Comments from PKoch

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PKoch
PKoch commented about Oasis Theatre on May 29, 2007 at 12:51 pm

Panzer65, you’re welcome. That’s a very good description of going to the Oasis, “your second home”, as a kid. Please keep posting here.

True, the new cinemas can’t replicate this. As Jay Leno said, years ago, it’s not a movie house any more. It’s a concrete bunker at the end of the shopping mall !

PKoch
PKoch commented about Glenwood Theatre on May 29, 2007 at 12:45 pm

Panzer65, please keep posting here. No, I’ve never viewed a motion picture from an “opera box”, though, like yourself, as a kid, I looked at them within the Ridgewood and Madison, and wondered about them as much as you did.

For history, perhaps Warren could help.

For details of building construction within the Glenwood, perhaps Bway could help. He’s been great that way about what’s left inside what was once the RKO Madison.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Garden Theater on May 29, 2007 at 11:42 am

Thanks, Warren.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Oasis Theatre on May 29, 2007 at 10:37 am

Thanks, MikeK. I’ve noticed the “Eat my meat” and “I’ll pork ya !” but not the “welcome home Timmy”. I remember posting about the first two phrases some time ago, if not on the Oasis Theater page, then on the page for some other Ridgewood theater.

Thanks for posting your Oasis movie memories, Panzer65. When I got back home to Ridgewood from my summer 1978 job in western Pennsylvania, I noticed the posters on light poles and traffic lights for a concert by Richard Hell and the Voidoids, and the Dead Boys, Saturday, August 12, 1978, at the Forest Park music grove and bandshell. I didn’t go, as I had returned two weeks later.

The one and only film I saw at the Oasis was “For The Love Of Benji”, the first or second Saturday in January, 1976.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Glenwood Theatre on May 29, 2007 at 6:29 am

Thank you, Panzer65, for your recollections of the Glenwood Bowl.

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 29, 2007 at 6:26 am

No, oodygdin, I don’t know anything about this theater, on Wyckoff, at either Weirfield or Centre St. I would like to know more about your Putnam trolley rides. I assume you mean the No. 26 trolley, the predecessor of the B-26 bus between Ridgewood and downtown Brooklyn, which runs on Halsey Street between either Bedford and Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy, and Wyckoff Avenue in Ridgewood.

Are you sure you don’t mean the Alhambra Theater, which used to be at the eastern corner of Halsey Street and Knickerbocker Avenue ? The 26 trolley would have gone past it. There IS a page for this theater on this site. I don’t recall the number offhand right now.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on May 25, 2007 at 5:57 am

Thanks, Lost Memory. I had thought it was in Brooklyn, near the BQE, as you said, also the Brooklyn Navy Yard, Wallabout Bay, etc.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Loew's Pitkin Theatre on May 25, 2007 at 5:53 am

So the Pitkin Theatre was once “the prince of Pitkin Avenue” ? Great !

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on May 24, 2007 at 9:04 am

Good work, guys. Thanks.

71 Park Avenue : Are we talking midtown Manhattan, or downtown Brooklyn ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about Ridgewood Theatre on May 24, 2007 at 6:39 am

Or perhaps the Throop Theater was located on a cross street in Bed-Stuy near Throop Avenue. I don’t know.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Kew Gardens Cinemas on May 22, 2007 at 9:24 am

Thanks for letting me know, Fred.

Good question, EdSolero.

PKoch
PKoch commented about Trylon Theater on May 22, 2007 at 9:21 am

Thanks for posting the link to the ad for the Trylon, Warren.

Ed Solero, I remember the old phone exchanges very well, including HA for Elmhurst (prep school classmate of mine). Thanks for mentioning what it stood for.

Also AP for APplegate (Cypress Hills, Bklyn), GL for GLenmore (my old home Ridgewood exchange) HY for HYacinth, EV for Evergreen, and VI for VIctoria (Richmond Hill, VA for Virginia ?

I’ve also seen HA for a home in Bayside.

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 21, 2007 at 11:04 am

Thanks, Bway and Warren.

Is Atlas Park Cinemas in Glendale a good example, Bway, of the newer modern multiplexes you’ve referred to above ?

The Ridgewood may not be “modern”, but it’s probably one of the, if not THE, cheapest movie ticket in NYC and vicinity.

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 21, 2007 at 7:28 am

Thank you all for your input. I have heard that now, multiplex cinemas have to compete with, and may already be in danger from, home computer game, and home theater entertainment, systems.

Yet, with a block-buster film, like “Spiderman III” nowadays, the multiplexes tend to return to the state of the single-screen theater, showing the same film on 3 or 4 screens. In that case, almost half of the screens and seats in the multiplex can be occupied by one film, yet with several times more screenings per day, and evening, of said film, than was possible with the older single-screen theater.

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 17, 2007 at 9:59 am

You’re welcome, Lost Memory. And thank you for YOUR thoughts.

All I can add is that the Madison and Ridgewood Theaters DID coexist for as long as the RKO Madison was in the business of showing movies and / or having live shows, about a month shy of fifty years, from its opening shortly after Thanksgiving Day 1927, to its closing around Halloween 1977.

What prevailing economic conditions in those fifty years allowed both theaters to so co-exist for so long, and so close together, not only with each other, but for part of that time, with smaller theaters such as the Parthenon, Acme, Majestic, Grandview and Belvedere ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 17, 2007 at 9:19 am

You’re probably right, Bway, and thanks for all the details, but I wanted to bring the idea up anyway, partly because I’d never seen it discussed here, and partly to get back on topic.

Thanks also for your rebuttal of the “strange notion” that Ridgewood “went bad”, and is no longer a viable community.

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 16, 2007 at 10:27 am

Thanks, Eleanor and BklynJim. One question : homes are selling for $ 500,000 in Bushwick, but who is buying ? Who is paying $ 1700 a month for a one bedroom apt. at Wilson Avenue and Cooper Street, where my great-grandparents Koch lived, seventy to eighty years ago, probably paying $ 25 a month for rent ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 16, 2007 at 6:33 am

I think Ridgewood and Bushwick still are viable neighborhoods, with help having been on the way in the form of the gentrification of Bushwick over the past five or so years, and I am thinking also of the scarcity of movie theaters for about five miles in every direction from the Ridgewood and Madison, with the sole exception of the Atlas Park Multiplex two miles to the east northeast, which, however, seems much too upscale and too far away from the Ridgewood Theatre (and the Madison, were it to re-open as a cinema) to draw much business away from it, anyway.

I certainly hope the Ridgewood Theater does not close, given its history, and the fact that it observed, only five months ago, albeit quietly, its 90th anniversary as a functioning cinema.

What about the recent revival and success of the Loew’s Jersey City, as well as the Paradise, in the Bronx ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 16, 2007 at 4:44 am

Has anyone given any serious thought as to what the economics of turning the RKO Madison Theatre from its present use as a Liberty Department Store into a multiplex cinema would be : the cost and the payback, in terms of new movie goers ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 8:33 am

mikemovies, let your freak flag fly while doing so !

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 7:44 am

Yes, along with my witty rejoinders about the Priapic Theatre.

Thanks, Bway. Now I know where to look for Mae West !

Say, big boys, why don’t we go up there and see her some time ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 7:36 am

Have you posted it there yet ?

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 7:17 am

Who’s on first ?

What’s on second ?

Naturally !

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 6:46 am

If the quote fits ….

PKoch
PKoch commented about RKO Madison Theatre on May 15, 2007 at 6:44 am

If the quote fits …