Don't stare for too long at these evil, evil symbols or I won't be responsible for what happens. You know the drill, Kenneth Anger screening tomorrow, 7pm, Hub, 4 bucks, yadda yadda. Looks like it won't even be super hot, which is nice.
That Happy Birthday show tonight is really crucial. Smiller recently was quoted as saying that the King Tuff record was one of the best of the 2000s and I concur. Haven't gotten into the Happy Birthday record yet, but I'm sure I will after tonight.Also, Friday, the Four Eyes play the motherfucking State Fair! Two sets, at one pm and two pm, at the Promenade stage, right after the Gracious Ladies of Hui Lau Lima (Polynesian Dance) and before a metal band called Grey Atlas. Wow, at 4pm there is something called "street beat presents parkour percussion". And at 10 am Naida West, none other than Dave West's mom and author of many volumes of California historical fiction, will be at the author area signing books. Shit, Lance Armstrong will be there at 4? That will be mobbed, I'm sure. The Four Eyes should find some way to capitalize ont hat.
Oh yeah, and this year you can bring food and drinks into the fair. That's kind of nice because usually they won't let you bring water in and you have to buy overpriced water.
Seriously. At $1,700 a month, I'm sure a few people would gladly take over that lease, organize a collective and do some great things with those three screens.
ReplyDeleteMy instinct is they haven't been paying that rate for a long time. If they have, well ... dang.
I don't get how Sid can be so sure that she will stay on board if the ownership changes unless there is already a buyer in mind for the Crest. In my mind, new buyer gets to run the place. It's like breaking up with someone. You don't get to tell them what to do anymore.
ReplyDeleteI thought Sid was the owner so I'm pretty confused
ReplyDeleteI'm not at all sure that $1,700 figure is correct. The Bee doesn't say how they got that figure or who they got it from. I remember Dave Smith saying the rent was considerably higher than that, don't remember how much, but way more $1,700.
ReplyDeleteMan, I could stare at those symbols all day and be completely content.
I kinda wonder where Dave Smith got his numbers, though. I'm not saying he's not on the up and up, but I can see the bigwigs from New York giving him the wrong numbers just as easily as the Bee getting their numbers wrong, ya know? Dave? I know you're there.
ReplyDeleteThat said, $1700 is just ridiculous. I hope they pay more than that, considering the number of times I gave customers complaining about the price of popcorn the "Well, the ticket sales pretty much all go to cover costs like rent and paying employees, this is where we make our profit" shpeel.
ReplyDeleteverification word: popences, as in the smell of popcorn first thing (11 o'clock) in the morning.
You never read the monthlies? It says how much rent is. It's not much. $1,700 might be right.
ReplyDeleteTower brings in over 1 million a year. They make money there, but not enough to really care. Reading is a real estate company that uses movie revenue to buy property. Or at least that's what they used to be during the property bubble.
They want the building which is why they bought out Landmark. There's not many national companies and lack of competition means that deals are made. Some sort of trade with Landmark to take over Tower and they'd let Landmark have another theatre(s) elsewhere.
In Korea and India, concessions are the same price as buying from a 7/11. I don't think the US concessions need to be as high as they are.
I don't remember how much the concessions were at the Reading theatre I went to in New Zealand, but they did sell good beer at a fair price. Speights in bottles which is totally different then the stuff they sell in cans.
Another thing I liked was how Reading sued American theatre companies for unfair trade practices, but used the same unfair trade practices in Australia/New Zealand where they lead the market. They like to own all the businesses around the theatres. Cafes make money.
The idea is to buy the entire Tower building and run their own shops.
Even if you were able to rent Tower for $1,700, I don't think an independent could survive there.
ReplyDeleteTower gets its choice of movies because they own some high value theatres in NYC and Texas. Tower shows some movies that aren't expected to make money because it gets them better deals in NY.
I should've given Reading another year. They mostly ignore Tower and I was pushing them too hard for changes and just frustrated the fuck out of myself.
I did get most of the stink out of the men's room while I was there. For less than $100. Did that come back?
