Comments from EdRentka

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EdRentka
EdRentka commented about Ritz Theatre on Mar 4, 2017 at 8:14 am

Around 1975 I was with some friends who knew the projector operator, we had to climb over the chain link fence at the top of the building to get access to the theater. This was right next to the gas station and a straight fall to the parking lot if we missed, pretty stupid.

In 1977 I got a part time job there, I was only in 8th grade which goes to show how the theater was being run. The place was pretty run down, but they were making some minor improvements. They painted the walls a dark yellow and I remember a guy using a rolling stencil dipped in red paint that looked like a fleur de lis. He rolled it up and down the walls to create the pattern. They used to lock up the soda cups so the employees wouldn’t help themselves to the it but they didn’t lock up the popcorn tubs so we just used those instead! The manager was an older guy who looked like he was on his last leg, he didn’t want to be bothered after the last show started and said to let anyone who showed up after that in for free. We would charge them a couple of bucks and keep it for ourselves, hey we were young teens. I wasn’t there for a fire or the closing, just some good memories and now I wish I had some photos to share.