Once more dyed the rich red colour of sockeye salmon

real outfits for the lads: Smug Mountie is drunk with lemonade and power
real outfits for the lads: future redneck rancher is two seconds away from whuppin' you
real outfits for the lads: you can't see it, but this kid's wearing chaps.
Flashy Gene Autry sling style holster, with artificial firearm and Curse of Gene Autry
Real outfits for the panicked Home Front

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Written by the guy who hums to himself as he paws through the dumpster

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Fueled by rage and fresh roasted peanuts

city of particle board and freeway

Note well: this is entry is long. And not funny! On the plus side, it's about Regina.

Every morning on my way to work and every afternoon on my way home I pause at the southwest corner of Albert Street and 11th Avenue to scan the marquee of the downtown Cineplex Odeon Coronet across the street. This is a testament to the ingrained power of habit, or perhaps to neurological authority, since the Odeon has been closed now for months. All the marquee says is �Thank you Regina | For 25 Great Years | Please Visit Us | At the Southland Cineplex Odeon | Or the Galaxy Normanview Shopping Centre�. Nonetheless I look, knowing that I�ll be seeing the exact same message each time � which is, in effect, �Fuck you | Downtown Regina | Move to the Suburbs | Where there�s Free Parking�.

When I moved to Regina in 1989 there were three first-run movie theatres, all located in the downtown within five minutes� walk of each other. The Cornwall Cinema 4 was built in 1981 as part of the new downtown Cornwall Centre, the mall that was intended to be the great shopping hub of the city (although later in the 80s the downtown was converted into a series of one-way streets with angled parking, causing people in the suburbs to scuttle to the edges of the city and construct gigantic entertainment-commerce hives of their own). The Capitol opened in 1929, one of those gigantic cathedrals of classiness decked out in red plush, heavy curtains and dark wooden accents.

The Cineplex Odeon on Albert multiplexed into existence in 1979 and ran smoothly until the opening of the Southland Theatre threw it into a business plan tizzy, one week offering second run movies for $2.00, the next week for $1.50, and the week after that offering first run movies for $4.00. For a brief happy period it tried to position itself as a combination first run and repetory house, running Akira and Space Odyssey 2001 alongside Mission to Mars and The Sixth Sense. By the time it closed up it was running the smallest and worst of the first, offering fare like Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever and House of 1000 Corpses to the low-income wanderers of a depressed after-hours downtown. And probably a scratchy print of The Two Towers.

For all that desperate flailing around and strategic bursts of activity, the actual closing of the theatre was done with astonishing rapidity and decisiveness. On Thursday night the theatre was open for business. On Friday morning the windows that made up the building�s front were covered with sheets of particle board. Puzzlingly, so were the doors. The marquee was blank. The overall effect was like looking at a gagged and blindfolded face. On Friday afternoon I expected to see, as usual, the skinny girls in polyester uniforms laboriously changing the marquee, one holding the plastic letter tiles, the other gripping the letters with a long pole-and-hook contraption. Instead, a mute front covered in particle board marred the street. The city's downtown had once more relaxed its grip on relevance and prosperity.

The Coronet was the last of three to close. The Capitol was demolished in 1992 for the benefit of an insurance company (and an imported workforce of Torontonians, many of whom arrived, cast their eyes about in horror, and hopped a plane back to the mothership). The Cornwall Cinema, vessel for Famous Players, shut down in August 2002. The absence of a new host signified Famous Players� desire to get the hell out of Regina. Now there are two first-run theatres on the southern and northwestern edges of town, both owned by the same company, and one second-run theatre located in a mall that�s notable for its liquidation stores and customers with orthopaedic shoes and hand-rolled cigarettes. The independent theatre in the basement of the downtown library plays all the scandalous subtitled films that the larger outfits can�t afford or won�t bother to run (although given the recent drastic and nauseating cuts to the city libraries � three outlying branches, the Dunlop Art Gallery and the Prairie History Room are all being hacked off from the body and left to die � not to mention the Writer in Residence program � there�s no guarantee that the library theatre will be around for much longer either).

