Going to the Movies

Going to the Movies was very different in the past. You would look in the newspaper, in the Entertainment section, usually part C in the back of it and see all the adds for the movies, you'd find the movie you wanted to see and check out the time it started. You estimated how busy it would be and how early you would have to go to get on line to get a ticket. 
     I remember standing in line in New City to see a movie called, 'The In-Laws' with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin when it was a single screen theater in 1979. I was in a line so long that it stretched down the  southern side of the mall, past stores until it almost reached the road. We did get a seat and a pretty good one
     Back then only one Movie was shown in a theater on a given day, several times a day.The Screens were larger, the popcorns and drinks were less expensive, smaller and the sizes were a reasonable size, not something that would feed a family of four for a week. There were no Multiplex theatres,except in New York City, a life time away for me, but We had Drive Ins. 
    
DRIVE INs

Rockland had a fair share of Drive Ins in their heyday. There were two on Route 303 and the third was up in Monsey on Route 59. 
    I went to the one in Monsey only once, that I can remember, and it was weird to boot. My Friend Mike had asked me if I wanted to see a movie called 'Star Wars'. I'd never heard of it and I figured why not. The why not turned out that he had invited a girl that he wanted to get to know better, and I guess I was supposed to be the beard for the night. You know, back then if three people went to the movies, the girl would be safe, not gang raped. I think I might have been used as a way to reassure her parents that it would be safe to go.
     We get to the Drive In and park. I don't remember much about the night except for Mike commenting that I got back too quick from the refreshment stand. I don't think I enjoyed the movie.
     The Nyack Drive In and Route 303 Drive In were the two Drive Ins I went to the most. I remember as a little kid going in a packed car. You'd pay one price for a car full or at least less per person at the Drive In. You'd head down a long gravel road and the rocks would crunch under the wheels. At the roads end it would open up to row after row of cars parked next to short four foot poles and hung from each were two speakers. The speaker hung on the driver's window, with all the other windows open to the elements, because who had air conditioning then. You'd drive down a side isle then turn down a row until you found an open spot you liked. The Car would go up a slight incline to orientate itself to the screen. Everyone would decide on what they wanted to eat and off to the refreshment stand. Drive Ins had the usual movie fare. The one thing that struck me when I was the already fading glory of the Drive In. The Refreshment stand had several spaces where registers had been in the past. One lone register handled the crowd on that evening. I remember standing in line wondering when they would open the other registers, it was summer and if not now when? It was many years later when I realized the Drive Ins were dying a slow death. America's love affair with doing everything in your car was changing. Across the street form the Nyack Drive In and down the road towards Nyack was a restaurant called Stewarts' Root Beer. It was an other example of a place we would go to eat. We'd all pile into the car, pull up to a long awning, nosing the car in and I don't remember if We ordered from a speaker or if a waitress came over and took our order. When Stewarts' closed I should of known it wouldn't be long before the Drive Ins closed.
     I took my first serious girlfriend to the Drive In. We talked most of the night (yeah, we really did) and I lost the plot of the movie, I don't remember the movie.   
     I took another girlfriend to see Star Trek- the movie at the Drive In. At this movie there was more kissing and I also lost the plot of the film and didn't enjoy the movie, but I still enjoyed the night.
      The Drive Ins would close for the winter, mostly. During a few winters Nyack would try to stay open by showing triple X or porn This was back when there was no internet and you needed to make an effort to view it.  Driving by in the winter, with the leaves down you could see the screen. Every time I drove by it was a scene where they were talking.
     One Year, the Monsey Drive In didn't open. I didn't think about it. I rarely went there and I rarely went to a Drive In anyway.
      A few years later, I guess it was the middle 80's and VHS tapes were getting real big, neither Nyack or Route 303 opened. I remember feeling a little sad and nostalgic, but it had been years since I'd been to a Drive In.

