Tag Archives: walking

The Portland Movie Theater Project

Leave a reply

Last November, I, a person who is not at all a movie person, not even in the slightest, decided that over the next year-ish, I’d watch one movie in each of Portland’s historic or independently owned movie theaters. The idea was inspired by the hundred-year-old diary I found at an antique market a few years ago. In it, the diarist recorded her daily life, including the movies she and her husband went to see. She recorded 18 movies in the diary and included a very short review for nine of them, sometimes as short as a single word (“Fine.”), never longer than a sentence (“We wished we had gone home instead.”).

Page from a diary from 1923. The relevant portion is quoted in the photo's caption.
Movie review from the bottom portion of the page reads, “We ate at Hazlewood [sic] at 7:15 [pm] then went to Majestic to see Harold Floyd in “Safety Last!” We wish we had gone home instead.”

My original plan was to watch each of the 18 movies recorded in the diary. I thought it could be a fun way to connect to and learn about both the past in general and the diarist’s life specifically, and a low-stakes attempt to do something outside of my usual creative box. I looked up each title on IMDB and Wikipedia and very quickly learned that all of the movies the diarist and her husband watched in 1923 were silent films (the first movie with synchronized sound didn’t release until three years later), which: no thank you!!! I’m not a regular, modern-day movie person. I’m absolutely not a silent movie person. Nevertheless.

In the process of trying to figure out how I’d approach this project, I poked around the Oregon Theater Project website to see if any of the theaters the diarist and her husband visited were still standing and/or operational (no), and I walked over to my neighborhood video rental store to see if they (1) had any of the titles for rent (yes), (2) had DVD or VCR players for rent so I could actually watch any of the titles I might rent (I forgot to ask), and (3) had any information or advice about how to watch a silent movie (no)—or where to find the music that would have accompanied each title when it was screened for live audiences (no) so that I could play the same soundtrack while watching the movies at home; or whether any local movie theaters screened silent films with live musical performances (not to their knowledge).

The front of Portland's last-standing and much-loved VHS and DVD rental store, Movie Madness.

Pretty quickly I knew that following through with this approach was more effort than I was willing to put forth. The juice, as they say, would not be worth the squeeze. So I decided instead to watch a movie at each of Portland’s historic or independently owned movie theaters, and I gave myself until the end of 2025 to do so. Close enough in spirit, and a much more manageable endeavor.

I ended up with 16 theaters on my list. (Some people will not consider some of these theaters to be independently owned. I wasn’t super strict with my definition—basically, any movie theater that (1) isn’t a big-box, brand name theater (AMC, Cinemark, Regal, etc.) and (2) is in the city went on my list.). To date, I’ve visited 11 of them, in the following order:

There are five theaters I definitely won’t be visiting, as they cater to an audience that I’m not part of and/or their earliest showtimes are too late in the day for me (my hyperactive autistic brain has a very early bedtime):

For all intents and purposes, I consider this project complete.

*

When I first started this project, I planned to make a very simple mini album documenting it, inspired by Jamaica’s “see it live” mini album and her practice of saving movie ticket stubs.

Screenshot from Pinterest of a mini album documenting the concerts attended by memorykeeper Jamaica.
Source
Screenshot from Pinterest of a ticket stubs collected by memorykeeper Jamaica.
Source

I envisioned including a full-bleed photo of each movie’s title screen (or, alternately, each theater’s marquee) on one side of a spread and colored or patterned paper and the movie ticket stub on the other—or, like Jamaica did here, affixing the ticket stub to a sheet of transparency over the photo of the movie’s title screen (or the theater’s marquee).

Screenshot from Pinterest of a mini album by memorykeeper Jamaica.
Source
Screenshot from Pinterest of a mini album by memorykeeper Jamaica.
Source

Going into this project, I was also hopeful that more theaters would have photo booths, and that I’d be able to incorporate the photo strips into a potential mini album. Alas, only two of the theaters I visited have photo booths—Laurelhurst Theater and Kennedy School Theater—and neither of them are film, neither of them produce strips in the traditional/expected orientation, and they’re both branded. Sad! (I do appreciate that both photo booths are reasonably priced ($6.00 card, $5.00 cash) and both give you two strips with the same frames, though I don’t like that one strip is color.)

