Concessions

How about those movies, eh, people? Those prices! You know,
the prices for the movies? Don’t even get me started. And what
about those snacks? The movie food? What, is that popcorn covered in
butter churned from the pope’s own sacrosanct Nazi boob-milk? (Fair
enough. That would be expensive.) I mean, movie popcorn is
pretty much as expensive as airplane food is stupid. Airplane food!
Those trays! SPORK! Why is my Salisbury steak like molten volcano lava,
but my dinner roll is like a glob of liquid nitrogen that got pooped
out by the world’s coldest yeti? Whaaat is the deeeeal with
yetiiiiiiiis?!?!?!

So anyways, because the whole country/world is suddenly all
economically fucked (where’d all that money go, BTW? I’d just like to
float a theory here really quick—THIEVING YETIS), maybe you don’t
have $10 or $12 or $35 to go to watch some big-screen bullshit about a
precocious dog that can smell the future. (Spoiler: You’re gonna have a
miscarriage! Bark bark!) Maybe that sounds like a ridiculous
expense for an unemployed or borderline-unemployed person. Or maybe
you are a dirty thief who just downloads movies off the internet and
watches them at home in your cozy ice cave (who gave the yetis internet
access?!). Either way, perhaps you would enjoy a trip to the discount
movie house!

Discount movies are like the real movies, except they’re way cheaper
and every-one you know has already seen them. And also they’re coming
out on DVD approximately 12 seconds from now. For instance, for
the purposes of this column, I dragged myself off the couch and trekked
to the Crest (16505 Fifth Ave NE, Shoreline) during a hurricane to
watch Happy-Go-Lucky, even though the DVD of
Happy-Go-Lucky was literally sitting on the coffee table next to
the couch from whence I had just dragged my sad sack of a self!
GODDAMNIT!

But I joke with you, friends. The Crest is fun, and the experience
of going to the movies is half the point of going to the movies. If you
haven’t been, the Crest is a grubby little building in the deep north
across from a 7-Eleven (for the purposes of cheap snacks) and a
sadly now-defunct bingo hall (for the purposes of spying on the
ghosts of old people). All tickets are $3; the staff is pleasantly
grumpy in a scrappy indie cinema kind of way; and moviegoers, drunk on
their massive savings, feel free to gab, gab, gab all the way through
the film, like they’re at home on their own goddamn ice couches in
their own goddamn ice caves. Goddamn yetis.

Other recession-appropriate movie-watching opportunities in the area
include: West Seattle’s Admiral Theater (all shows $5.50), Federal
Way’s Starplex Cinemas (all shows $2, and $1 on Tuesdays),
Wallingford’s Meaningful Movies (free every Friday), and Community
Cinema at SIFF Cinema (free; its next film is Taking Root: The
Vision of Wangari Maathai, March 28 at noon).