Cinematic Fantasy, Economic Reality Collide On Whitter Blvd.

One of the first places I used to go to upon declaring my conditional independence from my parents’ household was Commerce Theater out by Goodrich and Whittier Blvd. I still have fond memories of that theater. The mid 1990s was a magical time because the old management was still in charge and willing to sell you a ticket for a Rated R film as long as you told them that it was for your parents, who sent you ahead to purchase the tickets. The confines of the theater were special due to their complete lack of maintenance.

You could theater hop as much as you wanted — provided of course there was a bucket of popcorn in your hand. The theater made the real money off the concession stands, and it was in their best interest that you kept on buying. On any given day the seats were broken and the floors were so sticky, you could have sworn someone was placing multiple layers of tar. The seats not broken were usually occupied by couples who allowed their hormonal urges to get the better of them. Who knows how many babies were conceived to Danny Elfman soundtracks? Sometimes I stopped watching the movie altogether and watched them instead. To this day, I still don’t know what happened to Kid N’ Play at the end of “Class Act.”

This was the theater we grew up going to, because it was one of the few theaters that still displayed Mexican movies after the great collapse of the Los Angeles movie theater of the late 1980s. The VCR did its part as the prehistoric forefather of Netflix, but the hardest of times were felt by the movie houses located in downtown Los Angeles. The only survivors were the cineplexes that endured by running bare minimum performances. The movie houses often showed two movies – which was a great way for families to kill a Saturday afternoon. Alas, the twin fanged attack of the VCR and the cineplex made places like Teatro Unique, El Azteca, Teatro Brooklyn, the Million Dollar theaters, and the Huggy Boy a thing of the past.

My father would take us to these theaters, and it was always the same field trip.

My mom would carry her largest bag, and stuff it full of ham sandwiches and Sunkist sodas. The rule was that we had to wait until Mario Almada or Valentin Trujillo ran the car that was chasing them off to the road, so that we could synch the sound of us opening the soda can to the explosion onscreen. My mother would make me cover my eyes when the more than occasional breast or pubic hair patch came onscreen in order to preserve my virginal innocence. In the more extreme cases of Sasha Montenegro or Angelica Chain, I was expected to dump the popcorn tub over my head to prevent perversion.

However, I was reprimanded upon being discovered by my mother who spotted the peephole I had chewed through the bucket during a salacious dance by Lyn May during her performance in “Ratas de la Ciudad.”

My father was a proponent for Canal Azteca found on local Channel 22. Every Saturday, they would run non-stop movies from Mexico’s Golden Era. After a while, they all appeared to be the same movie. Sara García would play a cigar-chomping grandmother in trouble of losing the family farm, and then her good-for-nothing, womanizing, gambling, degenerate singing grandson usually played by Pedro Infante, ended up winning it back through a zany scheme usually accompanied by more singing. Who needs to go see “Batman Returns” when it’s so hard to get Pedro Infante to leave?

The last movie my father paid to see was “American Me” at Commerce Theater.

This memory resonates in me simply because when I got home, my mother hugged me and made me promise that I would never end up in jail. My father was more upset by the fact that he was not allowed to smoke in the lobby. Furthermore insult to injury was added when he was told his movie ticket entitled him to only one movie. He would always chastise me for being a sucker and paying to see one movie when I could stay home and watch nothing but hits till the cows came home. However, I never minded because these movies helped me escape for two hours. This was a world away from the pressures of middle school. This was a world where solace can be found and problems are resolved with undeniable grit and absolution – unless there was a sequel.

Follow Oscar Barajas on Twitter @Oscarcoatl