IF the Crest sells, the new seller won't bounce Sid off the bat. Worst case would be that someone would buy the place and in six months or a year kick the Crest out. Best case, someone will buy the place and go business as usually. That's what the last owner did.
ReplyDeleteNo body panic.
Charles
ps. the City should give Bill & Sid enough money to buy both the Tower and the Crest. Heck, they've made the crest work for 22 years.
pps. verf. word: bediest
Did I ever read the monthlies? Come on Dave, you know how much attention I paid to most paperwork. :) The stink came back a little, but it's never been as bad as it was before you showed up. They gotta give the LPB's something to sniff anyways.
ReplyDeleteWell, Bill & Sid made the Crest work with millions of dollars from the city...
ReplyDeleteI know Cody, I was mostly kidding. The rent is listed. It's a long-term lease that was signed by Landmark so it's cheap.
ReplyDeleteStupid Bee. I'm not going to register to fix mistakes in the comments and the Bee commenters are usually asshats anyways. If someone, DP maybe, wants to log-in, tell them that the reason Tower wasn't fixed was not because they don't make money.
It's a 3 way clusterfuck. Tower, Landmark, and Blumenfelds all have stakes in the building. They all want the insurance settlement but they don't want to sink money into the building. Reading/Landmark doesn't own the building and the Blumenfelds didn't want to sink money into it.
I read the article about Tower being for sale. That means that the Blumenfelds ignored Readings offers until the recession hit them hard. Now Reading doesn't have the money to buy the place and I doubt anyone else does either.
There's some expensive problems that need to be fixed in that building. The main one, that most readers here know about, sounds scary and it's super expensive to fix, but it's safe as long as it just sits there. I think there was a national overreaction to it and it was over-legislated.
Did they get the roof fixed? I said they should just tell Blumenfelds that they were going to use rent money to get the roof fixed. That kind of thinking impressed them. Me telling them I was leaving at the end of a shift didn't impress them. Telling me I had to rehire a kook that quit pissed me off.
Sorry about my shit grammar. It's after 5am here in Korea and I've been up most of the night.
Movie companies, theatres, distribution were a mob owned business for a long time. It should still be obvious that there's the same crooked accounting that record labels use. Someone needs to talk to the old folks and write a book about it. Start by reading Jim Thompson's book about it. He worked in the business too.
great thread. thanks for the insight,
ReplyDeletenick/sft
speaking of conjecture.... kudos the anonymous smug bug.
ReplyDeleteThe city did not give the Crest "millions" of dollars to my knowledge they gave them 1 million which were restoration monies not operational funds. Big difference. The ongoing success since the restoration can be attributed to Sid and Bill not a bottomless pot of city cash.
What's more as someone who helped on the 1995 restoration I will tell you that a million dollars in a place like that doesn't go as far as one might think. Even with a mil that shit was frugal with Sid, Bill and staff doing a lot of the manual labor and cleaning.
In all I'd say Bill and Sid have done a hell of a lot with pretty damn conservative resources and they've done it in a crap ball neighborhood to boot. As Charles said I ain't panicing... yet.
so wait, again, if sid does not own it, if she's the general manager, why would she put her own money into it?
ReplyDeleteI think Sid has gotten stock over the years as bonuses.
ReplyDeleteg
It's my understanding that Sid and Bill are the majority shareholders in the business that operates within the Crest but they do not own the building itself.
ReplyDeleteOof! I just noticed all the typos in my last post. I need a nap!
that makes sense, I understand that lots of people "own" businesses in which they rent or least the property, I guess what confuses me is that she referred to herself as the "general manager" rather than "owner" or "part owner".
ReplyDeleteRemember that brief window when Smitty had the power to fire people? That ruled.
ReplyDelete-- Patrone
I liked that Chad freaked out because I told him to start washing his stinky uniform and he quit since I was hired as a tool of The Man to fire everyone. That showed me.
ReplyDeleteI tried to talk them out of firing Karlos but his ticket reselling was really obvious.
Least favorite part: telling a really neat employee not to have sex on the employee's couch.
Damn Fred and his couch shenanigans.
ReplyDelete