Photo booth strip and movie ticket stub from Laurelhurt Theater, where I saw "Conclave."
Photo booth strip and movie ticket stub from Kennedy School Theater, where I saw "The Substance."

At this point, I don’t plan to make a mini album documenting this project. Uniformity is important to me in a memorykeeping project like this. If I were to make a mini album documenting this endeavor, I’d want for every spread to follow the same formula. That’s not possible here because I don’t have a title screen photo for each movie, I don’t have a photo of each theater’s marquee (some theaters don’t even have a marquee), I don’t want to use a movie poster for each movie, and the movie ticket stubs (“ticket stubs”) are, frankly, pathetic (I will never shut up about the decline and disappearance of well-designed, quality-crafted physical ephemera). Also—I’m sorry!—movies just aren’t that important to me. I don’t feel compelled to document this project beyond this blog post, and I don’t want to spend more time or other resources on it.

Ticket "stubs" from the movies I saw as part of this project, each in its own 3-inch by 4-inch pocket in a 6-inch by 8-inch page protector.

My primary takeaway from this project: more than not being a movie person, I’m not a going-to-the-movies person.

At the movies, there’s too much simultaneous sensory stimuli for my brain to handle. Things that other people can ignore, or that other people don’t even notice, command all of my attention (autistic brains don’t habituate to sensory input the way that non-autistic brains do; we are constantly taking in everything around us, which is why we become so overstimulated so easily and so often). Things like temperature; the volume and complexity of on- and off-screen noises; off-screen movement, which is especially disruptive in theaters that have seat-side food/drink service during the movie; smells—of food, of people, of the facility; and, as in one theater I visited (not pictured), visual clutter (T.G.I. Friday’s-style flair all over the walls, including above and on either side of the screen).

All of these things make it very difficult for me to actually take in the movie: my brain is too overwhelmed by all of the other sensory input it’s inundated with, and I’m too focused on not having an autistic meltdown in public. And that’s before factoring in the whole host of other health issues I have that make existing in public inconvenient, uncomfortable, stressful, etc.!

Title screen of "Conclave" as seen from the very back of the theater at Laurelhurst Theater in Portland, OR.

Do I regret doing this project? Do I feel like it was a waste of time or money? No. I got in a lot of good walks, I saw some parts of Portland I don’t spend much time in, I learned about two photo booths that weren’t previously on my radar (always a win, even when they’re not film), and I learned something important about myself—I learned why I don’t enjoy going to the movies. Having clarity about any aspect of yourself is always helpful.

Will this new knowledge about myself stop me from going to see the Michael Jackson biopic in a theater on release day? Absolutely not. Michael was my first-ever autistic hyperfocus, which developed instantly upon my mom playing for me one evening the first record she ever owned—the Jackson 5’s ABC. I was nine years old, the same age she’d been when the record was released. I will use all of my spoons and every last drop of my sensory and social batteries to experience this movie in person, among like-minded fans.

The iconic Hollywood Theater marquee in Portland, OR, advertising then-current showings of the movies "Queer," "Heretic," and "Flow."

Best marquee: Hollywood Theater. For sure the most iconic movie theater marquee in Portland, and one of the most well-known alongside that of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.

Coolest campus: Kennedy School Theater. I wish I’d had more time to explore this place when I was there. (I haven’t gone back to explore it because I have no reason to return other than to explore it and returning only to explore it isn’t worth the spoons for me right now.)

Favorite title sequence: Gladiator II. My relief when it was confirmed it wasn’t made by AI.

Movie I most enjoyed watching: Conclave. Visually stunning.

