“A fire broke out inside the Picture Show Theater at Main Place after an earthquake shook Orange County and surrounding areas, but no injuries were reported,” according to the O.C. Register.
Now Santa Ana has ZERO movie theaters. We are the youngest city in Orange County and we have to drive to Orange, Irvine, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove if we want to see a movie. How is that possible?
Santa Ana Mayor Miguel Pulido continues to pimp for developers who want to build luxury houses and condos. He even convinced Mothers Market to come to Santa Ana. But no theaters.
I am told that the clowns on the Santa Ana City Council also turned away a Best Buy location that was supposed to open up at the City Place. That location is now in Orange, on Tustin Ave. Orange now has two Best Buys. Santa Ana has none. At a time when thousands of Santa Ana residents are upgrading their television sets, they are having to drive to Orange and Costa Mesa to buy their new TV’s. Tax revenue for Santa Ana? Zero.
This November Pulido and his cabal will ask voters to once again select them on their ballots. Why should they, honestly? What a joke. There’s the rub. Irvine is a successful planned community. Santa Ana is a pitiful planned disaster…
Such a shame. Santa Ana has so much potential. Or should I say ‘had?’ Most of the city could stand to benefit from mixed-use development.
Here’s an example from my home city of Somerville, MA. When I was young, it was a shopping mall, before that it was an Edsel factory, but now it’s going to be this.
SMS
SMS,
The Renaissance Plan advocates for the mixed-use development you speak of.
But oh no, THAT will gentrify the city.
Oh well. No worries, you can get the bootleg of Batman from the guy behind the mayors muffler shop.
There are movie theaters downtown at 4th and Bush mixed in with shops and restaurants and art galleries not even two blocks away.
ummm, the theater is still open. I was there last night and they were opened as usual.
#2 –
‘The Renaissance Plan advocates for the mixed-use development you speak of.
But oh no, THAT will gentrify the city.‘
A particular development type shouldn’t gentrify the city unless it involves not building enough affordable housing.
SMS
#5,
That just means they cleaned up after the Register article. But that is not the point. You cannot see new movies there. They show flops and old movies. You cannot see the Dark Knight movie there…
#4,
Sure, if you want to see movies with Spanish captions on them. I don’t care to. If I want to see the Dark Knight I want to see it in a nice theater, in English.
#2,
You do realize that the Renaissance Plan EXCLUDED the crappy shopping center that Miguel Pulido’s dilapidated muffler shop sits in, right?
Main place theater shows movies just before or at the same time as they hit the DVD market.
For the price of a DVD rental you can see a movie at the Big Screen. or
For the price of a single ticket at most places, you can get 2 tickets, a tub of popcorn and 2 sodas at “the movie place”
I can wait for the “Dark Knight” when it shown on dollar Tuesdays.
Art,
Yes I do realize that…and it has nothing to do with the point I was making. You can’t decry the lack of development (particularly the kind of mixed-use development that has truly transformed many urban areas) in one breath and then reflexively cry “gentrification” when someone wants to bring such a development in the next breath.
Cook,
A year from now you will be able to see the Dark Knight at the Main Place theater. In the interim, you cannot see the Dark Knight movie in Santa Ana.
The residents of Floral Park are all silently crying. Wait. No they aren’t. They just drive across the 22 to the Block. Ha! All is good.
Did enough folks go to “The Picture Show” to miss it?
#11,
Any gentrification process that excludes the awful shopping center that Pulido’s sad little muffler shop is located in is bogus – and you know it.
“Any gentrification process that excludes the awful shopping center that Pulido’s sad little muffler shop is located in is bogus – and you know it.”
That’s right Art…continue to look at the little picture.
# 15,
“Little picture?” Are you making fun of Pulido’s Oompah Loompah height? Low blow!
#15
Your big picture vista of the RSP is at the expense of the small business owners contained within the the RSP boundaries.
And your myopic viewpoint expressed in your post appears to endorse Pulido’s oligarchy.
Art won’t change,his glass is always half empty.
Rick –
The purpose of this blog is to advance timely and topical conversation; not conversion.
“The purpose of this blog is to advance timely and topical conversation; not conversion.”
Oh really? Wasn’t this blog recently claiming to be the engine behind a “revolution”?
Gee, Art. Maybe you need to get out more often. Maybe you could visit the south side of town once in a while. I hate to break it to you, but you’ve overlooked the Regency South Coast Village Theatres, 1561 W Sunflower, Santa Ana 92704, 714/557-5701. Yes, it’s the very border with Costa Mesa but, being on the north side of the street, it is squarely in Santa Ana. It was closed for a while about 2 years ago but it did re-open and has been operating for more than a year. Presently they are showing Mama Mia! which is a first-run film and among the top ten films in current release. I do agree with you that a city the size of ours ought to have more first-run movie theatres but we are not so completely bereft as your post suggests.
Bill,
I am familiar with that venue. It is an old theater that usually shows art movies. And if they are showing Mama Mia that means they are not showing Dark Knight.
So yes my friend we ARE fairly bereft. Now if you go further south there is a very nice theater complex – but it is in Costa Mesa…not Santa Ana.
One gets the sense were Dark Knight never to have been made this thread never would have come into existence.
Oh, Art, I’m sorry. I obviously missed your point. My bad. Though I did see mention of Dark Knight in your headline, I found none in the body. So when I saw, “Now Santa Ana has ZERO movie theaters. We are the youngest city in Orange County and we have to drive to Orange, Irvine, Costa Mesa and Garden Grove if we want to see a movie. How is that possible?” I obviously got sidetracked. BTW, as of this morning when I checked their schedule, the Picture Show Theatre (the theatre you identified) also isn’t showing Dark Knight. So now, in addition to feeling bad about missing your point, I’m confused. Of course, there are those who say that’s a natural and typical condition and for all I know, you may be among them.
See, I thought your point was that thanks to Papi Pulido, there are few of the resources we want or need in in our city and too many of the ones Papi likes (i.e. benefits him and his contributor/patron friends).
In the process of making of what I thought was your point you said there are zero theatres in town. That assertion overlooks a theatre that actually exists. I thought you might like to know that the treatre is there, which apparently you already do. You characterize it as old, as if that’s bad, and that it typically shows art films, which it does, as if that also is bad. Frankly, I’m glad I don’t have to drive to Santa Monica or San Diego to see art films. And if I have to drive to Costa Mesa to see the latest mindless teenage blockbuster film, I’m OK with that, though, like you, I would rather see the tax revenue go to the city where I live and work.
Also, I do agree with you that Papi Pulido has not and continues not to do well for the residents of Santa Ana.
Finally, this is longer than I intended, and I want to apologize for that and again for missing your point. Let’s go see Mama Mia! and we can watch James Bond — er, um, Pierce Brosnan — croon sugar sweet disco pop tunes. That should be a hoot. Have a good weekend.