Oceanside Twin

it is own by the same people who owns the malverne

This was a single screen movie theater that opened in the mid to late 50's on the site of an old car dealership on Long Beach Road. It wasn't very big or memorable as a single screen theater but I did see a lot of movies here. It did not have a balcony. In the early 80's it was turned into a twin. What little charm this theater might've had as a single theater was destroyed. The last time I was there in the early 90's it had all the ambience of a bomb shelter. Terrible place.

Drove by this "thing" last weekend. What's up with the wacky marquee these days? It doesn't tell you what's playing, just says Oceanside Theater or something.

Is this hellhole still attracting a crowd? And how many theaters are in this place now? Smallish neighborhood theaters like this, I've noticed, don't attract the attention on this board the way the big ones do. I'd just like to know if people these days like this place. Who knows? Maybe it's really nice inside!

They are always taking the titles off to put up "Happy Birthday Eggbert" or whoever is having a birthday there. I was only in this theatre once and do not recall alot. It suprises me nobody else tried to open the RKO Lawrence since that whole area is under screened.

RobertR: thanks for the BIG laugh! I noticed either on the marquee or somewhere near it there was a sign advertising the place for birthday parties. There is a similar kind of theater in Northern NJ in Ramsey that does the same thing. BUT...they do it much more nicely.

As for Lawrence, I don't get it either. I did have a lot of friends from the 5 Towns and they always went to the Sunrise Multiplex. I guess schlepping all that way to a less than desirable theater was OK. There was a nice, big luxurious theater in the heart of Cedarhurst and I was surprised years ago that it closed down. Guess it's not that important to them.

There are 2 long narrow hellish screens in this hellhole building. Trust me its not very nice inside. Be afraid, be very afraid.

There is a large marquee that says Oceanside Theater that is over the sidewalk and can be easily seen by passing traffic. There is another smaller marquee flush against the building that gives the names of the movies playing. I've never seen any birthday messages.

There is nothing to be afraid of inside. There are two nondescript auditoriums, but the place is clean and the screens are clean and usually well lit.

This is a family-owned business with a friendly staff. It has a smallish lobby but a lot of one sheets advertising upcoming movies and those playing at the Bellmore and Malverne, also owned by this family.

Admission is also inexpensive and the concession stand is cheaper than the chains.

We should treasure these local houses, because we will miss them when they're gone. I recently saw Motorcycle Diaries and Maria Full of Grace here, so I also appreciate the creative booking that sometimes occurs.

Don't they also own Long beach?

When I lived on LI, this theater WAS a hellhole. When it was a single screener, it was gross. Never maintained. The kicker was that the town (Oceanside) was/is very nice so it was hard to understand why the owners managed it so poorly. But it seemed to bring people in because of the ample parking (in back) and the fact that the area had a lot of foot traffic.

When it was a single screener, one of the last movies I saw there was a lousy movie called "Rollercoaster" in Sensurround. Now, if you know this theater and it's size, installing that system seemed foolish. They had it installed in the Green Acres but that was understandable as it was huge. But in the Oceanside?!! Anyway...the "technicians" at the theater either didn't know how to use it or there was some kind of glitch because they couldn't turn it off. Literally from the moment the movie began through the end, the Sensurround was on. Only intermittantly did they get it off. No one could hear the dialogue (such as it was). Twice they turned the movie off to see if they could fix it. At one point, some High School students in the audience started acting up. A girl near me went to sit in her seat and the whole back simply fell off. It was the single worst movie going experience in my life. I had always disliked that theater and favored my Century's Baldwin much more, even as a kid.

The last movie I saw there was "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". It was horrible. The "theater" was a shoebox, the sound was terrible and the place was disgusting. But it was packed...

I never understood why Century's closed the Baldwin, I thought they owned the building. This was around the time they closed alot of places prior to the takeover by Almi-RKO.

The Century's Baldwin was small but pretty much the same size as the Oceanside, just better maintained. The last movie I saw at the Century's Baldwin was "Heaven Help Us". I hadn't been in there for awhile and was saddened to see that it wasn't being maintained too well. The dark paint in the auditorium was peeling, especially on the ceiling and the place just looked tired. I was surprised that it lasted as long as it did. But it still seemed to get 1st run movies right up until it closed and it attracted a crowd. The Oceanside, on the other hand, was always second run and looked it.

The difference, I think, is that the shopping area in Baldwin where the theater was located started to decline in the late 70's/early 80's while the area where the Oceanside is stayed fairly active. Maybe not the most attractive but it was/is used as opposed to where the Century's Baldwin was. And it's gotten worse since then...

They used to own the Long Beach but don't anymore, which was torn down and rebuilt by new owners.

