Fair Theatre

mp775 on March 29, 2007 at 8:53 pm

How is Bollywood a bad thing? Their current business plan of porn, camp, and third-run mainstream films doesn’t seem like it’s drawing many customers, while the nearby Eagle, at least when I passed by the place regularly a few years ago, is packed.

Al Alvarez on March 29, 2007 at 4:32 pm

It apparently shows mainstream recent releases, porn and exploitation genre films.

One of the advantages of Bollywood in the US is that the DVD is often available at the same time as the 35mm release. The wholesome audiences these musicals attract could drive out the porn if it actually works here.

pmullinsj on March 29, 2007 at 2:31 am

This sounds bad, alto. Like it may be the same thing happening to the Fair as happened to the Earle and the Fresh Meadows place to me. If the Post article came out today, how long was it since the author visited? There was no mention of the Bollywood posters. But it could be that, since the main auditorium has very few viewers that they indeed are going to use Indian films there, possibly for the staff and also neighborhood people, but I don’t know. I’m sure they wouldn’t be putting them up for decoration, and now I remember that, even though not many sat down in the theater, some watched it standing up or even from the lobby. I don’t like the sound of it, and hope this doesn’t signal the end.

Alto on March 29, 2007 at 1:59 am

As if their programming and screening policy wasn’t confusing (or schizophrenic) enough…

I walked in last week and was taken by surprise – the interior was plastered with huge “coming attraction”-style posters for, of all things, Indian films – it looks like the main screen at the Fair will be going “Bollywood”.

There was barely a square inch of wall space in the entry hall and lobby that wasn’t covered, and employees were still busy putting them up everywhere as I walked in. Looking around, I wondered if they were legitimate in their offerings or if they were hanging them there purely for decoration – the screen was still showing martial arts and slasher flicks, just as it has been for months, to an empty auditorium.

Which begs the question â€" why even bother? (I guess the manager must have gotten a good deal on free movie posters) The only South Asian audience that I can imagine wanting to see these films at this theatre are the Indian, Bengali and Sri Lankan staff that already work there.

Mike (saps) on March 29, 2007 at 12:16 am

Kind of amazing article in today’s New York Post

Here’s the link and here’s the article, copyright NY POST:

SCHLOCK AROUND THE CLOCK

INSIDE N.Y.’S LAST MOVIE GRINDHOUSE

By LOU LUMENICK

Rose McGowan stars in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ode to grindhouses.
Rose McGowan stars in Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s ode to grindhouses.
PrintEmailDigg ItStory Bottom

March 28, 2007 — IF you want to sample Times Square moviegoing in all of its raffish glory from the 1970s and early 1980s, you don’t need a time machine – just take the M60 bus out to East Elmhurst, Queens, and be prepared to watch your back.

On a shabby stretch of Astoria Boulevard near La Guardia Airport, the Fair Theatre is the city’s last grindhouse – a successor to the tradition of the crumbling, grimy showplaces that used to line both sides of 42nd Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue.

They were called grindhouses because they grinded out often-battered prints of movies practically around the clock. Mainstream movies shared double and triple features with violence- and sex-drenched, low-budget exploitation films you could see nowhere else in the pre-VCR era.

Today these films – with lurid titles that invariably promised more than they delivered, like “Jail Bait Baby,‘’ "Blood Spattered Bride'‘ and "Revenge of the Cheerleaders’‘ – have found a cult following on DVD, where new schlockfests continue to thrive.

These original flicks also inspired “Grindhouse” – a new faux double feature paying homage to cheesy exploitation films of the era from Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that opens April 6.

But to experience an actual grindhouse requires a trip to the 70-year-old Fair Theatre – named in anticipation of the 1939-40 World’s Fair in nearby Flushing Meadows – which sits in the middle of a blocklong two-story building between 90th and 91st streets.

The curved, art-deco marquee is coy about its offerings:

FIRST RUN IN QUEENS

2 TOP HITS R

NEWSHO W SUNDAY & THUR

Inside, a vintage sign proclaims “Fair Theatre Proudly Presents New Show Every Sunday & Thur 2 Big Features” – and, below that, an ominous warning that the premises are being watched by surveillance cameras.