There�s no question that the Coronet was not the greatest movie theatre around � from the outside it bore the dimensions of a warehouse, and the interior still wore the pink-and-green colour scheme from a late eighties fashion retrofit. Worse yet, there was almost no parking for blocks and blocks, and those who risked parking behind the theatre would often return to smashed windows and snatched stereos. After the Southland opened in 1997, with its convex screens, hideously booming Dolby sound systems, and most importantly, a gigantic parking lot, the Coronet started to look embarrassingly dated, a flashy relic of a time when calculator watches were stylish accessories for men. The Southland, by comparison, is disorienting and downright garish, wallowing in a pit of primary colours and popcorn toppings. The walls between the theatres are pitifully thin and unable to filter out the booming soundtrack from the adjacent screens.

The Galaxy is even worse than the Southland. Louder, bigger, more disorienting, and harder to get to if you don�t drive a car (which I don�t). It�s like being inside a gigantic high-tech playpen where the most primitive fantasies of power and sexual fulfilment are played out on gigantic screens. I used to think that the kind of entertainment generally offered by movie theatres functioned as an escape, but I�m beginning to see it as a reward for buying a car, a kind of rebate of fantasy on the actual incurred debt. When you look at home entertainment systems and recreational goods, the scheme becomes a bit more apparent � they are explicitly marketed and thought of as �rewards� for owning a home. Or more to the point, allowing a bank to own your home. As well as hold all your money for you. Ahem.

What really did in the Coronet, as well as the other downtown theatres, was Regina�s shameful and stupid treatment of its urban core. It�s not Detroit, but this city�s downtown is beginning to look a mouthful of decaying teeth � a row of brown ones here, a rotten black one there, a gap back there. The Army Navy department store (formerly the Metropolitan Movie Theatre, closed in 1981 to make way for the Cornwall Cinema), The Hudson�s Bay Company, the Medical-Dental Building, as well as a number of smaller office buildings and storefronts, are empty. Whole blocks of Hamilton, Rose and Broad are peppered with empty buildings and businesses whose viability is inexplicable. A little farther north of the downtown, on the other side of the train tracks, the great green behemoth of the Superstore, is now empty, all its foodstuffs and housewares having been moved to two brand new Superstores on the edges of the city where the buses don�t run.

There are a number of reasons for this scouring, from local decisions to global trends, from the emergence of big box stores at the city�s spacious margins to the truly horrific public transportation system, but right now I�m going to blame the populace of the city for being such a lot of twits, each for being so complacent and selfish, content to roam the wide air-conditioned hallways of the shopping centres on the edges of the city, moving along the ropes instead of coming into the middle, where, they fear, a hostile downtown dominated by gangs and homeless people is waiting to whup them and steal their cars. Every so often I end up in the truly surreal situation of having to explain to some horrified suburbanite that, yes, I do live downtown and yes, it�s quite safe (well, safe enough, but the more blinkered of suburbanites live by an entirely different standard of safety, an absolute standard that will not brook the appearance of the stranger or the unholy mixture of residence and business, old and new, rich and poor, that mark older parts of cities. There�s nothing new being said in this aside, so let�s move on, hey?).

Here�s one of my favourite anecdotes about the stupidity of this city�s population. In response to a massive wave of car thefts by kids, the University of Regina offered a free year�s rental of a steering wheel club lock to every student with a campus parking permit. The program shut down for lack of interest. Yup, lack of interest. When students were asked why they didn�t take the university up on their generous offer, it turned out they thought that all those car breaks were happening around the downtown and inner city. They effectively got on the radio and television and informed the city that in Regina�s south end there was a huge crop of automobiles ready for harvest. I never found out if thefts went up, but for the sake of the city I hope so. Otherwise the criminals are dumb as everyone else. But anyway, if the cars don�t end up at a chop shop, the cops can pick them up in the parking lot of the Galaxy Theatre, where the perps are enjoying the rewards for their skills, slurping down chili fries and x-large Cokes as they wait for Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! to start.

Retracted on 2004-02-22::6:43 p.m.


parode - exode


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