Oasis Theatre
63-57 Fresh Pond Road,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
63-57 Fresh Pond Road,
Ridgewood,
NY
11385
15 people
favorited this theater
Showing 126 - 150 of 198 comments found
Thanks, Bway.
No, LostMemory, the Oasis was no mirage, unless all of us here (and perhaps many more that are not)on Cinema Treasures are having the same delusion ! What could explain such a mass hallucination ?
That was probably at the beginning of the crack epidemic. That has subsided since the 70s and 80s.
I think that Karl Ehmer ad, the standing pig in the butcher hat and apron, is still painted on the building near where the Oasis Theater used to be, on the east side of Fresh Pond Road, facing north.
One could see it as one walked south on the east side of Fresh Pond Road, from Metropolitan Avenue.
It was once defaced with graffiti, reading :
EAT MY MEAT ! I’LL PORK YA !
which I think is gone now.
stevel, thanks for the mention of Richard Hell and the Voidoids. I’m glad I’m not the only one who remembers them. I was twenty-two when I saw the ad for their August 12 1978 concert at the Forest Park music grove and bandshell.
I have no idea what the drug scene is Maspeth is like now.
Richard Hell and the Voidoids played at the Oasis. i remember seeing the sign for the show and being around 12 years old i thought the name was strange/memorable.i dont recall any other shows there. i was still heavily into Kiss at the time.I remember seeing Food for the Gods, Grizzly Addems< the Apple Dumpling Gang,Return of the Pink Panther,Black Sunday/bw the Gambler, Ben, Death Race 2000(or was the at the Arion on metropolitan ave?)Hindenburg.I also remember a coin store right next door when i went through my coin collecting phase i usede to love that store.Maspeth was a nice town but there was ALOT of drugs going on.Everyone got high at a very young age.its not like that today (i hope)
to cinema treasures i think you should definitely list the oasis in Ridgewood rather than Glendale …i lived afew blocks away 1940 thru 1960 and ridgewood extended all the way to metropolitan aven…and glendale was at least half mile away thank you
well do iremeber the oasis on fresh pond rd and menahan street i lived on woodbine st only 5 blocks away….from 1940 to 1954 i saw some great double bills there ir remember Fredric March in One foot in heaven and jimmy durante in Youre in trhe army now…in 1944 i believe….a great movie house with wonderful soundsystem "
Utopia?
Could the introduction be changed? The names of the Randforce and Skouras circuits are spelled incorrectly. Also, to the best of my knowledge, until the United Artists Theatre Circuit dropped the divisional names of Randforce and Skouras, this was always the Randforce Utopia and never the Skouras Utopia. Because of its location in Ridgewood, the Utopia was considered in Randforce territory, which was exclusively Brooklyn except for a few theatres on the Queens border with Brooklyn. There were never any Skouras theatres in Brooklyn.
Hi Everyone! Thank you for bringing back such memories of The Oasis :) I was there a couple of times. I did look through all of the pics that were posted here but does anybody have any of the interior from when it was a roller rink? I would love to see them. Thanks!!
Ammie
Maspeth? Thats funny. Oasis was the perfect name for this theater. It was located in the middle of “nowhere”. Or was it just a mirage? :)
Thanks Robert. And by the way, to further confuse the whole “Ridgewood-Glendale” debate about this theater, they called it “Maspeth” in the article!!!
Here is a story about a 1953 robbery at the Oasis.
View link
The Burtons on a 1967 neighborhood run. The second feature had Faye Dunaway before she became a star in it.
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Many of the Ridgewood theaters were located in Brooklyn during the Ice Age. When the glaciers receded north, the Ridgewood theaters returned to their rightful place in Queens. :)
Haha. The Oasis is even close to Brooklyn! Again, obviously there must have been some sort of economic advantage in advertising so many of these Queens Theaters (such as the Madison, Ridgewood, Oasis – all in Queens) as “Brooklyn”.
Although granted, we still have the old “Brooklyn zip code”, even though in Queens) for Glendale and Ridgewood up until the early 80’s. This was discussed in mass in the Ridgewood Theater section. That could also be the reason.