A dusty board lists titles on six screens – among them “Legs Between,” “The Last Hunter” and “Mark of the Beast” – that look like they haven’t been changed in months. A printed flier on the wall lists the current attractions as “Daisy Chain” and “Eastern Heroes.”

Admission is $15, strictly cash, and the first thing you pass is a refreshment stand selling candy, cookies, soft drinks and coffee right behind the ticket booth.

The lobby is incredibly dim, but it’s hard not to make out the large signs that say “Prostitution and Lewdness are Prohibited” – or the three even larger security guards, one of whom follows me when I inadvertently wander toward the men’s room.

Suddenly I had visions of Jon Voight’s Joe Buck and his balcony scene with a teenager played by Bob Balaban in “Midnight Cowboy,” which took place in one of the 42nd Street grindhouses – known as much for their action off the screen as on.

It’s around 11 on a Friday morning – the Fair opens at 10:45 and stays open until 3 a.m. – and there are perhaps a dozen middle-age male patrons inside. Most of them are huddled in a vast, dark lounge decorated with enormous fish tanks, floor-to-ceiling lava lamps, and Christmas lights.

It’s totally empty in the main theater, which is even darker, but which appears to be a totally intact auditorium from 1937, complete with a small stage and a large closed-off balcony – and, more incongruously, rental lockers at the back of the room.

Feeling my way into a seat, I watch a few digitally projected minutes of the Hugh Jackman magician drama “The Prestige” before checking out the other attractions.

To my surprise, the floors aren’t sticky – whatever is going on at the Fair, it appears to be notably cleaner than the 42nd Street houses I visited in the early ‘80s, and odor-free.

In a pair of alcoves that appear to have been carved from a closed adjoining store, no one is watching either of a couple of “Star Wars” movies.

There appears to be more activity in neighboring rooms; one was showing straight porno, the other gay porno. The latter, I am told, is equipped with private booths for patrons' use.

When I begin asking the ticket-taker questions, he summons an assistant manager who said he needed to check with his lawyer. He later told me he was advised not to talk about the theater “because of the lawsuit.”

The Post could find no record of a suit involving the theater, but an employee at a nearby business said an African-American church that also occupies the building – an Italian restaurant adjoining the Fair recently closed – had been trying for years to get the place closed down. (The church did not return messages.)

Under laws enacted during the Giuliani administration, businesses within 500 feet of churches or schools cannot offer more than 40 percent adult wares. A Queens judge ruled in 1998 that the Fair complied and allowed it to remain open.

The Fair’s history and current activities have been extensively chronicled in dozens of posts on Cinema Treasures, a Web site run by theater buffs, who marvel the Fair hasn’t been carved up into multiple screens, converted to retail use or torn down like most of its contemporaries.

What was originally a 599-seat theater opened on Christmas Day 1937 with a double bill of “Dead End” with Humphrey Bogart and the Bing Crosby musical “Double or Nothing.” It was one of perhaps 500 neighborhood theaters in the city that showed movies at greatly reduced prices, weeks after they played in Manhattan and Queens movie palaces.

Some of those theaters, like the Fair, turned to XXX-rated fare as moviegoing declined by the early 1970s. The Polk, in nearby Jackson Heights, designed by the same architect as the Fair, closed last year as a porn house and will reportedly be torn down.

Another Jackson Heights theater, the Earle, switched after decades of porn to show Indian films under a slightly different name, the Eagle (as did a Fresh Meadows theater, now known as the Bombay).

The Fair’s practically nonexistent public profile was raised in early 2006 when it begin placing ads in the Village Voice announcing a “new policy” of “2 action films at all times” and listed obscure ‘70s titles like “Street Crimes” and “Pay or Die.”

The marquee was refurbished and new carpeting installed, but the ads stopped after a few months – and more contemporary mainstream fare was brought in to apparently legitimize the porn.

Still, the action films continue to be listed on the board outside the oddly cosy Fair. “Grindhouse” may evoke the movies of that era, but the Fair is the closest thing around here to those 42nd Street grindhouses of yore. At least until gentrification hits East Elmhurst.

Additional reporting by Ikimulisa Livingston.

