This is so cool! I grew up 6 houses away from the Drive-in/ Sunrise Cinemas in Rosedale. I just finished a book that discusses how I used what I learned as a kid sneaking into Sunrise Cinemas to sneak into 12/12/12 and other huge concerts all around the country and beyond. It’s called Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist. I’ll keep you posted on when it comes out. You can find more information about the book under Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist or Kenny Carr on Facebook.
Here’s an excerpt:
I grew up on a dead end street six houses away from a drive-in movie theater. A giant, solid eight foot metal fence at the end of my block surrounded the theater grounds. The older kids on the block would always have a hole dug somewhere under the fence so they could sneak in. Like tunnels out of a P.O.W. camp, it was constantly being found by security and had to be moved often. From an early age I prided myself on always knowing where the hole was located. I spent summer nights on the swings in front of the screen watching classic movies like Star Wars, Grease, Jaws and Bruce Lee triple features.
When I was eight, the drive-in was demolished and turned into a six theater multiplex. Throughout all phases of the demolition and construction of the new theater, the site was our playground. As the theater was being built we felt, as it was with the drive-in, that it was in some way ours. We knew that place from top to bottom, like the back of our hands. We knew it better than anybody. We even took pride in how nice the construction of the building had turned out. If it wasn’t ours then whose was it?
I remember there were about ten of us that went to the first showing of the first movie to ever play there. We all bought tickets and sat in the seats along the back row of the theater for Star Trek, the Original Motion Picture*. It was 1979. I was eight and a half. It was the worst movie I had seen up to that point in my young life and I was pissed. We had been looking forward to that experience for months. The two dollars we each spent on a ticket would have gone a long way at our corner store back in those days. Someone had to pay. It was after mulling it over, munching out on some snacks on the steps of our corner store on Hook Creek Boulevard that I decided I would never pay for another movie in my theater again.
Over the next couple of years, I spent countless hours honing my skills at sneaking into the movies. I learned what worked and what didn’t. I learned how to trust my instincts and how to move on them. There were a few of us that would do it a lot more than others. We must have snuck in to see Airplane at least a hundred times. Each time we would get a different joke or see something we hadn’t seen before and point it out to each other laughing hysterically. While most of my friends were involved in some form of organized sport, I sat through Follow That Bird (at an age when that was just not cool) just to be able to say that I snuck into every movie playing at, what was by that time, my thirteen theater multiplex.
You know the expression, “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.”? Everything I need to know about sneaking in I learned in those years at the Sunrise Cinemas.
*Roller Boogie was technically the first, but it only played on the weekends in one of the six theaters while they finished up construction.
Here’s more about Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist:
I grew up next door to a thirteen movie theater multiplex. As a kid I developed and perfected techniques for sneaking into the movies. As an adult I have used those skills and techniques to sneak into the biggest concerts held at some of the world’s most secure venues at will, or more accurately, by will. In Confessions of a Sneak-in Artist, I not only explore how I got into many of these events in great detail and what is required for others to do the same, but why those events meant so much to me in the first place and why I felt compelled to be there.
Confessions of a Sneak-in Artist is an informative collection of eleven engaging and amusing interrelated vignettes that read like the highlights of a really cool memoir. Each story is chockfull of sage like wisdom on the subject of sneaking in and pop culture references, but what seemed like a fun, funny ride gets flipped upside down near the end when a traumatic event is revealed. The reader is given the last piece to what they didn’t even know was a puzzle, enabling them to see the book’s bigger picture and underlying message of hope. This new information forces the curious reader to reexamine the timeline of events and the hopscotched chronological order in which the stories are told and want to read it again keeping that revelation in mind.
The 12/12/12 Concert for Sandy relief was pretty much everyone’s rock n’ roll fantasy. The world tuned in and were blown away by passionate performances by what Mick Jagger called from the stage, “…the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden”. The money poured in and went right towards helping the people that really needed it. The concert also marked the crowning achievement of my sneaking in career. Because of my personal connection to Long Beach, New York, a town destroyed by the Hurricane that was being helped and honored that night, and for the reasons why it was no longer my home, it was an emotional night for me. There was no way I could have afforded a ticket to that show, but there was no way I could have missed it. I felt I deserved to be there more than most of the people who were there because they had more money than I did. Long Beach had been my family’s home since 1990.
What I want everyone to know, simply, is that what I have done can be done and that they can do it too if they really want to. Where there is a will there is a way. Everyone has the ability to focus, channel their energy and use it to somehow, anyhow, make it happen. I have snuck into hundreds of events. It’s not luck. It is technique. In this book I explore numerous ways my techniques have worked for me and how they could work to help anyone do the same.
Thanks for the posts and for checking out mine! I love reading posts from the ushers from back when we used to do our thing! I’m very interested in learning more about how Sumner Redstone started his empire from “my theater”! Someone once told me it was the drive-in they used in Grease. Anybody know anything about that? No mention of the flea markets in the back? Anybody remember the only armed guard at the multiplex in the early to mid Eighties? We called him Stiff. He had a fused spine or something that made it so he couldn’t turn his head without turning his whole body. He was my arch nemesis! I’d love to get his perspective on things back then. Hopefully there’s no hard feelings! It was all in fun!
