The earliest movie I can distintly remember seeing at THE CREST was Bedknobs and Broomsticks(1971) when I was 8 years old. I remember walking with my 13 year old aunt around the front of the theater with our tickets as we searched for the end of the line. It ran all the way down the side of the building to the back then partially across the HUGE parking lot that separated it fromt the next business, Pucchinis Restaraunt. I grew up just behind THE CREST; across the alley and down about 5 houses. I spent many afternoons of my childhood and youth under its ornately decorated ceiling. I loved to sit there in my seat before the movie started and trace with my eyes the spirals and flourishes of the painted walls and ceilings. I think I recall highly stylized deco, aluminum light fixtures which I’d count one by one. The front marquee, the mosaic floor at the entrance, the ticket booth, the sunken smoking lounge, the entire building was a marvel to my eyes. When the movie Earthquake came out in 1974 it boasted being played in “sensaround” the vibration of which we could feel at home and see ripple the water of our swimming pool. Once or twice, when feeling particularly daring I think was let in by friends through the back door or vice versa. I loved that movie theater like no other place in the landscape of my childhood.
My first year in high school (1979) I remember waiting each morning to catch the public bus that stopped right in front of THE CREST. Then a sign was put up signalling the end. Even when it closed, it was there to shelter me from the rain, where I’d stand under the marquee till the bus arrived. Later that year, I remember my best friend, Mike, and I searching through the ruins of the building once they’d smashed it down. I don’t remeber what was there in the destruction, but I wish I’d taken some small momento. Even more, I wish I had been aware of my own power to have stopped it, but I was just a teenager and had no sense of empowerment. It was a huge loss to Bixby Knolls, the village-like neighborhood where I once lived. There is almost nothing left there now, the Hollywood nightclub Welch’s, Brownie’s Toy Store, the small department stores Roberts and Anthonys and Thrifty’s with its nickel-a-scoop ice cream cones and cafe are all gone. What did they build in the lot created by demolition THE CREST, as I recall it was a Subway Sandwich and a Mattress King, neither of which I ever went into.
The earliest movie I can distintly remember seeing at THE CREST was Bedknobs and Broomsticks(1971) when I was 8 years old. I remember walking with my 13 year old aunt around the front of the theater with our tickets as we searched for the end of the line. It ran all the way down the side of the building to the back then partially across the HUGE parking lot that separated it fromt the next business, Pucchinis Restaraunt. I grew up just behind THE CREST; across the alley and down about 5 houses. I spent many afternoons of my childhood and youth under its ornately decorated ceiling. I loved to sit there in my seat before the movie started and trace with my eyes the spirals and flourishes of the painted walls and ceilings. I think I recall highly stylized deco, aluminum light fixtures which I’d count one by one. The front marquee, the mosaic floor at the entrance, the ticket booth, the sunken smoking lounge, the entire building was a marvel to my eyes. When the movie Earthquake came out in 1974 it boasted being played in “sensaround” the vibration of which we could feel at home and see ripple the water of our swimming pool. Once or twice, when feeling particularly daring I think was let in by friends through the back door or vice versa. I loved that movie theater like no other place in the landscape of my childhood.
My first year in high school (1979) I remember waiting each morning to catch the public bus that stopped right in front of THE CREST. Then a sign was put up signalling the end. Even when it closed, it was there to shelter me from the rain, where I’d stand under the marquee till the bus arrived. Later that year, I remember my best friend, Mike, and I searching through the ruins of the building once they’d smashed it down. I don’t remeber what was there in the destruction, but I wish I’d taken some small momento. Even more, I wish I had been aware of my own power to have stopped it, but I was just a teenager and had no sense of empowerment. It was a huge loss to Bixby Knolls, the village-like neighborhood where I once lived. There is almost nothing left there now, the Hollywood nightclub Welch’s, Brownie’s Toy Store, the small department stores Roberts and Anthonys and Thrifty’s with its nickel-a-scoop ice cream cones and cafe are all gone. What did they build in the lot created by demolition THE CREST, as I recall it was a Subway Sandwich and a Mattress King, neither of which I ever went into.