The Conical Glass: The last picture show

Sunday, November 16, 2008

The last picture show

Studio 28 is gone, which means that all the movie theaters of my youth -- the Movies at North Kent, the Quad, the Movies at Woodland, the Alpine Twin, the Northtown, and my favorite, the local art house, the Bijou -- have now closed. I found this great photo online. It just screams "urban sprawl." I'd forgotten all about the Beltline Drive-in next door, with its giant Bugs Bunny and Goofy staring down from the back of the screen. (Here's a better photo of the Beltline -- it's hard to believe Bugs and Goofy had been up there since the 1950s!)

I hadn't been to Studio 28 in probably 20-plus years, but I spent a lot of time there as a kid. The 28 referred not to the number of screens (it had 20 after a 1988 expansion), but to its address on 28th Street. It was on the opposite side of town from where my family lived and no bus line went there. I didn't start driving until I was in my mid-20s, long after I'd left Grand Rapids, so going to Studio 28 meant either having to get a ride from one of my parents or from my friend James, who probably drove me there a hundred times. We'd usually stop in at Believe in Music or Crazy Larry's, the nearby record stores, before or after the show.

Studio 28 was a multiplex of little architectural significance -- its first screen went up in the mid-1960s, long after the heyday of the movie palace. The "big" auditorium was cool, but hardly had the grandeur of, say, the Castro. Its closing just makes me kind of nostalgic for all those "places that are gone," to quote Tommy Keene.

When Joe and I were in Grand Rapids last June, we were walking downtown, on our way to meet friends at one of the many cool new eateries that have sprung up there over the past few years. I was pointing out local landmarks -- the public library I visited almost every day after school, the Civic Theater where I used to usher so I could see shows for free -- and I said, "And down this street was a weird old record store called Dodd's." Then I did a double take, because Dodd's was still there. I couldn't believe it. Local mini-chains like the aforementioned Believe in Music and Crazy Larry's had gone out of business years ago, and yet Dodd's somehow endured.

Even back in the 1980s, Dodd's seemed resolutely old-fashioned; it was run by a guy who seemed ancient to me then (turns out he's in his late 70s now, so he was hardly that old). It was a short walk from my high school so I used to go in every once in a while, though I don't recall buying very much there; I remember picking up the Police's Zenyatta Mondatta there, but it really wasn't the first place you'd look for current releases. It was more of a time warp, a place where you could always find LPs by the sorts of artists who fell out of fashion when the Beatles made it big -- Mitch Miller, the Longines Symphonette and the Platters. There was also a lot of mainstream rock and adult contemporary. I was usually looking for some obscure British import or the latest release by Thomas Dolby or INXS, which never seemed to make it to Dodd's.

I'm not quite sure who shops there now, but the fact that the store endures strikes me as tremendously reassuring. I guess urban renewal hasn't quite touched its block of Division Street, so presumably the rent is low. Because I have a very bad dust/mold allergy, I can't spend a lot of time in used book or record stores, but I couldn't resist stopping into Dodd's. They have quite an amazing selection of still-shrinkwrapped LPs from the 60s, 70s and 80s -- if you have been craving the entire Orleans back catalog on vinyl that has never been touched by human hands, Dodd's is the place to go. I'm not sure serious collectors would be too thrilled with this storage method:

Here's a corner of the store, which looks exactly the same as it did back in the 1980s. Yes, Dodd's carries CDs, but they make up a small fraction of its inventory.

Now that vinyl has come back into favor, maybe a new generation will discover Dodd's.

posted by 125records @ 9:59 PM

3 Comments:

At 4:52 AM, 2fs said…

Dodd's was a trip. I'm guessing the guy owns the building and the store, and he's got nothing else to do, and he makes just enough to cover property taxes... I swear some of those albums have probably been in stock since you shopped there as a teenager.
At 9:51 AM, Taj said…

ahhh - I would go there to buy Joan Armatrading and special ordered Dream Girls...
At 1:30 PM, James said…

I always thought it kind of looked like Bugs and Goofy were giving the drive-in customers the finger!