Barefooting on the Subway

             More than a month ago I had been stumbling around the West Village for no real reason and when I came upon the IFC Center on 6th Avenue, I wanted to take a closer look at the schedule of movies being screened. In addition to the standard contemporary independent films and documentaries, the real value of the IFC Center is that they also screen alot of gems from the past. So when one might be regretful that they weren't alive when a certain great classic film came out, or just a movie they like in general, and they never experienced watching it on the big screen, the IFC Center makes that dream come true. There's a few other movie theaters in the city that do it as well, such as the Film Forum on West Houston and the Sunshine Theater on East Houston.

             When I looked at the schedule there was nothing that jumped at me at first, but then I saw a special midnight series every Friday and Saturday night throughout May and June that highlights the films of director Walter Hill. These films included the cult classic "The Warriors", Eddie Murphy's breakout in "48 Hours", but my eyes were drawn to a lesser known film of his called "Hard Times". The movie came out in 1975 and stars screen legends Charles Bronson and James Coburn. In the United Kingdom the title of the movie was switched to "The Streetfighter" to avoid conflict with the classic book by their beloved Charles Dickins that shared the same name. In no way is this movie an Academy Award winner or anything even close to it, but it certainly falls into the category of a movie I enjoy and I never had a chance to see a Charles Bronson movie a theater before. I had the two dates, which was a Friday and Saturday at midnight, in my head and had been looking forward to going for many weeks. A few days before the big release, my stomach decided to throw a curveball at me. I must have eaten something rotten or had a spell put on me because Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday nights my stomach was giving me alot of difficulty (that's about as far as descriptive as I'll get).

             Although my stomach was still bad and I was in a weaken condition on Friday, I purchased a ticket online ahead of time during the day for twelve bucks in hopes I would be good enough to travel into the city by night. The movie was also going to play the next night as well, but I had tickets for a concert that night, so it was either going to be Friday or nothing. When it came closer to decision time my stomach was feeling much better, but I wasn't in the best physical condition after not having any food or liquids in my system for a while. The smart choice would've been to stay home as the city at night can present many exciting adventures which require energy and running, but then again how many more times will "Hard Times" ever be shown in a movie theater? When veteran news anchorman Ted Koppel journeyed to Iran in 2008 to film the documentary "Iran: The Most Dangerous Nation", he encountered a small outdoor theater and the film being screened that day was no other than "Hard Times". I guess I could've always gone to Iran as well to try to track down this theater, but for some reason going to the IFC Center seemed much more convenient. So with an empty stomach and weak legs, I put on my sweater and headed for the subway.

             When I walked up the steps to the train station I noticed the hypodermic needle that was there earlier in the day had vanished. The ride down wasn't all that bad, I actually brought a book with me to keep my mind focused on something else besides my stomach. The only strenuous part was a transfer at 51st Street and Lexington which requires an escalator ride downstairs, a short walk in a hallway, an escalator going up, a longer walk, then a very long escalator downstairs. The next train came very quickly and I was at the West 4th station in no time. When popping out of the station, the IFC Center is literally in front of your eyes. I had arrived well ahead of time and strolled a little around the area to kill some time. It was a very foggy and cloudy night. From afar I could see the top floors of both the Empire State Building and newly constructed Freedom Tower both being engulfed by dark mushy clouds. Little drops of rain started to come down and a gusts of wind started to blow stuff all over the place. In fact, a promotion sign in front of the theater managed to take a noisy spill. It was still too early to go inside, so I just hung around on the block. The aroma of greasy hotdogs and cheeseburgers from Papaya Dog were tempting my stomach, which hadn't  received solid food in a couple of days, but I didn't want something to jeopardize my movie-going experience, or worse, the subway ride back home.

