UA Court Street Stadium: Brooklyn, NY

After watching the trailer for The Man With The Iron Fists, the Kung Fu flick that I’ve been hoping The RZA would make for nearly 20 years, I immediately had a vision of where I would see such a movie and was reminded of a story:

             A room full of people from different ethnicities, religions, parts of the country, et cetera are having an open discussion about race. At some point during the discussion a man – a white man – interjects with the following: “I’m sorry but I have to say this. My wife and I don’t go to the Court Street movie theater because we know if we go there we’re gonna have to deal with people talking and yelling at the screen the whole time. Who wants to pay $13 for a ticket just to have the movie ruined? And I think we’re all familiar with what the stereotype is there so I don’t have to go into it… but does that make me a racist?” Needless to say, this was followed by an awkward silence, broken very matter-of-factly by a black woman of locked hair: “Yeah.”

Fascinating! But perhaps more so when given the context.

Court Street Stadium is located at the corner of Court and State streets in Brooklyn Heights, which is referred to among many local folk as “Downtown Brooklyn”, although technically Downtown Brooklyn is it’s own separate area bordering the Heights. It is the most expensive area in Brooklyn to live and knowing that key piece of information, there is one question that begs answering: How then did it become overrun with loud, obnoxious, lower-middle class black people?¹ Well, just outside the cozy confines of Brooklyn Heights is a neighborhood called Fort Greene. Although it is now known as the mixed race capital of New York², Fort Greene was just a couple of decades ago almost entirely black (and black owned) and is still home to the Walt Whitman and Farragut housing projects. If you live in Fort Greene and want to go to the movies without doing some traveling, you have two options: Court Street or BAM Rose Cinemas. And if indie, art house is not your bag then you can BAM Rose.

So what then does all of this mean?   

Let’s say your name is Ezra and you live on Clinton St. at Remsen. You’re 40 years old and you have a wife and two tween children. You went to take your family on opening weekend to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close because your television said you should and your wife agreed. You could’ve gone to Cobble Hill Cinemas but it’s 2012 and you don’t trust that your eleven and thirteen year old can sustain a 20 minute walk down a busy street without melting down, so you went to Court Street. It’s early evening, about 5 pm, and the theater is packed to capacity. If you’re Ezra, what all of this means for you is that at least 35%³ of the audience will be people from Fort Greene who look nothing like you and there is a very good chance that by 6:15 pm you and your family will be privy to phrases and terms that you have never heard before, like “Who is in charge of this lil’ nigga?” or “White people let their kids talk to them any kinda way.” But for me, this means something totally different. Not because of the color of my skin but because I’m perceptive and tactical.

I’ve been to Court Street Stadium twice and I can say that for certain kinds of movies it’s great but it’s not for everything. When Beasts of the Southern Wild comes out I’ll see it at BAM where I might run into Touré, or at Nitehawk where I can enjoy a nice Louisiana inspired dish and adult beverage during the movie. I would never ever see it at Court Street⁴. The two times that I have been there, the genre of film I saw was the same - horror flicks! The first was for The Crazies, which was awful, and the second was The Devil Inside, which was slightly less awful but hey, I’m into exorcism movies. Seeing the midnight showing of The Crazies at Court Street was exactly what my date and I were expecting and hoping for – rowdy people commentating on the intelligence of the characters and then shouting instructions at the screen⁵. And without pause or reservation! It was glorious!⁶ I know this is an unspoken agreement in the Black and Latino communities but yelling at the screen during a horror flick or really anything that’s campy and doesn’t take itself seriously, should be universally accepted. It totally defines the experience.

Our second venture however, did not go as well. In fact it was pretty strange. For starters we went in the early afternoon of a 55-degree day in January⁷. Then throughout the previews and even at points during the movie a guy in front of us that was already with someone, was talking on his Bluetooth. And later, somewhere around the middle of the movie, three teenage girls broke out in a group discussion that had nothing to do with The Devil Inside while the fourth was having a phone conversation with her mother! So on that front, the lesson was learned: Don’t go to Court Street Stadium in the early afternoon on a nice day, as it is apparently the Brooklyn Heights version of The Max. But outside of that, there’s no other theater I’d rather be at for the opening weekend, midnight showing of the sequel to The Last Exorcism, the inevitable sequel to The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 4 or The Man With The Iron Fists.

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1. Zing!

2. It’s cool. Some of my best friends are black… and white.

3. Being that this is one of the whitest movies ever, I knocked off 10%.

4. That is, assuming someone would recognize the earning potential a film like that could have in such a neighborhood.

5. I have not seen the black horror film but if it exists, the commentary would go from “White people are crazy!” to “These niggas acting like white people!”

6. We also, unexpectedly, had the same experience seeing Paranormal Activity 3 at the Regal in Union Square: “I’ma have to roll up mad haze to go to sleep after this shit!”

7. What the hell were we doing in a movie theater?