I suggested we go see Beetlejuice, which was playing between Fifth and Sixth. “I don’t think there’s any theater around here we want to go to,” Tim said, but I convinced him. The previous movie, Friday the 13th Part 7, was still playing, so we had to wait in the tiny lobby until it was over. The theater was almost full when we did go in, so I guess everyone had paid for both features. We ended up way up front, in the fourth row.
The audience was rowdy, but not menacing. The theater looked as old as it’s name “The Electric”, suggested. There were roccoco reliefs on the walls of effete young men in Roman dress, and holes and stains on the ceiling.
“The Electric” did, indeed, date back to the silent era, but its name was relatively new. According to this website, the theater started as the Maio Biograph, then the Circle, then the Newsreel, then the Crest, and only after that, the Electric. Now it’s The Crazy Horse “Gentlemen’s Club.”
It was the movie theater closest to where we lived, practically around the corner, on a section of Market that was profoundly run down and depressed (it still is.) Most of the people attending were likely neighbors, but not our closest neighbors, not on Tehama, which back then was being settled by 20-something artists and Silicon-Valley Gold Rushers. I remember the audience as, not older than we were, but wearier and in older clothes.
The “rowdiness” of the audience was the kind I like, which involved comments about the action, loud expressions of approval and disgust, and occasional instructions yelled at the characters.
Pam Troy 