             The movie was being played in a reasonably-sized room with many seats, but apparently only myself and about fifteen other individuals had any interest in seeing "Hard Times" on this particular night. Luckily the film is only ninety-three minutes long, so I wasn't going to get out super late. When I did get out the rain had been pouring down steadily and I immediately ducked into the West 4th station next to the theater's entrance. There was another train held up there on the platform when I arrived, and the PA announcement said it was due to a police investigation. After about ten minutes the train finally took off, but then there was more police involvement. I saw four uniformed cops enter from one end of the platform with their gloves on, usually meaning they anticipate physically handling someone, and some Chinese lady started speaking to them. It seems the lady was pointing out someone on the other side of the platform that must have been causing problems or something. I couldn't make out exactly who or what she was referring to. As the cops made their slow march towards the other end of the platform, the lady took off and exited the station entirely. The cops first had words with some homeless-looking guy, but then they kept moving on, so it must have been someone else they were after. My train pulled into the station, and since it was really getting late, I couldn't stick around to see what the big mystery was. I peeked out the window as the train was pulling away, but it was going quite fast at that point and everything outside was a blur.

             Then a new mystery fell into my lap when we reached the Port Authority station; a girl got on the train, holding her shoes in her hands, and walking barefoot. She was in her late twenties, didn't look crazy or homeless or anything of that sort, just the odd fact she was walking around with no socks or shoes on. Plus the fact her feet were on perhaps one of the filthiest known surfaces on the entire planet, a NYC subway. I figured at first maybe it had to do something with the rain and her shoes were a certain material, but they appeared to be standard leather. Then I thought maybe one of her heels broke, but upon closer inspection they both looked intact to me. The heels weren't stilettos or anything that seemed uncomfortable, so I don't think it was a case that she needed to rest her ankles. She wasn't drunk, or at least didn't appear to be, so I couldn't pinpoint exactly why she was voluntarily doing this. A few stops later she got off and as she was walking away, I noticed the black tar developing under the soles of her feet, which indicated she might've been walking around like this for several hours.

               One should be very careful walking around subways without any shoes on, you never know when you might run into a hypodermic needle.....

CLICK HERE to be brought to YouTube to view "Hard Times" trailer

A Taste of Their Own Medicine

            The mom-n-pop video store evaporated all about fifteen years ago. With cable television fully embedded into the culture and the Blockbuster video chain dominating the video rental industry, there was just no way the smaller independant video stores could compete and keep their doors open. One by one they started to get picked off, and they all followed the same pattern. They would first scramble to get into offering video game rentals, but new video game systems were always being introduced, so games have a habit of becoming obsolete very quickly. Then they would try to get into offering DVD, but in a store filled to the walls with their old VHS cassette tapes, there was no room, time, or money to replace all the VHS tapes with DVD discs. Once reality set in and doom was around the corner, the stores would announce they're going out of business and that all their stock was up for sale. People would rush in to buy movies, the store would get emptied out, and finally close for good. A month or two later a nail salon or a 99 cent store would open in it's place.

            Each of these mom-n-pop video stores operated in the same fashion. They would have the video cassette box displayed on their shelves, but instead of a VHS tape instead, it was stuffed with styrofoam, and the movie labeled by usually a four-digit number. Depending on the store's procedure, either you brought this cassette cover to the register, or you simply gave the clerk behind the counter the four-digit code written on the cover. The clerk would then go into a back room later, and with great anticipation, they would come out and hand you the actual VHS tape which was secured in a hard plastic box that was either colored black or dark brown. The shelves were organized by genre such as comedy, action, drama, classic, sports, wrestling, and the ever alluring adult section, which would be protected from view of the rest of the store by a curtain or row of beads. As a kid if you were lucky, sometimes the curtain was bent or crooked to the point where it gave you a small field of vision to peek inside very briefly. Alot of times there would be an acarde game inside such as StreetFighter, Mortal Kombat, NARC, and WrestleFest. When a new movie was to be released to video, the store would have a poster in the front window annoucing the release was coming up. If it was a movie that was hot in the theaters, the store might have two, possibly three copies to offer the public. In the scope of things, only two or three copies for an entire neighborhood isn't enough and it was close to hitting the lottery if you were able to get a new movie within the first week of the release. To this day, I have no idea how my aunt was able to get a copy of the 1989 "Batman" we watched after Thanksgiving dinner.

