There are a few contributors that when their e-mails hit my in-box, I get truly excited to read them. And right on top of that list is Johnny Paradise. His reports take us on a journey, and through his words we transport ourselves to where he was once.
And it's a glorious ride.
Take it away, sir.
***
Doc,
On a sleepy summer Sunday afternoon in Bay City, Michigan, time does anything but move quickly.
It ambles, it saunters, it strolls along quiet small town streets that seem, despite unmistakable touches of modern flair, to have been permanently etched in that undefined but palpably real place known as yesteryear.
Times washes in like a nostalgic daydream over the beautiful blue waters of Lake Huron, it breezes through the neighboring corn fields, it lingers in the shadow of the massive Michigan Sugar tower, that shiny red and silvery steel monument to Midwestern agricultural production.
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| Cinema Arts Bay City, MI |
Time window shops in the Nut House (since 1904, says the sign, and in Bay City there is no reason to doubt that this is exactly so) and peers in the long stretch of antique shops that draw travelers, tourists, locals, workers, farmers, professionals, drifters, moms and aunts and friends and the occasional only slightly out of place hipster who may or may not realize, ironically, that the city itself is something of an antique; no – a curio. It is a small towner’s big city and it is an urbanite’s small town, it is urban, it is rural, it is however you see it and it is almost whatever you want it to be.
It is, on a Sunday afternoon, slow….quiet, peaceful, quaint. Places like this are never exactly what they seem.
I found myself in Bay City traveling south along the thumb to Saginaw after a weekend of contemplation on the beach. On the dusty outskirts of the city there is a place known to fellow travelers in this great unnamed hobby… known but not famous. It is the Cinema Arts Theatre. It is on an unassuming section of an unassuming street, next to an ancient barber shop on one side and on the other a rough looking bar not quite picturesque enough to be a dive. The theatre was built, I believe, in the 30s, and though there are very few vestiges of its original incarnation remaining, there is, if you will allow a touch of romanticism, a certain sense of the place that it once was…there is a touch of the forgotten… and one strains to see the invisible indelible presences of phantoms in the dimly lit store, in the long corridor to the booths and the tiny theatre…
I am no spiritualist. But if any place ever felt haunted by the ghosts of forgotten glory, it is this forsaken sin-soaked cinematheque on the quiescent fringes of this miniature midwestern metropolis.
The practical details – prices, layout, and such – have been offered before. My responsibilities as a “journalist” compel me to report that there are two “couples nights” now – Thursday and Saturday. I have heard many things about this place but have never seen anything save for a glimmer, a promise, an exquisite possibility.
That did not change today. The crowd in the theatre was composed exclusively of men over 50 – farmers and laborers by their look, and in that healthy rural way of looking they might have been as as old as 80. They sat scattered through the small room staring lazily at the video image in front. One man reached into his pants with a body posture that shouted adherence to some unspoken responsibility much more than the sudden impulse of carnal passion; another weekend chore snuck in on a day of rest. In Bay City, it seems, even masturbation is an unrushed affair.
Then there was a couple. An incredibly sharp looking couple – passers-by, I sensed, not locals, from their dress and their manner and their bearing. She was pure atomic bombshell, busty and blonde and beautifully wrought from some plutonium daydream of Hollywood glamour. He was solid and handsome, at once professorial but seeming like he belonged on the gridiron, dressed casually as if he had just stepped off a yacht. They entered the store area and looked quizzically and admiringly at the retail stock, shared whispered secrets, laughed and looked and pondered and teased each other. They spoke to the clerk.
She went to use the bathroom and he checked out the theatre, briefly, only as long as it would take for someone’s eyes to adjust to the darkness and the disappointing realization about the demographic of the gathered throng. They purchased something and left. Had they stayed I anticipate others would have shown up. From the texting I observed today it seems there is some serious pipeline of information concerning the goings on here. Had they stayed, EVERYTHING would suddenly have been different. I could feel that. There is something going on here, even on a Sunday.
Soon thereafter I departed, slowly rolling out of town towards Saginaw and even before crossing the city line I made plans to return. I felt, again, after months of contemplative inaction, the irresistible pull of the road and the inescapable fascination that these forgotten, forsaken, forlorn, forbidden locations offer, the taste of that sugary sweet adrenaline high I felt today, splashed in lurid color and almost total darkness.
I made it to Saginaw and ate at Halo Burger. It was delicious.
Johnny Paradise
***
Doc here again... Many, many thanks to Johnny Paradise for this great report. We are lucky to have him contribute here...
Thanks,
Doc
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