Thanks for that update. Really.
Lately I’ve been rhapsodizing here about the late, lamented Little Art Theatre, southern New Jersey’s sole oasis of outre and offbeat culture in the 1980’s. It was where I saw “Eraserhead” and “Jean de Florette” and “Withnail and I” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — the last providing my first date with the woman who became my wife. I have fond memories indeed of this cinematic sanctuary.
So today, in response to these thoughts, good friend Paul emailed me this update:
“I drove by the Little Art Theater site a few days ago, it is now a vet’s office with dog grooming.”
Thanks. Thanks for that. Really. Now whenever I think about the place, I’ll have that to remember as well.
(And as a side note to my students at USC whom I was hectoring Monday night about comma splices, Paul’s email provides a fine example.)
Two years ago while in bucolic Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, the closest “city” to my birthplace, I made the mistake of dropping in on the former Ireland’s Newsstand, the mecca of my youth where, whenever I was so fortunate as to get someone to drive me the seemingly endless eight miles to town, I could actually peruse and purchase almost any comic book then in release. In its day, Ireland’s carried the aroma of slick paper and fresh newssprint, smells I associated with bigger thoughts and faraway places calling to me. Now it had become a grimy and foul-smelling convenience store of the post-apocalypse, staffed by a man in a dirty turban sitting beside racks that long ago had been stripped of all reading material.
Paul’s email provides more proof that you can go home again — but you shouldn’t.
November 29th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Well at least the old Little Art was not transformed into a Blockbuster Video.
I am happy to say that there are some of the old place we used to haunt in the old days. There’s Clam Bar in Somers Point, the Black Cat in Absecon (even if they did clean it up), and the High Point Bar also in Absecon.
Paul
December 1st, 2007 at 6:37 pm
The Little Art was amazing, especially considering that it was far from any major urban center. I, too, enjoyed “Rocky Horror” there and saw “Britannia Hospital” and Pasolini’s “Salo – 120 Days of Sodom”. They also had great matinees. We have fond memories of taking our kids to see “Labyrinth” (written by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, no less). Wish we still had someplace to see alternative movies on a big screen.
December 3rd, 2007 at 2:12 am
In the 1970s various theaters in the Columbus Ohio area — particularly those around the University — offered off-beat and revival shows: Bogart, Fields, the Marx Brothers, etc. particularly at a splendidly musty old place called STUDIO 35. No more revival houses, but the area still holds three Art Theaters that feature the little, off-beat films that get a small audience and deserve a big screen. Plus the Wexner Center, which brings in all sorts of special programming, mostly on week-nights, alas.
Culture still lives in the fly-over states.