Theaters I’m most likely to watch another movie at (if I continue to go to the movies after this project): Bagdad Theater (below) or Laurelhurst Theater. Bagdad is enormous, which means it’s very unlikely I’d ever be seated near anyone else; I like that it has balcony seating; overall it’s just a vibe; and it’s close enough to my apartment. Laurelhurst is the closest of the two theaters with a photo booth, and also I love their light fixtures (see two photos above).

Movie screen at Bagdad Theater in Portland, OR, displaying the title of the movie "Companion," as seen from the balcony.

Total cost of the project: $91.50, which is less than I thought I’d spend. To be fair, 10 of the 11 movies I went to were matinees; I didn’t buy any concessions at any movie; I purchased 10 of my 11 tickets in person, which was at least $1.00 cheaper per ticket than buying online; and I either walked to or parked in free zones for 10 of the 11 movies.

*

For the curious, here are the movies the diarist recorded in her diary in 1923, listed in the order she and her husband saw them. Titles are linked to their IMDB page. A review, if offered, is in parentheses.

Sending Smiles: a mini zine

Leave a reply

This summer, I went for a lot of walks. I took tons of photos during those walks, including of the various sidewalk smiley faces I spotted. And then I made a mini zine of some of them 🙂

A sheet of paper with images of sidewalk smiley faces that hasn't yet been folded into a zine and a smiley face greeting card atop my desk.

This was my first-ever attempt at making a zine and I’m both pleased and surprised to report that I’m happy with how it turned out (a miracle). I used a single sheet of paper and followed this tutorial from Austin Kleon on how to fold and cut it (he rips his, I cut mine).

Before I started printing, I used an unfolded one-page zine from my collection to sketch a little diagram on a post-it note to make sure I ordered and oriented my pages correctly. Then, I made a template in Photoshop Elements. Because my regular-degular printer doesn’t do full-bleed printing, I fucked around a bit with the sizing and spacing of each page/rectangle layer in Photoshop to try to get the white border as uniform as possible on all sides of each page. Because I have zero actual art skills—I can’t sketch or draw or paint to save my life (sad!)—the front of the zine is a scan of the front of a greeting card from my collection that happens to very perfectly fit the smiley face theme.

I printed the front panel in color and the rest in black and white. The smiley faces in the last spread are a little hard to see in the accompanying photo—the one on the left is jack-o’-lantern-esque, the one on the right is in line with the cracks in the concrete. My favorite smilies are—in order—the one on the right side of the second spread (third pic below) and the one on the left side of the first spread (second pic below).

Front cover of my "sending smiles" mini zine, featuring the front of a smiley face greeting card that I scanned in and sized down to fit the zine.
First spread of my "sending smiles" zine. A different sidewalk smiley face is printed in black and white on each page.
Second spread of my "sending smiles" zine. A different sidewalk smiley face is printed in black and white on each page.
Third spread of my "sending smiles" zine. A different sidewalk smiley face is printed in black and white on each page.
Back cover of the "sending smiles" zine, featuring a peace sign, a heart, and a smiley face drawn into concrete.

Originally this mini zine was going to be an edition of one—it was going to be a gift for only my former roommate, to whom I texted all these photos in real time as I found them and who always enjoyed them so much. I decided to print a copy for another friend in New York after a recent long phone call that helped encouraged me to start making and memorykeeping and blogging again. And then I decided to also print copies for each of my three kids. For the two who aren’t currently here with me, I bought these fun smiley face greeting cards at Powell’s to send the zines in. So cute!

Two hot pink greeting cards with 5 rows of 4 yellow smiley faces each covering the front of the card.

Summer walks

3 Replies

One of the items on my 2024 summer bucket list was “go for more—and longer—walks” (meaning: “longer than the one-mile zig-zag that I sometimes do through my neighborhood”). And that I did. Beginning June 1 through September 15—my arbitrary “start of summer” and “end of summer” dates for this project—I walked about 215 miles.

Photo of my shadow on the sidewalk.

