Historic Cinemas—The Grand Lake Theatre

Location: Oakland, Calif.
Built: 1926
Current Status: Alive and Kicking

I’m just like you. I go out to actual movies at actual cinemas less and less. Partly I’m noticing that television has started to offer more and more worthwhile content (not to mention Netflix and Amazon), and it often seems fewer and fewer major studio cinematic releases are … well, worth the bother. But I also go out less frequently because the cinema experience ain’t what it used to be. At the risk of drifting a bit too far into “Get off my lawn!” territory—I’m old and I like good acting. And good scripts. And good theaters! My nearest current-release cinema is a blocky, soulless megaplex in the middle of a supremely irritating shopping district, and everyone in the house seems to have a lit smartphone screen two inches from their face through the whole feature. Drag.

Happily, we still have some alternatives.

Last week my oldest daughter and I went to Oakland’s Grand Lake Theatre. I realized I seldom go to that theater—I think I saw a screening of Lawrence of Arabia a couple of years ago? And I couldn’t figure out why it was not a staple entertainment destination for my family; it had certainly been a cornerstone of my teens. Parking Trauma, maybe? But I remembered how worthwhile it was to brave the BP-elevating parking situation the minute I stepped under their stunningly lit marquee.

A true movie palace (and a vaudeville venue before the “talkies” got popular), the Grand Lake has kept its deco grandeur through two expansions that brought it from a single-screen cinema to a four-auditorium complex. While it’s all-digital and continuously updated (two-projector 3-D, people!), it has also retained the ability to screen 35mm and 70mm films should the need arise. We got there and found a huge crowd waiting to be let into a screening of Raul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, and lots of others on their way in to see Rogue One or Moana or our pick, Hidden Figures.

The Grand Lake is one of the best places—maybe the best place—to see a movie in the Bay Area. They keep their prices under control, they show current releases and classics, they refuse to show commercials, and it all takes place in a setting so elegant and opulent that you wouldn’t dare keep your phone turned on—it’d just be disrespectful. (It’s disrespectful in any cinema; this place just makes you feel it.) Settings like this elevate the cinema experience to what it used to be and still should be—something special. On Saturday nights, they still play the original Wurlitzer in the main auditorium.

Grace loved the movie, which was great—and on the day before her first political march it was inspiring for her to take in a story about three Black American women who kicked mathematical ass at NASA. “Do you think they made up the part where John Glenn wouldn’t get into the rocket until Katherine Johnson confirmed his coordinates? I hope it really happened exactly that way.” The film gave her a newfound respect for math—but so did the majestic architecture of the auditorium. The best part, though? An atmosphere that provokes a 14-year-old girl to actually put her head on her mom’s shoulder and say, “I love this place. And I love going to the movies with you.”

Amy Glynn is an award-winning poet and essayist with complicated, mixed feelings about adaptations. In addition to literature, film and television, she also thinks a lot about grapes being adapted into wine. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can follow her on Twitter.