The Golden Gate Bridge! The Palace of Fine Arts! Golden Gate Park! The row houses from Full House! Bi-Rite! All landmarks that make San Francisco the best city in the U.S. (yep, I said it). But, above all the beautiful spots in this town, there is one that holds the key to my heart: the Castro Theatre. About a year ago, some jerk spread a rumor on the internets about how the Castro might be closing down for good. My reaction can be best expressed through this animated gif. It was almost as bad as that time I was 11 and stayed up until 5am crying and trying to communicate with Anne Frank’s ghost.
Suffice it to say that this particular movie palace is an important part of my life. When I first visited SF in April 2006, the hills and the vistas and the gentle people made me start considering a permanent move, but a viewing of The Shining at the Castro sealed the deal (I had never seen it ’cause I used to be a hopeless philistine). Beyond Shelley Duvall’s spastic, knife-flailing dramatics, I was taken by the architecture, the murals, the organ player, and that intergalactic-looking chandelier. Since then, I’ve experienced many a Sound of Music sing-along, taken refuge in the theater for a nap during a storm, and unexpectedly cried into my smuggled-in burrito at the end of Lost in Translation (get over it, Sofia haters). I treat the Castro like my living room: a perfectly acceptable forum in which to sing off-key about wayward nuns or get narcoleptic or showcase my best ugly cry.
During construction in 1922
source: oscars.org