still thirteen years old, and had convinced my parents to take me to see A Cool Movie, and all time was redeemable. Old places in New York, the places I went to as a kid, make me feel invisible, like a friend you’ve known so long that you can invite them over to your house instead of having to go out anywhere, opening the door wearing your house jeans, wearing all your secrets on the outside.