The presentation is horrible at Oceanside. I should know, I work in the booth. All the equipment needs to be udgraded. The light on the screen is not even half the brightness it should be. The screens are wrinkled also. The place may be clean, but that does not make up for bad presentations.

Like I said above, this was always known as a crap-ola theater even back in the 70's when every neighborhood had a theater. The Century's Baldwin was so much better maintained. That's why I'm surprised that this one has remained around for so long.

And what is the benefit to the owners to have the light on the screen so dim? Does it save electricity or something?

It saves electricity and extends the life of the Zenon bulb, but makes the picture look like crap.

It doesn't surprise me that the Oceanside would do that. It's in a long tradition. God I loathed that place. Avoided it like the plague.

Here's an interesting Q & A from Roger Ebert's 10/03/04 column concerning screen brightness. Hey, CConnolly, maybe we should get a light meter and check out some of these local houses!

Q. I know well your well-deserved attacks on theater managers who don't have bulbs at full brightness. So when I was hired as the general manager of the Grand Cinema, a non-profit movie theater in Tacoma, Wash., I resolved not to be one of those managers. One of my first questions to my projectionist was whether we have the bulbs of our three screens at full power. We don't.

And five months later, we still don't. As he tells me, our theaters are so small (no more than 50 or 60 feet from projector to screen) that having our bulbs at full would burn our screens and wash out a picture. I've relied on his judgment, but I think it's time to check this. Is there any evidence to suggest that a bulb should be dimmed slightly or significantly if playing in a very small theater?

Erik Hanberg, Tacoma, Wash.

A. Steve Kraus of the Lake Street Screening Room in Chicago, who is a scholar of film projection, tells me: "Yes, it is possible to be too bright. Of course you can't literally burn the screen but the picture could be washed out and uncomfortable to watch. There are many factors in picture brightness, but there is no reason for guessing. A technician with a light meter can read the reflected brightness of the screen with the projector running without film. It should be 16 foot-Lamberts. I would recommend the forum section at www.film-tech.com, where he can get detailed advice about his particular equipment."

That link should be www.film-tech.com (without the comma)

You have to understand something very important about Xenon bulbs and lamphouses. If you run a xenon bulb below the proper amperage, you decrease the life of the bulb. To change the power output of the bulb, you change the amperage not the voltage. The voltage remains at around 25 volts DC. A 2000 watt bulb, like they use at oceanside, runs at around 75 amps DC. It may save electricity (pennies maybe) but you will kill the bulb. You change the brightness of the light on the screen by moving the bulb closer or further away from the reflector inside the lamphouse. Bulbs should always be run at full power. As far as burning the screen, it does not matter how close the projector is to the screen. What matters is how big the screen is. The more area of screen you have to cover, the darker the light is. Oceanside runs the bulbs at full power. They just run them until they burn out or explode.

I remember from my theatre days that many times the bulbs lasted way past their expectancy. You were supposed to change them when they hit their recommended hours of usage or they could explode and ruin the reflector mirror or damage the lamphouse. Many times though the bulbs seemed to live on and on, but the picture got darker and sometimes the bulbs burned uneven causing dark patches.

That is very true. We get way more life out of the bulbs at my theater. Its all in the way you care for them. Like a car engine, its the starting of the bulb that degrades them. We light the bulbs at the start of the first show and never shut them down till midnight. Also each machine has it's own exhaust. The cooler you keep them the longer they last. We use 1000 watt bulbs at my theater. You usually get around 2000 hours out of them. We average around 7000 hours. Even at 7000 hours, we get 16FL in the center with around 14FL at the sides. Also when bulbs get older it will change the color of the light on the screen. A brand new bulb will burn nice and white. As it ages, it gets a brownish tint to it.

Jesus...I never knew there was so much to the projector! This is fascinating.

I once had a friend who's father was the projectionist at the Port Washington Multiplex. He gave me a quick tour of one of the projector rooms. I saw that they had layed out the movie "A Fish Called Wanda" on the huge platter, which I understand, was a fairly new development (don't know the year but from other posts for other theaters, it seemed that way). No offense, but in the "olden days" without the platter, how did the projectionist change reels without any disruption? I know that near the end of a reel, all films have a tiny "blip" that appears in one of the corners to alert the projectionist to change reels. Can someone explain how this is done?

ALSO...does anyone here realize the wealth of great information that people like RobertR and Warren and so many others (especially on the Radio City Music Hall board) are writing here? This subject and the various memories are perfect for a documentary.

OConnolly, Before platters, 2 machines were used. There are 2 sets of cue marks at the end of each reel. The projectionist would watch near the end of the reel for them. When the first set would pass, he or she would turn on the motor for the next machine. When the second set would pass (about 8 seconds later) they would press a button that would changeover the picture and sound at the same exact time. You would never notice the change. Some houses still use changeovers.