             To offshoot this, typically the rental for a new movie was one night only, versus two nights which was the standard for the rest of the movies. Even with the attempt to keep the new movies within frequent circulation of their customers, it was this lack of supply of new movies for the high-demanding public which led to the downfall of the mom-n-pop stores and the rise of the Blockbuster chain. When a new movie was released to video, Blockbuster's strength was that it had twenty copies available. The strength of the mom-n-pop stores were that they had more titles and 'harder to find' movies, whereas Blockbuster focused on mainstream and popular movies. What hurt Blockbuster at first was the ridiculous prices they charged for rentals. Even though they could be relied on for new releases, it still made financial sense to rely on the mom-n-pop shops for older movies. Finally, Blockbuster let go some of its ego, started charging a little less, plus were able to offer more in terms of the video games, and that was about it for the mom-n-pop stores. Near where I lived there was Joni's, Wall-to-Wall, and the last one was called K&G Video. They all faded out one by one.

            There was a Blockbuster somewhat close to where I lived around 1990 or 1991, but it was about 1992 where one opened up very close to me. The store used to be a pharmacy as well as had aisles for other types of goods. The closest resemblance of that today would be like a Walgreen's, CVS, or Rite-Aid. It was quite a big deal in the neighborhood when it first opened as it was the only real type of chain establishment in the area. Going inside the first time and seeing how much bigger, brighter, and cleaner it was over the local video stores, was quite refreshing, but there was also something missing. Immediately noticeable were the missing adult sections and arcade games, but more importantly a sense of commercialism stood in the place of spirit. There used to be a sense of accomplishment if you were able to secure a copy of a newly released movie in the old stores, but when Blockbuster made fifty copies available, getting a new movie wasn't as sweet. Also, usually the older stores were being run by the owner or someone close to the owner, so you could detect they were really into the business. In fact, alot of times the owner had good knowledge of movies and talk up a small conversation about your selections while you checked them out. People working at Blockbuster was typically some high-school student on their summer job or some person looking for minimum wage work, not actually a movie fan that could offer any insight.

            At least for a while, Blockbuster was able to sustain the culture of going to a video store and picking out a movie, something that had been a part of American culture since the invention of the VCR in the late 1970's. As Blockbuster was the kryptonite to the mom-n-pop video stores, the internet started to slay the once big, bad, Blockbuster. First there was NetFlix, which for a very low monthly cost offers customers a wide range of movie titles and the luxury of not having to go leave their premesis to get it. Then there's the internet itself, with legal means such as iTunes, or illegal means to be able to download about any movie. The process of actually going to the video store to pick out a movie to rent faded away to the point were its basically non-existant anymore. Blockbuster has tried to offer downloadable as well as NetFlix-style delivery options for rental, but its seriously lagging behind in the rental industry and likely to be extinct in the next few years to come. One by one, Blockbuster stores have been closing down, and recently it was announced that the one near me, which was the cool new thing back in 1992, has reached its end. Like its mom-n-pop ancestors before it, this Blockbuster has been selling off it's merchandise in a last ditch effort to make as much money as possible before its closed for good.

           When it says everything is for sale, it literally means everything is on sale. Beyond the movies, they're selling the shelf fixtures, the cases, the TVs, even the ladder is up for grabs for $35. I've made a few stops inside to stock up on some DVDs over the past few weeks, although I haven't been enticed enough yet to purchase the ladder. As I made my last visit and looked at the titles of the movies still left over on the shelf, something struck a chord in my head. Sure one can look at the internet, satillite/cable television, and NetFlix for the demise of Blockbuster, but I realized something else probably stopped the people from coming, the movies. With the mom-n-pop stores gone, Blockbuster became the lone representative of the movie rental world, and their focus was always the new releases and mainstream pop culture movies over the wide variety and 'hard-to-reach' titles. If the product was good, I think the people would've kept coming. Not to say there were no bad movies before the year 2000, but looking at the movies left in that Blockbuster there seems to have been an absolute total saturation of trashy productions after 2000. Since Blockbuster became the first line of communication between the movies and the public with low cost rentals, the public must have saw less use coming into the place. With epic releases such as "How She Move", "Zombie Strippers", "Lake Placid 3"(didn't even know there was a 2), and "American Poop", why would anyone want to go into Blockbuster anymore? I couldn't answer the question, I could just give the inside of Blockbuster (the last part of the American culture of video renting) one final look and say goodbye. We'll never see it again.

            Whereas we once took a journey to the local video store to decide between Indiana Jones or Star Wars, we now get to sit on our couch and download "American Poop" to our iPhone...