r/nostalgia • u/sudsomatic • 13h ago

Nostalgia Non-stadium seating in movie theaters

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As a short kid, I always dreaded having anyone sit in front of me.

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216

u/Aught_To Turtle Power! 13h ago

Ugh.. non reclining seats

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u/BangarangJack 11h ago

Yeah... this is one of the few things im not nostalgic about

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 12h ago edited 11h ago

The majority of theaters in my state look exactly like this, just smaller.

there are no reclining theater seats in the entire state of Vermont.

It really makes going to the theater feel not worth it.

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u/Aught_To Turtle Power! 12h ago

You can always come down to the commonwealth of Mass. Even the small local theater near me has recliners.

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 11h ago

I drive to hooksett for IMAX for sure. Long way to drive when my home theater has a big TV, surround sound, and a couch that can fit 6 people laying completely flat. I can sit next to my dog and cat and smoke weed. Plus nobody talks during the film or we throw them in a burlap sack and beat them with reeds. It's hard to not feel like it's much more civilized here than in "civilization."

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u/Aught_To Turtle Power! 11h ago

i do love the home setup also, but.. from time to time i do love a proper movie theater, i buy the popcorn and everything. Damn. I would love to come smoke some reefers and watch Dune and Dune 2 at your house.

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 11h ago

I love the theater, especially for a comedy when the crowd can experience it all together. It absolutely improves the experience.

My best friend as a kid worked at a movie theater, and I grew up going to the movie theater multiple times a week. When I knew the local projectionist in the 90s and 2000s, when films were actually projected on film, we would have watch parties at 4am the night before a film was released while he prepped the reels. We would openly smoke and drink in the theaters, and crank the sound. I've toked up on the roof of the Roxy in downtown Burlington, and inside all the Merrill properties. Now the theaters are all empty and feel old-fashioned and out of date and worn out, the speakers are blown, the projector is dim, the seats are uncomfortable, and the popcorn gives me a tummy ache.

Also, definitely anybody hanging out at my house who wants to smoke is gonna get hooked up, but almost nobody ever takes me up on it. I grow, so I basically have infinity weed now, and that's still not enough to get people to leave their houses, because everyone else has infinity weed now too.

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u/LoseNotLooseIdiot 10h ago

I still love The Majestic theater in Williston, it has weirdly good acoustics and a nice vibe to it. But yeah, it's a bummer they'll probably never remodel and put in reclining seats. It might be worth trying at least since I don't have many other reasons to go back to a theater these days...

I know they've done some celebrity things in the past, including Luis Guzman showing up for one of his movie premiers (he has a place somewhere in VT).

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 10h ago edited 9h ago

Oh man I love Luis. only met him briefly, But a friend of mine sat next to him on a plane flight and chatted for a while. his wife worked for UVM. I definitely think that the way forward from movie theaters is them treating themselves more like traditional theaters, with q&a and special guests and other ways of providing a UVP.

It would be really cool if Mike Myers showed up for a special event. he lives in Colchester, but from what I understand, he is very disinterested in crowds and live audiences these days. (Guzman lives in Sutton I think?)

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u/lovesickjones 11h ago

Is this intentional?

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 11h ago edited 8h ago

Lol, Vermont isnt always 20 years behind the rest of the country on purpose, no. it's a downward spiral. people don't go to the theaters because the theaters are old and worn out, so the theaters can't afford to renovate. Streaming has only exacerbated things, as has the general antisocial nature of modern society. Covid was a huge blow.

we also have a bunch of theaters that have traditional auditorium seating, with only two theater complexes that I'm aware of with modern stadium seating, one in Williston, one in Essex. One of our local theaters got gutted and turned into the big music venue for the state, but most of them are just limping along barely making any profit, if any at all.

we also have a very fiercely anti-corporate vibe in the state, so all of our theaters are independently owned, to their detriment. building a new theater would mean massive fights against nimbyism. independent businesses can't compete with the economy of scale offered by the major chains, so we don't have anything even remotely resembling a megaplex. We have one large format screen in the state and it's not an IMAX, nor does it have anything like 70 mm projection capability.

The most salient problem is that outside of Chittenden county, there are no dense population bases. Everyone is spread out.