Look at the Brooklyn theatres for this 1964 re-release of “The Longest Day”,16 theatres.
View link
The actual boundary near this former theater is the train tracks. If you want to be accurate this theater was in Ridgewood. I’m starting to feel like the rest of you now. Who really cares where it was located.
Trouble is, postal zone 11385 contains both Ridgewood and Glendale, without a boundary between them. DOES Ridgewood have any sort of “official” boundary, whether a Congressional district, or some function of state, city or county government ?
Or is there just the “unoffical” Ridgewood boundary shown in the map included in the New York Times article, “If you’re thinking of living in Ridgewood …” ?
Otherwise, one can debate neighborhood boundaries, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, like medieval schoolmen trying to figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but I, for one, have better and more important things to do.
I will admit it sometimes makes for good humor, though, like the 30-year running routine between me and my best friend, “Hey Pete, where’s South Brooklyn ?”
There seems to have been a lot of protest by Ridgewood residents recently about the “lumping” of Ridgewood with Bushwick, and Brooklyn, rather than Glendale, Maspeth, and Middle Village, and Queens, in terms of public services, like home care for the elderly, despite the recent gentrification of Bushwick.
Wow, I just noticed the old photo of the Oasis' exterior. The marquee seen in that photo is not the one that survived to the end. I don’t know when the original one was replaced, but the one I remember in the 70’s and 80’s, was a trapezoid shaped one (skinnier near the street, and then wider as it approaced the building). On the skinny end at the street was a large “Oasis” sign in orange/gold bulbs or neon. While the structure of the marquee survived into the roller skating days, it was stripped, and got a white background, and “Oasis Roller World” put on the marquee, with the large “O” in Oasis having a desert scene with palm trees, etc in it. That was the logo of the roller rink, and the chips they would give you for your shoe check had that desert scene on it.
After the Oasis building burned in the late 90’s, they removed the stores that fronted on Fresh Pond Road, the Oasis lobby, and the whole right side of the building.
Interestingly, I took my photo last year in the exact location that Warren’s old photo was taken in.
Compare my photo to the old one that Warren posted:
Click here for Warren’s link to the old photo
Click here for my current photo taken last year
Thanks Warren, keep the theaters you do find coming, they are great.
Anyway, as for the Ridgewood-Glendale thing, I have never seen Fresh Pond Rd listed as Glendale, and I had lived in Ridgewood for over almost 25 years before I left there some years ago. Lost Memory is right, it is the Railroad tracks that divide Ridgewood and Glendale, as far as I know.
The Oasis is and was in Ridgewood.
More Disney fun at the Oasis
View link
Here are two stores on Freshpond Road with the address being listed as Ridgewood. One is:
Fresh Pond Pharmacy
68-52 Fresh Pond Road
Ridgewood, NY 11385
The other is the CVS that replaced this theater:
CVS/Pharmacy
63-57 Fresh Pond Rd
Ridgewood, NY 11385
You can verify those addresses at this link:
http://www.drugstore-dir.com/city-NY/Ridgewood.htm
The images of the Oasis are mostly from trade journals published around the time that the theatre first opened. I have no images of the Ridgewood Theatre, and don’t intend to search for any until I learn its exact opening date. Otherwise, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack.
A TV ad for Casa Classica Italian furniture store at 63-XX Fresh Pond Road, on or near the same block as the Oasis, I have heard on TV in the last 12 years, refers to it as being in “Ridgewood, Queens” loud and clear amidst all the rapidly spoken Italian.
The stores might not call it Ridgewood or they might not like being in Ridgewood, but it is Ridgewood. The Oasis was in Ridgewood. The Glenwood on Myrtle was in Ridgewood. Even the Wagner was in Ridgewood. These are the boundaries listed for Ridgewood:
“Ridgewood is a neighborhood in Brooklyn and Queens. Bounded to the north by Metropolitan Avenue, to the east by the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road and Conrail, to the south by Central Avenue, and to the west by Flushing Avenue”.
Freshpond Road would be considered east. The railroad tracks are just past Freshpond Road making Freshpond Road part of Ridgewood.