Now you may brush this off as some “White suburban housewife” style of rumor that originates from a completely non-NYC native hearing a joke and passing it off as fact but I actually had two completely unrelated movie podcasts repeat it with the hosts for both being long-time NYC natives and if anyone could sniff out the BS on this it should be them.
Basically the story I heard is that in NYC up until recently (I don’t know if it’s still happening but the podcasts I heard it on make it seem like it was going on until the late 00’s) there was a street in one of the boroughs with two movie theaters owned by the same company on opposite sides of the street. I don’t know if they were big movie theaters or just single screen ones (since from what I understand multiplex’s in NYC proper tend to be underground and thus would be highly uneconomical to build two at once) but apparently this movie theater had severe problems with rival gangs getting into massive fights and shutting down the theater completely during business hours so the owners (who didn’t want to close-up shop because they still were making a ton of money when the place wasn’t forced to close) bought up a location across the street and converted that into a movie theater as well. The end result being, rival gangs each had an unspoken rule on which theater was their own “territory” and they never crossed street lines, and the company continued to have this arrangement since they were still making a lot of money at both locations now.
I mean, I highly doubt the “We Hate Movies” podcast would make a joke of this nature considering how liberal they are, and if it was meant to be taken as a joke they normally make sure to let people know when they’re kidding or not, which makes me think they were being legit when they told this story.
They might not both still be movie theaters-- It’s possible that the gang situation has since quieted down, and it became unprofitable to keep both open. Or, heck, maybe both became unprofitable, and couldn’t compete with the megaplexes out in the suburbs: That’s certainly happened to enough other cinemas.
On 42nd St, the AMC 25 and Regal E-Walk are across from each other, but this story sounds like a complete fabrication. I’m surprised someone would take it at face value.
Fun fact: That Regal used to be a Loews, until the AMC-Loews merger, when they were required to sell off one of the two Times Square locations. But for a short time, they were both owned by the same company.
Just on the face of it, there seem to be several reasons this sounds like an urban legend.
the tendency of certain businesses to cluster in an area it common. There are several locations in my town with a McDonalds and a Burger King on the same corner. And all those stage theatres along Broadway in NYC, not because of ‘gang problems’.
the movie theatres could easily control this by refusing entrance to anyone wearing ‘gang signs’. There was a time when some movie theatres here were doing that. Some local high schools still do that.
theatres in separate territories wouldn’t stop this. Gang fights are initiated when one gang deliberately invades the territory of another gang. So such a theatre arrangement would just encourage one gang to threaten a rival gang by invading ‘their’ movie theatre.
most theatres don’t shut down if there is a fight in the audience. I’ve been in one when it happened, and they just ejected those in the fight. If audience members went to the box office to complain, they were offered not a refund, but a free pass – and only to another showing of that same movie, not a different one. And if you stayed until the end of the movie, you didn’t get a free pass – only a half-off coupon.
This is incorrect. Some theaters are partially underground–there used to be, maybe still is one near Lincoln Center. But all the multiplexes I know of are built up–just like the rest of New York. Digging down in Manhattan is very hard as it’s all granite.
Yeah, the independent Lincoln Plaza Cinema is entirely underground, and the AMC Lincoln Center has three of it’s 14 screens underground. The Angelika is also underground, as is the AMC 19th St. All the other theaters I can think of are aboveground.
That was a huge block of breathless text, to just say …
Which is patently illogical. Although gangs make a big deal about turf invasions, members never adhere to the boarders so tightly. And a narrow, visible border would be pointless – no one could claim the other was the real violating party. There’s just so much woo here, its not even laughable.
