Escanaba…Ready For, Another Update?

Put on your reading caps kids, because we have a LOT of update for you to read! Lets start with an easy one to warm you up!

We got our “Arcade License”, so now you can get rid of all those pesky quarters you have lying around! Don’t have quarters? Don’t fret! We have quarters that you can trade your old wrinkly dollar bills for! That’s what friends are for, right? Also, I know that you have been wondering, and yes, I can now reliably make it to the third screen on Space Invaders. Thank you, thank you, no need to applaud. I would like to thank Claire Sovey, my training partner. Without Claire, this would not have been possible. She pushed me to keep playing when I wanted to go home and sleep, and when she got better than me I had somebody to try to beat. This is a great accomplishment for mankind, and it is one that will be remembered. I know this accomplishment seems out of reach, but you too can achieve this if you try hard enough. Speaking of arcade stuff, some of you may have noticed that last year we had the original Street Fighter, but this year it is Street Fighter II. What’s up with that? Well, just like the rest of you, I had a couple extra Street Fighter PCBs laying around, and I just couldn’t help myself, I had to put it in the Street Fighter cabinet. I know the first one was groundbreaking, and it is great, but there is something about the second one that makes it the best one they have ever made.

Alright, I hope that warm up topic wasn’t too much for you, because this next one is a bit heavier. Kids movies. We thought maybe showing some kids movies would be cool to do on the weekends. Boy was we wrong! Well, we weren’t wrong, it is cool, but it wasn’t the most effective way to raise money for this project. The kids movies just have not been doing that great. Maybe it is the time of day we chose to do them, maybe it is the day of the week, maybe it is our very, very lacking marketing strategy, and maybe there just isn’t much demand for it in the summer, up here in the Great Upper Peninsula, where you can spend every summer weekend at a different, fantastic outdoor attraction. Regardless, we will not be booking any more this summer. Don’t worry, there are still a few you can watch this year, and we will probably do it again in the future using different parameters, like, better parameters, like, a lot better. So if you like Scooby Doo (the live action movie from 2002) or The Lego Movie, come on down one of the next few Saturdays or Sundays to watch em on the big screen!

Speaking of movies, some of you wonder how we choose movies and book them. You will have to keep wondering, because that is a topic for a whole other post all on its own.

Here is a fun little update: Concessions! You may not have known it, but you voted, and responded to those votes! What we sometimes forget in this modern world of ours is that we are constantly voting, all day, every day. We vote with our money, our attention, and our time. In the case of the concessions at the Old Michigan Theater, you all voted with your money! We learned very quickly that when people come to the movies, they don’t want no puny normal candy bar, they want a big box of candy! So, we removed our candy bars from the counter and filled in their spots with even more options in the boxed candy category. We also noticed, through your money votes, that many of you would prefer these boxes of candy over popcorn. Now, while we would prefer that you all just bought a bunch of popcorn, because it is easier and our margins are better, we cannot deny the denizens of our good land what they want, what they need! So we made for you, The Candy Combo! That’s right, a combo for all of you our there who want a beverage AND candy, but NO popcorn! This combo will save you a whole fifty cents! If my math is right, and it always is, that is a savings of more than nine percent over the old cost. Again, that’s what friends are for, right? And lastly on the concessions front, we would like to take a moment of silence for those concessions who aren’t with us anymore. * silent moment * Boston Baked Beans was a good candy, a strong candy. It was the kind of candy that everyone recognized, even if nobody wanted to eat it. It was the kind of candy you remember eating once as a kid, and you thought it was good, but for some reason you just don’t ever want to eat it again. Boston Baked Beans was a resilient candy. How many other candies could survive the beating dealt by Reese’s Pieces and the Sour Patch Kids? Not many. We will remember you Baked Beans of Boston, and while you will no longer be at our concessions counter, you will always be on the bottom shelf of certain stores. And when we see you, we will remember the time we had with you.

Man, that got a lot heavier than I expected, sorry about that. How about an update that we have been talking about for a while? Bathrooms and heating. Guess what. That probably ain’t happening this year. Long story short, it has not been the easiest thing to finance. From what we understand, most lenders are not too keen on lending money towards part of a project rather than the whole project. And, most lenders view our plumbing and heat as part of a larger project, which they would be correct. On top of that, as we have mentioned in previous posts, commercial buildings are not always the best collateral for a loan. So, yeah. We have decided to switch gears on that front. Our plan had been to get the building back to functioning so we could be open and showing movies. Once that was done we were going to start working on grants and whatnot to renovate the building. What we are going to do instead of that, is work on grants and whatnot, renovate the building, and then be open. Our current plan is to have this accomplished in the next 3 years. We will still show movies this summer, and probsibly next summer, and maybe every summer until the renovation, but that does mean that our plumbing and heat will be out of service until then. There is a small chance that we will stumble upon the money we need while walking in the park, or maybe we will buy a big winning lottery ticket, or perhaps have an angel investor fall out of the sky and do whatever half-angel-half-investors do, so don’t lose hope. Until one of those things happens though, we will have to take the long route on this journey. That is probably for the best though, the long route really works your glutes, and typically you get more roubust, long lasting results than the short route. Wait…was our previous plan a short route? Maybe they are just two different looking long routes…either way, that is our new plan, stay posted for updates on it and our glutes.