This is so cool! I grew up 6 houses away from the Drive-in/ Sunrise Cinemas in Rosedale. I just finished a book that discusses how I used what I learned as a kid sneaking into Sunrise Cinemas to sneak into 12/12/12 and other huge concerts all around the country and beyond. It’s called Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist. I’ll keep you posted on when it comes out. You can find more information about the book under Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist or Kenny Carr on Facebook.
Here’s an excerpt:
I grew up on a dead end street six houses away from a drive-in movie theater. A giant, solid eight foot metal fence at the end of my block surrounded the theater grounds. The older kids on the block would always have a hole dug somewhere under the fence so they could sneak in. Like tunnels out of a P.O.W. camp, it was constantly being found by security and had to be moved often. From an early age I prided myself on always knowing where the hole was located. I spent summer nights on the swings in front of the screen watching classic movies like Star Wars, Grease, Jaws and Bruce Lee triple features.
When I was eight, the drive-in was demolished and turned into a six theater multiplex. Throughout all phases of the demolition and construction of the new theater, the site was our playground. As the theater was being built we felt, as it was with the drive-in, that it was in some way ours. We knew that place from top to bottom, like the back of our hands. We knew it better than anybody. We even took pride in how nice the construction of the building had turned out. If it wasn’t ours then whose was it?
I remember there were about ten of us that went to the first showing of the first movie to ever play there. We all bought tickets and sat in the seats along the back row of the theater for Star Trek, the Original Motion Picture*. It was 1979. I was eight and a half. It was the worst movie I had seen up to that point in my young life and I was pissed. We had been looking forward to that experience for months. The two dollars we each spent on a ticket would have gone a long way at our corner store back in those days. Someone had to pay. It was after mulling it over, munching out on some snacks on the steps of our corner store on Hook Creek Boulevard that I decided I would never pay for another movie in my theater again.
Over the next couple of years, I spent countless hours honing my skills at sneaking into the movies. I learned what worked and what didn’t. I learned how to trust my instincts and how to move on them. There were a few of us that would do it a lot more than others. We must have snuck in to see Airplane at least a hundred times. Each time we would get a different joke or see something we hadn’t seen before and point it out to each other laughing hysterically. While most of my friends were involved in some form of organized sport, I sat through Follow That Bird (at an age when that was just not cool) just to be able to say that I snuck into every movie playing at, what was by that time, my thirteen theater multiplex.
You know the expression, “Everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten.”? Everything I need to know about sneaking in I learned in those years at the Sunrise Cinemas.
*Roller Boogie was technically the first, but it only played on the weekends in one of the six theaters while they finished up construction.
Here’s more about Confessions of a Sneak-In Artist:
I grew up next door to a thirteen movie theater multiplex. As a kid I developed and perfected techniques for sneaking into the movies. As an adult I have used those skills and techniques to sneak into the biggest concerts held at some of the world’s most secure venues at will, or more accurately, by will. In Confessions of a Sneak-in Artist, I not only explore how I got into many of these events in great detail and what is required for others to do the same, but why those events meant so much to me in the first place and why I felt compelled to be there.
Confessions of a Sneak-in Artist is an informative collection of eleven engaging and amusing interrelated vignettes that read like the highlights of a really cool memoir. Each story is chockfull of sage like wisdom on the subject of sneaking in and pop culture references, but what seemed like a fun, funny ride gets flipped upside down near the end when a traumatic event is revealed. The reader is given the last piece to what they didn’t even know was a puzzle, enabling them to see the book’s bigger picture and underlying message of hope. This new information forces the curious reader to reexamine the timeline of events and the hopscotched chronological order in which the stories are told and want to read it again keeping that revelation in mind.
The 12/12/12 Concert for Sandy relief was pretty much everyone’s rock n’ roll fantasy. The world tuned in and were blown away by passionate performances by what Mick Jagger called from the stage, “…the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden”. The money poured in and went right towards helping the people that really needed it. The concert also marked the crowning achievement of my sneaking in career. Because of my personal connection to Long Beach, New York, a town destroyed by the Hurricane that was being helped and honored that night, and for the reasons why it was no longer my home, it was an emotional night for me. There was no way I could have afforded a ticket to that show, but there was no way I could have missed it. I felt I deserved to be there more than most of the people who were there because they had more money than I did. Long Beach had been my family’s home since 1990.
What I want everyone to know, simply, is that what I have done can be done and that they can do it too if they really want to. Where there is a will there is a way. Everyone has the ability to focus, channel their energy and use it to somehow, anyhow, make it happen. I have snuck into hundreds of events. It’s not luck. It is technique. In this book I explore numerous ways my techniques have worked for me and how they could work to help anyone do the same.
Thanks for the posts and for checking out mine! I love reading posts from the ushers from back when we used to do our thing! I’m very interested in learning more about how Sumner Redstone started his empire from “my theater”! Someone once told me it was the drive-in they used in Grease. Anybody know anything about that? No mention of the flea markets in the back? Anybody remember the only armed guard at the multiplex in the early to mid Eighties? We called him Stiff. He had a fused spine or something that made it so he couldn’t turn his head without turning his whole body. He was my arch nemesis! I’d love to get his perspective on things back then. Hopefully there’s no hard feelings! It was all in fun!