Holiday Art Theatre

On my way into work this morning (5/27/09). I noticed that the Holiday Art is now for rant. Yes, RANT. A sign across the former marquee. Amazing.

Perhaps I’ll work up enough muster to go down there and get some photos as it would be appreciated here and I’m sure also on Failblog.

Someone has told me today,
There is a dumpster outside of the Art Holiday filled with seats this week……

I can’t stop with the Taliban remarks when they happen to be right on the money. For we do have those with a Taliban-like mindset coming hard at Philadelphia right now, and all that’s missing is for somebody to come right out and say it, except that I have. And I fully stand by it. And seriously, Gil, we have to wake up from this blindness we’re showing towards it and face up to that. OR….to use the term “garbage” where it’s appropriate and fitting, we WILL all end up being just that. And it’s already happening.

Look at where the Mayfair Theatre used to be, or the Orleans Theatre, the Crest, the Tyson, etc. With those once beautiful theaters stupidly cast aside by those with the Taliban-mentality, and where their surrounding neighborhoods have been moved into by people who support that Taliban-mentality (such as you perhaps?), well, there’s your garbage, my friend. And don’t blame me for that. If you’re going to use the term “garbage,” please apply it where it’s fitting.

Thanks for the link, Gil, though I would hardly call what you wrote a “story.” More like a hateful, anti-theater diatribe so typical of the ignoramuses that have so over-flooded Philadelphia now, particularly with the coming slots parlors and all.

Although I don’t classify the Holiday Art’s location as “Northeast Philadelphia,” it’s totally certain fate at this point is clearly another case of the Northeast Taliban strikes again, or is about to in this case. And unlike Northeast Philadelphia’s AMC Orleans 8 which got razed in December of 2007 (just last month at the time of this writing), the Holiday Art has some significant historic theater architecture value to it. But watch and see that it will make no difference. For morons don’t understand that. All they know is picking off the last of the movie theaters wherever they happen to be, while it looks very certain right now this is the next one to go. The “Rolling Darkness” claims yet another victim… [sigh]

I just got wind (call me slow) that the Holiday Art, or “Art Holiday” as it’s better known, is either now offically closed or about to close soon — View link

Ah, William Harold Lee strikes again! And can this man, one of the most brilliant leading movie theater architects of the 20th century, not get any respect or what? But surely the fact that this theater remains fully operational, though clearly not in showing the best possible films, attests to his practicality in theater design, given the totally rundown state of the community all around it.

In terms of getting good photographs of it as it is now, that would be best left up to anyone who really knows their way around there well as it is now, who are expertly street-wise when it comes to parts of the city such as that. And with all the advances of home video, cable-TV, DVD and the Internet, I couldn’t even imagine who still goes to it. For going in that theater disguised as a pervert, well what’s a pervert look like these days? And why am I suddenly having flashbacks of George C. Scott in that movie, “Hardcore”? His chewing gum and snidely laughing, “No man,” when asked if he’s a cop. But that was a whole different era. A much better disguise perhaps these days would be that of a homeless person looking to catch some shut eye, or, given how that part of Philadelphia is these days, a cop. Pretty ironic how the times have changed, eh?

The late Irvin R. Glazer in his out of print hardback
“Philadelphia Theatres, A-Z” (1986) has the following entry:

ACE THEATRE (Windsor, Holiday), 4204 Kensington Avenue, capacity 920. The Ace Theatre is a two story plain red brick structure with a large multi-colored marquee. It was built in the early 1920’s as the Windsor, a silent movie house. It was entirely re-decorated in the moderne style by theater architect W. H. Lee after it became the Ace. In the ‘70’s, it became the Holiday, a porno house. Most of the exterior decoration is hidden by the city transit authority’s elevated railway structure."