Bronx Movie

[Martin Hash]

During a Med School Peds rotation in Lincoln Hospital in Harlem, my wife, Gwynne, and I lived via AirBnB room-hopping. While I was working, Gwynne would walk the neighborhoods around our place, which are some of the most violent in the U.S. but mild compared to other places we've lived so she was undeterred, and she's a little old White blond woman that walks invisibly in a Black neighborhood. On the rare days I got off early, she would have a list of places we could go together, and would excitedly offer suggestions. She wanted to see the new “Jurassic World” movie, it was opening day, and it also happened to be discount day at the movie theater complex in the Bronx, near Yankee Stadium.

I was up for a movie. Instead of the subway, we chose to walk, as she always did, through some rough territory but the journey there was uneventful by Harlem standards: gangs of youth blocking the sidewalk but letting us through, beggars, ambulances, racing cars. The movie theater was in a rundown mall and there was a running NYC police car parked out front, street people were loitering everywhere, sirens were blaring from multiple directions all around us, armed guards at the complex doors: totally normal atmosphere. We went in without hesitation.

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It was a multiplex on cheap ticket night, so the theater was relatively packed. Most of these customers would stay for the whole day, watching all 10 movies in the multiplex on the same ticket. Good for them. Of course, we were the only White people there but that's often the case: we've gone months in Africa & Middle East as the only European-looking folks, and I've done medical stints in E. Oakland & S. Miami, so we no longer noticed our singularity.

Gwynne had bought tickets to see the 3D version of the movie but they had forgotten to give her the glasses. She went back to the counter to get them and when she came back she said, “I got the feeling we are the first ones to get glasses?”
“Maybe we'll be the only one in the theater?” I suggested. “Or maybe everyone is going to come late? I can't imagine people would watch a 3D movie without glasses. My god, it would be so blurry.”
The theater was packed. We were the only ones with glasses.

In inner-city theaters, the lights don't go down during the previews in an attempt to delay the rambunctious chaos until the last possible moment. When they did, Gwynne & I put on our glasses and dutifully started watching the movie. While wearing those silly 3D glasses, if you don't hold your head vertical, the picture gets dark & you feel ill so I was intent on not getting sick. The movie was rather dull until about 30 minutes in when some guy in the back started yelling "Shut up, mutterfukker!" & about 5 minutes later the theater broke out in a riot. Coke, ice cubes & partially eaten hot-dogs showered the crowd, & when I took off my goggles, I could see men wrestling in the back. So what, been there, done that, and anyway, the movie was starting to get good.

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I was really caught up in the story, good movie, and the next time I looked around, most of the crowd had left. Take-away message: watching dinosaurs eat people is a lot more exciting in the Bronx.