On a more interesting topic, our marquee started leaking. Not sure what happened there, but I suppose I will have to climb up there and take a peek. I am sure it isn’t anything a few dozen gallons of Flex Seal won’t handle. In the mean time, if you have something that really can’t get wet, say, your new pet you got from an elderly Asian fellow in a sketchy basement store, and it starts raining, please keep in mind that hiding under the marquee may not be your best option. If this scenario happens however, and we are open, you can bring your new pet in and watch a movie or play some games while you wait out the storm.

This next thing isn’t so much an update, as just a thing that I thought of that would be AWESOME. Okay, you ready?! Old Michigan Book Club! I know, Right?! So I am pretty sure I thought of this before, but what brought it back to me was us booking Ready Player One. That is, booking as in gaining a license to show the film, not booking as in…hitting it with a book? As you may or probably should know, the movie Ready Player One is based on the book of the same name written by Ernest Cline. I know that not all of you are readers…or maybe those of you reading this are readers…and the people who come to our movies but don’t read books are not…the…readers…I forgot where I was going with that. Anyway, there are so many good movies out there based on even better books, and sometimes people don’t even know there is a book! Wouldn’t that be awesome to get together with a bunch of other nerds and watch the movie and then read the book and then talk about how the movie was great and how the book was even better?! You may not be able to tell, but I have yet to find a movie that was better than the book it was based on. Fight Club, Deadpool, and Alita: Battle Angel came really close for me, like, really close, like, they are almost on the same level in my head, but the book is just a hair higher. Regardless of this fact, I still love movies and movies based on books. This whole Old Michigan Book Club thing probably won’t happen any time soon, but maybe, just maybe in the future. Also, comic books are books so don’t even start with me on the Deadpool and Alita topic.

And of course, I have saved the most valuable information for last. You probably have never wondered what we do with the movie posters after we take them down, but maybe after me saying that you are now wondering just a little bit. Maybe one of you who are wondering just a little bit also has a very empty wall upon which you would like to position a piece of art, like say, a 27” x 40” print of The Neverending Story or Blade Runner. You see where I am going with this, right? Just to be safe, I will spell it out for you, literally. We are selling some the posters from this summer. These posters are slightly used and may or may not, but definitely do, have pin holes in each corner. Some of the posters have minor water damage due to the fact that the poster displays are not quite water tight and we have been getting a buttload* of rain this summer. While that may be alarming to you, we take care when removing our posters from the displays and make sure they are dry before we roll them up. As a result, the fact that they may once have been wet is unnoticeable on most of the posters. The exception to this is posters with white at the bottom, where the water damage is slightly noticeable. Here is our deal for you. If you want a movie poster that we may have, just waltz on up to the concessions counter during our business hours and ask to see the goods. We will then inform you what posters we have available and you will be able to inspect them prior to purchase. Should you decide that the poster you have inspected suits your fancy, you may then tell us something along the lines of, “I’ll take it.” At that point, you will give us ten U.S. dollars ($10) and the transaction will result in you owning the aforementioned poster. So to summarize that, we will be selling some of our movie posters for $10 each. Just ask about them at the counter.

Last but very far from least, we wanted to send a thank you out to Kelly Pepin. This man is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to The Wizard of Oz and Escanaba. We hope to have him back again to educate you all on Oz lore! Kelly also did some digging for us. This digging was not with a shovel, although I am sure the irony of that is not lost on Kelly, given his profession. No, this digging was in the archives! Kelly found some more information about the Michigan Theater and its history! We will save the theater’s origin story for another post, but let me tell you, it is perdy cool! We will in fact have to update our History page on the website to reflect our new knowledge! Thank you Kelly!

I am not sure about you, but my reading cap is smoking now. I think we will have to end our updating for the day. I hope you learned something useful, and if not, I hope you at least used up that spare time you were trying to burn. If you still need to burn some more though, and you like reading things that don’t directly impact you, feel free to peruse our content here and on Facebook.

*Did You Know That: A buttload is an actual unit of measure! A butt is a container that resembles a large barrel or cask and was used to store wine or ale. While the exact volume of a butt has been different amounts in different times and places, it is now generally agreed upon that a buttload is equal to 491 litres (108 Imperial gallons or 130 U.S. gallons) for ale, and 573 litres (126 Imperial gallons or 151 U.S. gallons). I put litres first because the metric system is superior, and I spelled it litres instead of liters as a shout out to our Canadian brethren. Another fun fact is that the unit of volumetric measurement right above a butt is a tun. There are two butts in a tun. So you could actually have a tun of butts and only be talking about beverages. Now You Know!