A rowdy movie house suddenly goes dark, inspiring an outpouring of dismay and reminiscences.
On a recent morning, the Regal UA Court Street in Brooklyn was uncharacteristically quiet. Posters for “Jackass Forever” and “American Underdog” hung in its windows, but the curving marquee had been stripped of its letters, and its glass doors were locked. Peering inside, you could see a scattering of dead leaves on the floor of the darkened lobby, like tumbleweeds in a western.
A pair of teenage boys, Kimani Augustin and his friend Demarcus Cousins (yes, like the basketball player), stood outside and reminisced about the good times they’d had there. “It could get crazy,” Kimani said, “but was amazing nonetheless.”
The theater closed last Sunday, taking regulars by surprise. Right away, the Twitter tributes poured in, many of them written in a tone of ironic amusement. Dean Fleischer-Camp, a filmmaker, said that his favorite movie experience ever involved people “screaming, laughing, singing” and “throwing popcorn” during a 6 p.m. screening of “Drag Me to Hell.” Lincoln Restler, the newly elected councilman whose district includes Downtown Brooklyn, shared a picture of a moving van parked outside. “For the shouting-back-at-action-movie experience,” he wrote, “there was no place better!”
Cyrus McQueen, a stand-up comic and the author of “Tweeting Truth to Power,” a book of essays on race and politics in America, was as struck by what these commenters didn’t say as by what they did. “I’m an African-American man, so I speak plainly,” he said. “It was a Black theater. You yelled at the screen, and folks would talk.” A longtime resident of Crown Heights, Mr. McQueen regarded a sold-out showing of “Black Panther” at the Regal as one of the highlights of his life.
“A major component of Black existence is forced comportment in white spaces,” he said. “There is a comfort derived from taking off the disguise, if just for a few minutes in the cinema.”
For more than two decades, the 13-story megaplex was a cultural mainstay of Downtown Brooklyn, a shopping destination for residents of the borough’s predominantly working-class Black neighborhoods. People from Bedford-Stuyvesant and Flatbush and Brownsville would travel there on trains and buses and in dollar vans, sometimes stopping to shop or eat at nearby Fulton Mall.
But soon after the Regal opened, developers began to transform the area, pushing out local businesses to make way for luxury condo towers. At Alamo Drafthouse, a theater that opened in one of those towers a few years back, you can take in your movie while sipping dry rosé cider and eating margherita pizza in a plush recliner. “It’s kind of hoity-toity,” said RJ Adams, an independent photographer from East New York. “Everyone’s uptight. At Court Street, everyone was just relaxed.”
The Court Street theater closed without warning or explanation. Whether it fell victim to gentrification, the pandemic, competition from streaming services or some other evil remains a mystery. A representative of the chain did not respond to multiple voice messages seeking comment; a spokeswoman for Madison International Realty, the property owner, wrote that the company is “gathering more information” and that it shares “the community’s disappointment.” Rendy Jones, a 23-year-old member of the Regal Crown Club rewards program, was bewildered. “I need to know what happened,” he said. “At least email me about it!”
Mr. Jones, a movie buff from Crown Heights, said he cried when he first saw the news on Twitter. “I started going there before I could even walk, either with my mom or dad,” he said on the phone the other day. “I still have my ticket stubs. I’m looking at them now.” At 13, he began writing a blog about movies; eventually he became an accredited critic for Rotten Tomatoes, an accomplishment that he credits to the Regal.
Like many teenagers, he would take advantage of the establishment’s relaxed atmosphere to see three or four movies in a day, hopping between theaters when employees weren’t looking. “I would plan it out like a supervillain,” he said. Still, he was surprised to see people on Twitter describing the theater as “chaotic” and “rowdy.” “All I remember is watching the movies and having a good time,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything crazy happen there.”
B.A. Parker, a former film professor and a co-host of The Cut podcast, has. Two years ago, she went to the theater to see “The Photograph,” a romantic drama starring Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield. “They showed the first five minutes of ‘Harley Quinn’ before they realized they messed up and had to switch reels,” she said. “Kids started shouting. Halfway through, the cops came in and took them out. Twenty minutes later, the kids came back screaming ‘We’re back’!” I still can’t tell you what happened in ‘The Photograph.’”
Ms. Parker, who is Black, said that three of her five worst moviegoing experiences took place there. Even so, she was sad to see it go. “I’ve been to 70 percent of the theaters in New York City,” she said, “and the loss of any of them is a tragedy to me.”
