Today I took advantage of my new free time, and went to go see a movie during the afternoon. I also decided to try picking up my daughter from her preschool today via Metro Rail, both because she is a big train fan, and to see if it would be feasible to make the trip with my daughter without a car.I started in east Hollywood (at the Sunset/Vermont station) about 11 AM, and took the Metro Red Line subway to the Hollywood/Highland station, which is about a block east of the Grauman's Chinese Theater. The theater was part of the redevelopment which created the Kodak Theater (the annual venue for the Academy Awards) and the Hollywood and Highland complex.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, my first movie-going experience was at the Chinese Theater. My family went to see Star Wars in late 1977 because so many people were saying good things about it (and my brother and I kept bugging my parents enough that they finally gave in).
Back in those days, the ticket booth was located directly in front of the main entrance, and a red awning ran down the middle of the courtyard. Since the redevelopment, the ticket booth has been moved, and the courtyard returned to its original look circa 1927. When I first saw the courtyard after the redevelopment when our news bureau was covering the opening of the new shopping center, I was really struck by how different the courtyard looked, and wondered if the dimensions had been changed. It's funny how the mind remembers things in certain ways.
My family also saw the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve at the Chinese. Right now, Superman Returns is playing there, and it was my first time seeing a movie there since the 1980s. As impressive as the lobby and restrooms and auditorium were, those things didn't make up for the $9 matinee price. My local movie theater, the Vista, looks almost as nice, and is still $5 for matinees. Also, the Chinese theater had a tour walk through the auditorium (they were quiet, but still) while the feature was in the title credits, for Pete's sake.
As for the movie, I had read some lukewarm reviews in the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, so I had lowered expectations. But the movie was far better in my opinion than the critics'. Bryan Singer's adaptation made us cheer for Superman in all the right places, but it also gave us reason to want Lois Lane's new family (fiancee and son) to be able to survive Superman's return from a long absence. And it echoed themes from the first two Christopher Reeve movies so poignantly.
After the movie ended around 2:30 pm, I hurried back to the Red Line station, and made my way downtown to 7th Metro, where I changed trains to the Blue Line, which heads south out of downtown to Long Beach. My destination was only a couple of stations down on the Blue Line, but I was in a hurry because I wanted to avoid the start of the evening commute. I didn't want to be in fully packed trains with my daughter and a stroller.When I was driving my daughter to preschool every morning before work, we would drive down Flower Street through downtown, and regularly see the Metro Blue Line either coming or going down Flower, to the delight of my daughter. I have sometimes pulled over a minute or two to wait for the light rail cars to reach us.
My wife and I have taken our daughter on the Red Line a couple of times for weekend trips (to the Nisei Week parade and the Thai New Year celebration in Hollywood), but she has never been on the Blue Line. My sense was that today's trip was not so much fun for her, and possibly because she was tired out from a full day at preschool. The cars were not so full and everything went smoothly, but we probably won't be making the trip again except in some emergency.
