A Farewell to the Paris Theatre

When I was 26 years old, I moved to New York City.  I had, for as long as I could remember, had an unabashed love of New York City.  I remember as a child pouring over maps of the neighborhoods I would find in encyclopedias and looking at the subway map and imagining living in different spots & just going on adventures.  I grew up a country boy with a city dreamer's heart, and New York City felt about as far away as Pluto or Narnia sandwiched between a Dairy Queen & a corn field.  Getting to live there, just for a year, was a dream that I would never deprive myself of even though it ended up being one of the hardest & loneliest years of my life (for reasons that had nothing to do with the city, and for reasons I'll save for a different day/post).

But what I want to talk about here is what I did my final weekend in New York City.  It was a beautiful day in either late April or early May (it's shocking to think of how momentous occasions become just wavy lines in the background if you put enough distance between then-and-now).  I decided that, as it was my last Saturday off before the move back to my old life, that I would indulge and spend the day doing only things that I love or had put off while living in New York City.  I was broke from the move so most of the things had to be either cheap or free, and so I set off at the corner of 110th and 5th Avenue, and walked the entire length of the park, with my Smart Phone app guiding me to make sure I didn't miss any major landmarks.  I paused for a copy of the Times and a sandwich at Zabar's, picnicking near Turtle Pond, and after walking at least 51 blocks (likely more as I meandered around the city), I stopped for a drink at McGee's Pub (which inspired the fictional MacLaren's in How I Met Your Mother).  Not content to end my day just yet, I concluded at the Paris Theatre, which was briefly featured in one of my other favorite shows Sex and the City, sitting in as close to the spot where Carrie Bradshaw sat as I could get, eating Whoppers (like she did on the show) and watching Potiche with Catherine Deneuve.  One of my favorite episodes of the series, it felt like the perfect coda to a day I didn't really want to end, and had misgivings about even needing to happen in the first place, as it was about Carrie, not knowing what the future would bring, going on a date with herself, perhaps not sure if she'd ever find love with anything other than herself and her city.

The Paris Theatre had been a New York landmark decades before either Carrie Bradshaw nor I found it as a haven in a time of uncertainty in our lives.  Founded in 1948 (the ribbon was cut by no less a cinematic luminary than Marlene Dietrich), it has been a mainstay of Manhattan for decades.  Known for film premieres & its consistent French fare, it stands as a lovely compliment to the nearby Plaza Hotel, another storied monument.  With the closing of the Ziegfeld in 2016, though, it became a solitary icon-the only single-screen Manhattan theater left in a world where such things increasingly don't exist anymore.  This past week it was announced that, barring some sort of miracle investment, the Paris Theatre will close its doors, as a result leaving only multiplexes in its wake.

I have not been to the Paris Theatre since that night, since while I've visited New York many times, I haven't made the time to revisit one of the best and also loneliest days of my life.  I think about it all-the-time, though, and it made me cry to think a place that was a sanctuary from me during a time of uncertainty would be disappearing.  Movie theaters have always been my safe space, the place where I go when I'm feeling lost or alone or scared, but single-screen ones hold a special place in my heart because they have been so important to me in times of trouble.  Whether it's the Paris Theatre on my last day in New York or the Uptown Theater which I went to after my first real breakup or the tiny little one-screen theater I would go to nearly every week in my home town (the only place other than my house I ever felt like I belonged as a young, introverted gay boy in a conservative rural community), they stand as a testament of who I have been.  I understand in a world where superheroes rule the cineplex that a little theater like the Paris can's survive in the brutal commercial environment of Manhattan, but it makes me sad nonetheless that a place so steeped in New York City culture can just fade away into our memories, one less lighthouse in a city that never sleeps.