Theatres
    I remember the thrill of walking into the theater in Pearl River in the 60's and 70's. Both Theaters are gone now. The one down toward the center of town I liked the best. You would walk in after paying for your ticket. There would be a long hallway that got dark as it got closer to the doors for the theater. On the left, set back a little way off the hall was the cencession stand. It was small and didn't take into account the future importance the dollars from selling food would bring. After getting pop corn and whatever you started up the hallway into the dark.I think you came to a set of doors then and after going through them and your eyes had become accustomed to the dark you would see hallway, left and right and two setsof stairs slightly behind you that would take you to the balcony, which more often then not would be closed. It was not an ancient theater, most likely it was built in the fifties when Rockland was still a one horse town and the bridge hadn't changed it from a resort community.
     The surprising thing, to me and maybe to you, Spring Valley used to be the economic hub of the county. You can see it in the number of movie houses in and around the area. There was the one in Hillcrest, were I first saw Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I'd never laughed that much in my life. Now if you see it you might not understand how it was so funny. Humor is subjective and it was the right movie making fun of the right topic at the right time, the definition of humor.
     The next theater on Route 45 would of been the one in town. Growing up that was always an x-rated movie theater. I saw my first porn film there. I think it was 'The Devil in Miss Jones', I could be wrong. It was a double feature The second movie, equally memorable, the title has been lost had characters called Peter the great and the great Peter. I'll let you surmise what they refer to.
      Coming to Route 59, and going west you would reach the Rockland Drive In. It alway seemed to have been the most successful of the three. It even had a sign, lit by neon on the side of 59 announcing you were only one mile from it. The Sign should of ened up in the Rockland Museum. Two problems with that, The first there was no Rockland Museum then and the sign was destroyed during a road widening in the 80's.
     The Spring Valley area had three theaters, Pearl River had two and Nyack also had two. The one on North Broadway, never had any parking. It might of been a real old, and beautiful theater, I only vaguely remember going there as a kid in the early 60's. One is now an Apartment complex. The other theater in Nyack, I'm not too sure where it was. The one theater I went to a lot in the 70's and 80's was on the corner of..... and Main Street, it was new. opened in the 70's, I think. I saw Alien there and it was the location of the midnight Rocky Horror Picture show for at least ten, fifteen years. In all that time, I never went to it. It was just too weird.People would go dressed up as characters from the film and echo lines as the Movie played. If you want to know what it was like, see the movie Fame, made in the 80's. It has an extended scene about what it was like to go to the show.
     The Theater in Suffern, I went rarely to. It is the grandest theater still around in the area, as of 2017. It can trace its' history to the silent era. It even hosted live shows and Vaudeville, I think. For a while in the 90's the theater would play the pipe organ before shows. It was fun.
      Multiplex's started showing up in the county in the 90's. The first one was in the Spring Valley Market place just off Route 59 on Clarkstown Road. It was fun and a bit of an adventure at first. Then the movies opened up in the new Palisades Mall and theaters began to close and the prices took a steep rise. Around 2000, the price of a ticket was $7.50 and I was complaining about the price jump from $6.00 in Spring Valley, which had closed. By 2015 the price of a ticket at the Mall had risen to $12.95. Now there is talk about adjustable pricing depending on the popularity of the film.
     The price of refreshment had shy rocketed. A large drink and a bucket of pop corn started at $9.00, a pricey sum in 2000. In 2015 over $12.00.
     Life goes on and going to the movies has changed by shades. It was no easier to get a ticket at a perceived reasonable price in 1980, then it is today. I liked multiplexes at the start. I see them now as a dilution in the quality of the theater experience. Smaller screens, over sized drinks and pop corn. It's a drive to push people to consume and we do, more and more. The sizes of everything compared to what is normal has been so warped that went we see normal, it looks cheap and insubstantial. 

     Now $60.00 for six months we can go to the movies as often as once a day, if We want. I hope it doesn't go out of business at least until we get to use it a couple of time. I got two passes. One for her for six months and a second for me for a year for $89.00.