RCDTJ: Please be patient with me if you feel I'm asking idiotic questions. I've never been in one of the older projection booths and this stuff fascinates me. Anything about movies does...

So you have two projectors. Is the "window" through which the image is projected big enough so that the projectionist doesn't have to slide one projector out of the way when transferring to the next reel? I'm assuming that in the two machine method, they are pretty much right next to one another, correct? Were they also bolted to the floor and such to avoid shaking?

The platter method did away with this two projector operation, right? When did this start to be used?

During the two machine operation, it must've required the projectionist to pay attention while watching the film for those cue marks especially if it was a new movie and they were not sure where they were. Did you ever "fall asleep at the wheel"?

Thanks for the info...

CConnolly

The two (or more) projectors were a few feet apart from each other so the projectionist could thread the film and clean and maintain the projectors. Each projector had it's own hole usually called a portal, which in most houses had a pane of glass to keep the sound out. In the better theatres we operated we had special optical glass, the other plain glass or plexi-glass. The projectors were indeed bolted to the floor, although in some theatres the base was so heavy that this was not neccesary. You asked about watching for the cues, well there was a series of bells that rand to tell you that the reel was getting close to the changeover. There were 20 minute reels and hour long reels. Glad to try to clarify some of this for you.

A lot of theaters did have the bells but some did not. You could tell by watching the reel, when you were getting near the end. Each machine had 2 portholes. One for the projector, and one for the projectionist. The pedastals were never really bolted down. The four bolts at the bottom of the pedastal are used to level the equipment. They are so heavy that there really is no chance for it to move. The pedastal holds the lamphouse, projector head, and soundhead. Together they weigh about 450 pound. The platers started being used sometime in the 70's I think. There are never any idiotic questions about this subject. Most people never now how the old booths work.

I can recall when I first learned of the changeover cue marks and the fact that changeovers occurred approximately every 20 minutes.(hour changeovers must have been a later development). I even got to the point of noticing the cue marks at the top right of the screen and anticipating the change to the next reel. A few times the warning bells could be heard from the booth. Most often the changeover would be seamless, but occasionally there'd be a glitch and everything went to black, or for whatever reason there'd be a wobbly start to the next reel. I gather that the cue marks were a permanent part of the film since I notice that they still appear in some of the older movies shown on tv.

I heard about the cue mark (like a quick DOT on the screen) before the reel change when I was a kid and went to the movies a lot. As a kid, I began to look for it. In the cheaper theaters (like the UA Farmingdale...second run but nice theaters) I'd could see the cue and then a few seconds later, I could tell when the reel was different because sometimes (very often, I hate to say) the next reel's quality was not the same as the first, either good or bad. And there was occasionally a bit of a "blip" in the sound and a tiny jump. I guess that's where the change over was.

All this must've been hard enough with a normal movie at or under 2 hours. But those longer flicks like "Ben Hur" or "My Fair Lady" must've been murder.

I was very interested in becoming a projectionist when I was younger in the 80's. But my friend's father, who was the projectionist at the Port Washington multiplex, kind of talked me out of it because he said it was difficult to get int the union AND the jobs were drying up. He had to supplement his income by doing office cleaning (ran his own firm). He started out at the Oceanside when he was around 20 years old.

Also, just one other comment/question that I've wondered about even in today's megaplexes: how they HELL did you guys sit through the same movie over and over and over and over and over without losing your minds? I mean, at least in today's movie going environment, the films change over a lot. But "back in the days" (even when I was a kid in the 70's) films would stay in the same single screener for months. "Jaws" played at the Green Acres in Valley Stream from it's release in May or June of 1975 until Christmas. I thought it would never leave. The projectionists there must've gone out of their minds!

Most people wonder about that all the time. In most theaters, especially the ones with a lot of screens, you really dont have time to watch the movies. All projectionist today have more than one job. At most theaters, the pay is not bad but you share the booth with 2 or 3 other people so you only get around 20-30 hours a week. The one hour changeovers are that way only because you put 3 small reels together on a larger reel. It cuts down on the changeovers. You usually do it that way if you know the movie is going to stay for a while. Also, finding the cue marks is not always so easy. I worked a screening room one time and did a screening of little mermaid I think. At the end of one of the reels, it was an underwater scene. There were bubbles everywhere. I could not see either set of cue marks. They blended in with the bubbles. So the next show, I marked the frames with stripes so I would not miss it again.

I recently went to this theater and I got a ticket stub from the Strand Twin; the address is listed on the ticket as 25-15 Broadway. Small world.

saps: Figures. The ULTRA el-cheapo Oceanside continues it's ways. Unbelievable. Was a hole, always a hole.

I remember years ago when we would order tickets they would sometimes offer us tickets printed for other theatres that had errors on them or they had gone out of business.

