Not the Pleasant Street!
Oct. 16th, 2007 03:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spatchDisturbing news from the Pioneer Valley: The Pleasant St. Theater in Northampton is slated to close in the next few months. The building is changing owners, and while the new owner doesn't mind having a movie theater, he "doesn't want to run it himself." The soon-to-be-former owner mentions several offers to run the theater were made, but they "didn't work out for one reason or another."
This is really terrible news, even moreso since the Pleasant Street is the last movie theater in Northampton. It was also the first "indie" theater I ever knew, the place where you'd see the non-mainstream films that the Academy of Music (now no longer showing pictures) hadn't picked up. Their teeny-tiny "Little Theatre" in the basement, no bigger than the coach section of an airplane, was an odd screening room but it worked. Heck, I was part of a pick-up performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in that little space once when it was screened as part of the Northampton Film Festival in the mid-90s, playing Riff-Raff as usual along with much of the same crew who terrorized the Tower Theater in 1991-1992. (Yes, I used to be stick-thin before my hummingbird metabolism departed for parts unknown sometime around 1997.)
The Pleasant Street was my theater of choice in the 1990s. I remember seeing so many Spike & Mike animation fests there, including the Sick & Twisteds. I remember seeing Welcome to the Dollhouse there because no other theater would pick it up; ditto Heavenly Creatures. There was a row or two in the back of the main auditorium that featured special cushioned loveseats designed for two. Jendave and I had our last date there in 2003 (we saw The Station Agent.) The only video store I had a membership at was the Pleasant Street Video store next door; I still have its black-and-magenta card somewhere. (The video store had an extensive collection of Japanese animation and I went through every single offering they had; in one memorable evening of cognitive dissonance, I watched My Neighbor Totoro followed by Legend of the Overfiend. Um.)
Nothing lasts forever, but I never expected the Pleasant Street Theater to go. Y'know? It was always there, a permanent, integral part of Northampton like the courthouse and the mural on the Route 9 railroad overpass and the Pride March. Now it's going to go the way of Jack August, Myers Eatery, Sheehan's, the Words & Pictures Museum, Bart's Ice Cream, Childs Toy Store, and the hideous four-story 1960s plastic facade that hung above the Woolworth's.
Hmm. Perhaps some change is for the better, but losing the Pleasant Street most certainly isn't.
This is really terrible news, even moreso since the Pleasant Street is the last movie theater in Northampton. It was also the first "indie" theater I ever knew, the place where you'd see the non-mainstream films that the Academy of Music (now no longer showing pictures) hadn't picked up. Their teeny-tiny "Little Theatre" in the basement, no bigger than the coach section of an airplane, was an odd screening room but it worked. Heck, I was part of a pick-up performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in that little space once when it was screened as part of the Northampton Film Festival in the mid-90s, playing Riff-Raff as usual along with much of the same crew who terrorized the Tower Theater in 1991-1992. (Yes, I used to be stick-thin before my hummingbird metabolism departed for parts unknown sometime around 1997.)
The Pleasant Street was my theater of choice in the 1990s. I remember seeing so many Spike & Mike animation fests there, including the Sick & Twisteds. I remember seeing Welcome to the Dollhouse there because no other theater would pick it up; ditto Heavenly Creatures. There was a row or two in the back of the main auditorium that featured special cushioned loveseats designed for two. Jendave and I had our last date there in 2003 (we saw The Station Agent.) The only video store I had a membership at was the Pleasant Street Video store next door; I still have its black-and-magenta card somewhere. (The video store had an extensive collection of Japanese animation and I went through every single offering they had; in one memorable evening of cognitive dissonance, I watched My Neighbor Totoro followed by Legend of the Overfiend. Um.)
Nothing lasts forever, but I never expected the Pleasant Street Theater to go. Y'know? It was always there, a permanent, integral part of Northampton like the courthouse and the mural on the Route 9 railroad overpass and the Pride March. Now it's going to go the way of Jack August, Myers Eatery, Sheehan's, the Words & Pictures Museum, Bart's Ice Cream, Childs Toy Store, and the hideous four-story 1960s plastic facade that hung above the Woolworth's.
Hmm. Perhaps some change is for the better, but losing the Pleasant Street most certainly isn't.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-16 09:15 pm (UTC)(And wait -- Cummington? Boggle! I spent the first ten years of my life in Chesterfield. My father helped run the Warner Farm center for the UCC in the 80s and 90s.)
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-16 09:22 pm (UTC)And by the way, bringing up the Words and Pictures Museum actually made me a bit misty. That place was incredible. My uncle owned a comic book store almost across the way. Lance's Comics. Ever go there?
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 12:18 pm (UTC)I can believe that; however, the last part of this story was told and re-told and re-told throughout the comic book readers in my junior high (at that point I went to Amherst Regional, go, uh, whatever team we were; I think it was the "Black Bears") and, through subsequent re-tellings, it blossomed into this incredible tall tale of the manager, ripshit mad at the mall and his store's closing, standing on a counter announcing "anything that hits the floor is free!" and then gleefully dumping boxes of stock on the ground while a general riot ensued around him.
("I wasn't there, but I heard it from Mark's brother over there who swears his friend was there and he got a lot of free comics that day, too bad you weren't there, huh...")
Personally I did my comic book shopping at Crossroads Comics in Amherst (which, by the time I started darkening its doors, was a little far away from any crossroads) because the manager let my best friend from high school and I sell our kitchen sink-published comic book there, taking a mere 50 cents off the top of each $1.50 issue sold. It was the best publishing deal I ever got.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 12:22 pm (UTC)Noah
PS We were the Hurricanes, though I assume, after Katrina, they changed it to "The Indigenous Peoples" or something
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 12:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 12:28 pm (UTC)Hey-o!
Noah
(no subject)
Date: 2007-10-17 12:41 pm (UTC)And from looking at the homepage, it does appear our alma mater still goes by the team name Hurricanes. Changing it post-Katrina was probably debated -- in fact, I'd have been surprised if it hadn't -- but it would've been incredibly ironic. From what I can remember, the team name was chosen in 1938 after the hurricane that kind of, y'know, took out half of New England.