Schlock around the clock

QUEENS, NY — In the spirit of the upcoming film from Tarantino/Rodriguez, Lou Lumenick takes a look into New York City’s last remaining grindhouse, the Fair Theatre.

If you want to sample Times Square moviegoing in all of its raffish glory from the 1970s and early 1980s, you don’t need a time machine – just take the M60 bus out to East Elmhurst, Queens, and be prepared to watch your back.

On a shabby stretch of Astoria Boulevard near La Guardia Airport, the Fair Theatre is the city’s last grindhouse – a successor to the tradition of the crumbling, grimy showplaces that used to line both sides of 42nd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.

But to experience an actual grindhouse requires a trip to the 70-year-old Fair Theatre – named in anticipation of the 1939-40 World’s Fair in nearby Flushing Meadows – which sits in the middle of a blocklong two-story building between 90th and 91st streets.

Read the full story at the NY Post and you’ll also see his reference to our page for this theater as providing inspiration for this piece.

Theaters in this post

• Fair Theatre