Al Alvarez on March 25, 2007 at 3:41 pm

This has got to be one of the more entertaining threads. It has sex, drugs, violence, comedy, transvestites, the KKK, religion, a scarecrow, Italian cuisine, bus routes and finally, an act of treachery from the in-house villain. Most current FILMS aren’t anywhere nearly as entertaining!

This from the NY Times Oct. 18, 1998 confirms the suspicions raised about the programming. The ads must be intended as proof.

“And last week Judge Arthur W. Lonschein of Queens ruled that the formerly all-adult Fair Theatre in East Elmhurst, Queens, could remain open because it was now showing adult films in less than 40 percent of its theatres.“

I will now step outside for a smoke.

faberfranz on March 15, 2007 at 1:25 am

What time of day (or night) did you visit?

McGinty on March 14, 2007 at 1:04 pm

After reading these accounts of the Fair, and since I’m a sporting and adventurous young man, I decided to do some research and check it out myself. The poster of The Klansmen is indeed still displayed in the front lobby, and when one walks through the door, there is another poster for Enter the Dragon inside. There are also some smaller photos of Hollywood legends like Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, etc. and one I couldn’t readily identify, it looked like Linda Darnell to me. I also noticed a flyer that announced the double features that the Fair was playing for the next several weeks. The only 2 movies I had even vaguely heard of were Sweet Justice & Mark of the Beast, 2 direct-to-video epics. I laughed to myself because they had cut-and-pasted an image of Janet Leigh from Psycho screaming, and there was no mention of a Hitchcock film. I paid $15 to walk through a turnstile and passed a small dirty-looking concession stand that sold mostly candy bars.
To my left, I saw an entrance to some sort of food establishment and walked into the rather dark main lobby. It immediately looked surreal to me, as I was greeted with the sight of several colorful fish tanks, and several older gentlemen just standing idly and watching me enter rather intently. I strolled on over to the main theatre screen area and was delighted to find a nice, well-preserved theater with about maybe 300 or so seats, a closed-off balcony, but a rather small screen. The empty small screen was playing Interview with the Vampire. There was a stage at the foot of the screen with lightbulbs around it, and there was also a set of lockers, which I found odd at the time. I walked around more and noticed more older gentlemen watching and following me. I felt a little better when I also noticed several guys with t-shirts that read “Security” walking around as well, though I noticed one was asleep. I stumbled upon a small projection screen showing an explicit gay porn film, and an adjacent room playing an explicit straight porn film. These rooms were fairly packed, but I didn’t observe any overt sexual activity going on, but more older guys sleeping. I noticed there were booths ahead with a lot of guys standing around, but I retreated to find 2 more very small screening rooms. To my left, a video projection screen was showing “Gang Related” with Jim Belushi to an empty set of abput 10 chairs, and the room on the right, also empty, was playing some Western with the actor Miguel Sandoval. I should note that there were a couple of randomly placed 3 foot Christmas trees and some funky lights randomly placed on the walls here and there. The scene was at once creepy and fascinating, but it was fun to check out the old main theater. Perhaps I’ll go back, stoned, and watch a direct-to-video movie by myself!

faberfranz on February 28, 2007 at 2:58 am

Early in this thread, someone said #7 express doesn’t run on weekends. But this needs to be updated: these days, neither express NOR the local runs on weekends. Alternative routes = ??

I’d appreciate hearing (e.g. via email) from fairytail and others familiar with current operations for updates on social milieu, popular days and hours, that sort of thing. Do women (“non-working” women) or couples visit?

My ISP is “humanoid encountered by Gulliver in his travels” (human-sized, neither Lilliputian nor Brobdingnagian).

Mike (saps) on February 27, 2007 at 6:21 pm

Maybe the extra 25 cents was for a packet of tissues or wet-naps.

Jeffrey1955 on February 27, 2007 at 4:35 pm

Ahh, how restful. There’s nothing quite like discussing the preservation of old movie theaters.

fairytail on February 27, 2007 at 3:34 pm

ooh not perverts at all my good man. The Fair is a fun place and life should include some fun. This is my fav theatre.

If the gentleman was staring down at your wiener LittleParkwiththeTrees, you should have politely declined any offers. Only consensual activities take place there.