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Burying Friends

I'm almost sixty and I haven't gotten used to burying friends and I felt I need to write about it.
     My best friend, Mike buried his older brother, Steve this past weekend. I honestly don't know how he has done it. Two of his brothers have died and neither were that old. Are drugs doing this? A lot of Rock and Roll Artists have died young too. Ronnie, Mike's second oldest brother was in his fifties when he died,now Steve.
     Steve was a smoker, had been all his life. He started some where around the age of twelve, maybe a little older, I was there near the start. We used to go smoking in the swamp behind my house to a place we called Davy Jones' locker. It was a locker like in high school. It had been thrown  there, a clearing had been trampled around it to form a semi secluded place to hang out with your friends. You would talk to friends about things, do things that were best done out of the eyes of Adults. We pretended the Adults didn't know about the places we hung out. For all I know they were there first. Mikes and my father were both West Nyack boys. My Dad was born in a camp house in Nanuet up near where Rt 304 would be built. Mike's Dad, if he wasn't born here came when he was young.
    I maybe getting stories and details mixed, which gives me the opportunity to embellish some if I want, but I won't. How I remember it starting was Mike and I got it into our heads to smoke some cigarettes. Why not our parents did and if they did it it must be OK. We went up to the local luncheonette at the corner of Klein Ave and West Nyack Rd. It was the sixties and there were hippies and cigarette vending machines. My Dad smoked Kools and Mike's Dad smoked Lucky Strikes. Both sounded so cool that you just had to try them. We walk through the door of the Luncheonette to the cigarette machine. Looking at the selection. I think at that point one of us says ah,my Dad smokes Kools, or Lucky Strikes, oh wait no he smokes Marlboro's, Then the other says Kools or something like that. If You had been watching it most likely it would of been the funniest,dumbest, not subtle, not cool moment of anyone's life. The fact that two kids could walk into a place and buy cigarettes from a vending machine without anyone thinking it odd or maybe telling them they couldn't buy cigarettes, because they were too young, didn't happen ever then.  Before We left, we each snagged a couple packages of matches, also left so they could be conveniently taken without bothering the store owner. We walked out of Don Len's Luncheonette with our booty,thinking this was going to be fun. We headed toward Davy Jones' locker, cutting between my Aunt's house and her neighbors. Out through their gate,make sure you close it if you go through it and into the back field. The last open space before the Swamp. The place were civilization ended and our world began or so we thought. We ducked past where my cousin, Billy had parked his junk car, past trees covered in vines, some as thick two inches. On other days We be imagining swinging like Tarzan from them, but not today. Today We were doing something more adult, smoking. Behind Billy's 1939 car was a small clearing and the start of a path between two bushes. We sat down on Davy Jones' locker.It was Spring and it was still cold. We both tore open the top of the packs the way we'd seen our father's do it. Open it up just enough to create that little square in the top and then tap out your first cigarette like we'd seen adults do a thousand times. Strike a match, the smell of the burning match oh so associated with cigarettes. You had to hold your cigarette between your first two fingers or have it perched gently between your two lips as bought the match up to the end. A quick in hale, the end of the cigarette glows and the mostly ignored cough of your first deep inhale as your body tries to tell you that this is poison as you tell yourself how cool is this. We had a cigarette or to that day. We'd come back on other days and smoke. Some days I'd comeback on my own and smoke, but that wasn't fun.
     One Day my Mother calls me from out the back door,saying I have a doctors appointment today. No one had ever said anything about it,but I went home to get ready. While I was gone Steve and Tommy Martin somehow got involved or maybe I've forgotten their involvement earlier then this day. I'm at the Doctors office being told I have the heart of an old man, while Mikes mother storms Davy Jones' Locker. It was told to me several times over the years how it happened. Steve and Tommy Martin were there smoking with Mike.Tommy Martin was showing of his option (think about it, option, He got it and she doesn't.) when Mrs Marsico catches everyone there red handed. Mike tells me at that point Steve says,"Well guy, crime doesn't pay" In the movie remake of this incident I can just imagine a James Cagney look a like playing Steve delivering that line. Me, I felt going to the Doctor was way better then getting caught like they did. What my mom and Doctor Rosen cooked up mostly went over my head. I didn't know that I stunk of cigarette smoke and the Doctor was a set up. I felt I'd been lucky and got away with it.
       I never did smoke cigarettes after that. I did smoke some pot, I guess it's called grass, no weed now. I found that out when I tried to sell an energy drink that had THC in it like pot, grass, weed, whatever. 
     All of my friends smoked as they grew up. Rob and Louie stopped sometime before the 1990's. Until this day Mike uses nicorette gum to avoid smoking. He's been on it for ten years.
     In the last few years of his life Steve smoked. He worked in construction doing seasonal work on big construction jobs and getting paid well. He was rail thin one of the last times I saw him. I was walking down Lake Road toward Route 9 W with my daughters. He was outside his house on Lake Road smoking a cigarette and sitting on a step near the road. I stopped and we talked about nothing important. I introduced my Daughters and after a while went on. A few years later just before he was going to lose his house he decides to move to Florida. He'd been unemployed for a while and had not been able to pay his mortgage. So his wife, Carol buys a home in Florida and they walk away from this one. A few months later Mike says his brother has throat cancer and they need to remove his voice box. After it is done Steve doesn't adapt very well and he leaves a message on mike's phone he can't life like this. By the time Mike gets it and calls the police, it is too late. Steve is gone. It was a sad way to end.

























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