People do anything to save money. If they would just put a little money into the place, then maybe they would be doing better.

Not that this has anything to do with the Oceanside Theater but for anyone who knows the area or grew up there, it might be interesting to know that the "lovely" Oceanside Motel is going to be demolished. This "great" place has been a fixture in Oceanside right across the street from the movie theater since 1962.

Where the movie theater is and the motel is a strange place because most of Long Beach Road is very nice (though way overdeveloped). The particular store front where the movie theater is in is positively SLUMMY as hell. It looks more like a storefront in a rundown town. Maybe with the motel's closing (they're making it a town parking lot) it will improve that section.

Just an FYI...

Does anyone know the details and extent of damage from the recent fire at the theater? The NY Post and Daily News list the theater's showtimes as 'closed due to fire'.

There was no fire damage to the theater itself. There was very heavy smoke and water damage. Most of the damage came from the firefighters ripping open the ceilings and walls. I understand that they have to do this, but the extent to which they did made no sense. It is highly unlikely that the theater will ever re-open. To repair all the damage would not be cost effective.

Please update the listing to show that the theatre is closed. It may not reopen.

I know this site is meant to mourn the passing of movie theaters but in this case, I can hardly feel sad about losing the Oceanside. It was an insult to movie going. The owners always kept the theater trashy as hell. It was horrible going there. The only reason why it ever stayed open is that the neighborhood is very nice and it deserved a better theater.

CConnolly, you really have a bug up you ass about this place.

I feel bad for any theatre that closes. I'm sure plenty of people considered the Oceanside their neighborhood theatre and miss it.

Sorry if I come across overly harsh on this place. Everyone of a certain age has their neighborhood theaters that they absolutely loved or hated. I grew up in Baldwin and was an avid movie goer since my folks came of age in Manhattan during the movie's golden ages (the 30s & 40s). They instilled in me a love of the movies that I still carry to this day (not for todays fare, though).

But I digress. Growing up we avoided the Oceanside like the plague. Back in the 70s the place was a joke. So badly maintained. We had the Century's Baldwin, The Fantasy in Rockville Center and my favorite, the Green Acres. All were absolutely immaculately maintained. No sticky floors, great presentation, etc. Oceanside? I have no idea how this place managed to last as long as it did.

Oceanside is a great town, better now than when I grew up in the area. The neighborhood deserves a great theater. 10 or 15 years ago, I guarantee that another movie theater would spring up in it's place. The audience is there. But I don't think it's going to happen.

Again, sorry if I seem to harsh.

I really didn't want to say anything else about this theater, but unfortunately I do have to agree with CConnolly. It's a miracle that this place had stayed open for so long. It would have done better if some money was put into it. Okay, alot of money. I worked here as a projectionist in the 90's. Everything in the booth was held together with tape. Some people just don't understand that you have to spend money to make money. With the 2 decent sized screens, the presentation could have been a lot better. I think it's just sad that we are losing another theater, no matter how horrible it was.

It looks like it's going to be knocked down very soon and built over. Maybe one of these Long Island Theatres can re-open before it's too late. I've been toying with the prospect myself but do not know enough about theatre management, costs and all that jazz.

It was a horrible place, but its still sad to see it go. Are there ANY discount houses left on long island now?

I dont think there are any 2nd run discount houses left on longisland..........

Its a shame. Not like places like this were ever fantastic to go to but if you had a couple bucks and nothing better to do at least they gave you someplace to go for a few hours.

Has the theater been razed yet? I recently moved to Lynbrook and I'm not all that far from the site. I remember passing last year on my way to Long Beach and seeing it still standing.

This view from local.live.com shows the theater still standing next to the rubble strewn lots where the adjacent stores had burned down.

Interestingly, this local.live view to the south (which can't be seen in close-up for some reason) is a much older view showing the adjacent structures still very much intact.

Ed,
I actually passed by there yesterday morning. The lot where the supermarket was has been cleand up. The theater itself is still standing. There was not a lot of structural damage done to the theater itself. Most of the theater damage was done when the firefighters pulled the walls down inside theater #1.

The local newspaper reports that Walgreens will be built on the site.

On the site where the supermarket burned down or on the site of the theater? Or both?

The newspaper article reports that a Wild By Nature supermarket will be built on the vacant lot site and the Walgreens will be built on the theater location.

I passed the site yesterday. The theater has been razed.

Another one bites the dust.

this thing lasted 15 years longer than one would have thought..

Sadly a new CVS has gone up in its place. And just east of the old place is a new supermarket. I was able to see one of the last movies ever played there. Farenheit 911 by Michael Moore. I think that was in 04 or 05

It's a Walgreens. And there's no sign that there ever was a theater there.