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Kitty Turner's avatar

Yay! We have a shared experience. At fifteen, I took my first job at a gorgeous old single-screen called the Rio Theater (http://www.riotheatre.com/). Amazingly, the movie house is still in operation today, although it doubles as a music venue. The fey Erika and I, along with Cindy, who hated people but loved animals, and Raffi, the Armenian that smelled like Pan, ran the magical place.

Cindy worked the box office. Just like it sounds, it was a ticket office in a box. A chrome polyhedron with vents in the sides so she could breathe. It looked like a tiny spaceship set down on the mosaic-tiled entryway under the marquee.

There were time portals in the old building, like the wedge-shaped storage area behind the sign filled with movie posters and displays dating back to 1946. The projector room was a mad scientist’s lab. But the most liminal of all the secret spaces was the Cry Room—this weird little glass-fronted mini-theater hung suspended above the other 900 seats. Its original purpose was to seal mothers with their crying babies away in a soundproof booth. By 1985, this segregation was no longer practiced, so it was abandoned. Erika and I would sneak up there to watch movies, smoke pot, and make love. It was heaven.

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Maegan Heil's avatar

As someone who literally lived in a movie theater (twice!), I thoroughly enjoyed this. To this day "concession girl" still goes down in history as my favorite job of all time. And what I wouldn't give to watch "Stand by Me" fifty thousand more times on the silver screen. Happy Sunday!

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