Couch Potato tells it like it is.
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I left England in the 70′s as a teen, having been born & bred in Crystal Palace & one of my fondest memories as a child was Saturday morning pictures at the Granada (I think it was then)! We bought bubble gum from the machine outside the news agent and sucked on frozen Jubilees – I remember the naughty boys in the back used to lob their half-melted jubilees into the midst of the other kids right in the part where the film got quiet! I came home for my 1st visit in 2009 and will definitely be back just to see a film in the old place! My heart is with 25 Church Road! Good luck in your endeavour.
Reading the guardian on saturday there was a large piece on Michael Moore who was behind the opening of a cinema in Traverse City which had been in decline for many years. The cinema was fundamental to their urban regeneration. Here’s a sample from the piece:
“When I first got here the theatre was boarded up,” says Moore. “It was a mess. I said, look, let me reopen this theatre, I’ll create a non-profit. It has brought, like, half a million people downtown in the first two years. If they’re downtown they go out to dinner, they go to the bookstore. It livens everything up. Stores open. Now there’s no plywood on any windows.” This, says Moore, has made him something of a local hero even in a town that votes Republican.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jan/30/michael-moore-capitalism-a-love-story
Looking forward to a tub of ice cream in the interval. Goodness, though, to think of my granddaughters snogging and smoking on the back row?! I’m shocked.
“Sometimes when you believe the impossible the incredible comes true.” We’ll it is not impossible!
I feel trully inspired by this blog Couch Potato and I can tell everyone who supports the cinema campaign that I will personally go the distance to try and bring a cinema back to Crystal Palace and to its rightful home on the site of the old Rialto on Church Road.
I too can remember going to the cinema as a child – I saw Star Wars probably 6 times at our local odeon. Mum took me to see Jaws and Dad used to take me and my best friend to see the James Bond movies. As I got older it was snogging on the back row graduating to smoking on the back row, – those were the days of intervals and ice creams in tubs. Going to the cinema was fun and it was local and you always used to bump into friends – it was an event.
We want to bring back that event and sense of community and shared experience to the people of Crystal Palace.