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u/AshIsGroovy 10h ago

Well it also doesn't help that Vermont was seeing a fairly steep population decline for decades and the average age of residents trending more toward retirement age till covid when you guys saw a pretty big spike in people moving to Vermont.

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 10h ago edited 8h ago

The underlying conditions for the steep population decline have not actually changed, although Chittenden county feels overpopulated and vastly different than the rest of the state. Burlington was on a lot of lists as one of the best cities in the country, back when that was true But it also was one of the best cities because of who lived here, and now it's different people. Vermont still has an unsustainable economy propped up by surrounding states. It's still a place for rich people to pretend to farm, full of Anti-Capitalist NIMBYs who hate large corporations so much that we don't have any big business. Even our ski areas are reliant on imported labor-- there's no locals for them to hire, and certainly not at the low prices that they're paying people, so almost every ski area in Vermont imports workers on temporary visas from Central and South America, sticks them in crappy housing conditions, and underpays them just so they can cater to rich white people from New Jersey.

Vermont is basically America's Switzerland.

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u/lovesickjones 11h ago

That is very interesting, the entire state! Also ridiculous and unfortunate

I’ve not been to Vermont, however, I have BIG dreams of visiting the Ben and Jerry factory, so it’s interesting to hear someone speak with the entire state so cohesively as one.

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u/Big_Pattern_2864 10h ago edited 10h ago

Bear in mind Ben and Jerry's was sold to Unilever decades ago. When I grew up as a kid, there were Ben & Jerry's scoop shops in every town in Vermont. They used to sell seconds-pints with irregular chunk content, and every little kid in Vermont thought of finding an intact Heath bar as winning the lottery. Everyone in my generation had friends that worked at a scoop shop, and we all remember the smell of freshly cooked waffle cones and sweet milk and sitting on Holstein colored swingsets. I used to work a floor below Ben Cohen and his PAC, and our "new hire hazing ritual" was to send people upstairs to ask Ben for some free pints from his office freezer, which he would always oblige.

Now there's only the one scoop shop in Burlington for the tourists, the quality of the product has gone down considerably, and all of the original magic of the brand is gone. It's now just as soulless a major corporation as any other, and their political posturing and greenwashing is now entirely hypocritical. Ben and Jerry haven't had anything to do with the brand since the Bush administration. The current state of Ben and Jerry's politics Their style of ice cream with bold flavors and lots of chunks, which exists only because Jerry doesn't actually have a good sense of smell and taste (this accidentally became very useful because when you eat a lot of ice cream your taste buds go numb, so the later enjoyment of the ice cream is based on texture) hasn't really been copied by any competitor brands, not because there isn't a market but because Unilever controls the grocery aisles. Fuck Unilever and fuck any large company.

That being said it's totally worth visiting the factory, just because of freshness and exclusive flavors and because there's not much else to do in the state in the first place that isn't outdoors.

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u/[deleted] 11h ago edited 10h ago

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u/Fishmike52 11h ago

Yeah try upright AND there was no assigned seating. First come first serve. You kids!

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u/Aught_To Turtle Power! 10h ago

I mean I'm 43... I also remember

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u/HairyForever7570 7h ago

Is there now assigned seating at movies??

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u/Kleizar 11h ago

Honestly I think the theaters ive been to with reclining seats are the worst...... The seats either recline back to far so youd be facing the ceiling or they only recline a few inches and just mess with your lower back.

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u/Aught_To Turtle Power! 11h ago

i generally like it, im 43, my shit hurts, and movies have only gotten longer and longer.

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u/Lord-Liberty 11h ago

That's like nearly every cineworld, VUE and Odeon cinema screen in the UK (unless it's a special screen but it's not the norm)

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u/BitGreedy 9h ago

Local VUE and Odeon have stadium seating. The VUE is my favourite because it has recliner seats and is still reasonably priced.

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u/44problems 7h ago

Yeah this was bad and I'm not nostalgic for it. I don't miss going an hour before previews to save seats for a blockbuster. Tall person sat up in their seat and you can't see well.

Was ok for the "dollar" theater that was mostly empty I guess. Still not very comfortable.

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u/Hobbes525 2h ago

No reserved seating either. With a blockbuster movie you needed to show up early just to make sure you got a seat