While I did track roughly how many miles I walked out of curiosity, I wasn’t concerned with—and didn’t track—how many steps I took each day (I don’t even own a device that would do this) or how often I walked. This wasn’t an exercise goal for me. The idea behind this summer bucket list item was to spend more time outside, see more of Portland, and, for very predictable reasons (pollution, gas prices, maintenance costs), cut back on driving. And the fantasy of it was that I’d magically make friends and/or meet-cute the love of my life while out walking. I definitely spent more time outside and cut back on driving. I definitely didn’t magically make friends or meet-cute the love of my life. Sad!

Photo of downtown Portland from the East end of the Burnside Bridge.

I ran (heh) many of my errands this summer by walking: I walked to the library, to the pharmacy, to the post office, to the grocery store, to doctor appointments, to a haircut, to (and through!) parks and gardens and bookstores and cute shops full of things I both want and can’t afford. Some of those errands were less than a mile round-trip, others were closer to (or further than) ten. Many evenings I finished my day with a short two-mile loop around my neighborhood. Like many autistics, I struggle with transitions, even when they’re expected, planned, and/or wanted. I’ve found that walking a mile or two is a really good transition activity for my brain, especially at the end of the day.

I didn’t see as much of Portland via these walks as I’d hoped, in large part because I’m an extremely anxious and burnt-out autistic with very low and sensitive social and sensory batteries and tend to stick to what I know and what I know is my neighborhood and those immediately surrounding it.

Photo of dense wildflowers in the yard of a Ladd's Addition neighborhood.

My favorite part of these walks was finding little treasures along the way. Most of the things I found were on the ground. A few of them were hanging onto a telephone pole or wall by their last thread. I collected them all in a document box. I’m not yet sure what to do with it all aside from take a few flat-lay photos. Maybe a photo zine/book/album?

Photo of a document box full of small items I found on my walks. Items include things like playing cards, painted rocks, flyers, receipts, pin-back buttons, etc.

I really enjoyed this summer bucket list item. While I didn’t see as much of the city as I’d hoped, I did accomplish my goals of spending more time outside and cutting back on driving. Do I plan to keep at it? Absolutely. Will I walk as frequently or as far during the cold and wet months? Absolutely not. I don’t anticipate going on regular walks, and certainly not longer ones, until next spring.

(As much as I enjoyed my walks this summer, I would’ve rather spent the season hiking in the Gorge or the Coastal Range than walking in the city. I didn’t because I (1) prefer to hike alone, (2) had a few pretty intense and scary mental illness episodes while hiking alone throughout the 2022 season (the last time I went hiking) and haven’t felt safe hiking alone since, and (3) don’t know anyone to hike with while. Walking around the city, where I’m never very far from home and have plenty of people around to ask for help if I need it, seemed like a smart compromise.)

Truthfully, I’d like to graduate to biking around the city next year and, mental stability pending, save the walking for the hiking trails. Is it likely I’ll be mentally stable enough to return to hiking? Doubt. Do I have a bike? No. Do I know anyone I could borrow one from? Also no. Do I have the money to buy one? Definitely no. Did they just remove the BIKETOWN station that was inches from my apartment and with it some of the motivation and convenience to rent a bike? They did. Do I know how to ride a bike? I do. Do I know how to ride a bike in traffic? Absolutely not. Am I legitimately scared to try? Yes. Will I let any of those things stop me from trying? Almost certainly. We’ll have to wait till next year to find out.

* * *

Although I’m wearing running shoes in the photo at the top of the post, I walked almost all of this summer’s 215 miles in a pair of Birks that I wore to the bone.

Photo of my Birkenstock soles, worn down to the cork footbed.
Photo of my Birkenstock soles, worn down to the cork footbed.

Could I buy a “better” shoe that’s specifically designed for walking? For sure. Do I want to? Hard no. I love my Arizonas. And of all the pairs I have (I have multiple pairs, some for wearing inside and some for wearing outside; they’re sensory heaven for my feet), I especially love this pair. I love that all the miles I walked in them and all the love I have for them is clearly evident with even the briefest glance at them.