Meet Me Downtown

With a countdown from local newsman and former downtown resident Dan Marries,  the brand-new marquee at The Screening Room on Congress Street was lit up Friday night to the cheers of a crowd of a couple hundred celebrants who filled the north lane of Congress.

The obligatory self-congratulatory build-up included on-stage recognition of people that made it happen, such as Michael Keith and architects Ibarra and Rosano, joyful appreciation from Arizona Media Arts Center denizens Giulio Scalinger and Claudia Jesperson, and political speeches.

After the new marquee was lit up, the Fox Theatre marquee–one block to the west, and the Rialto Theatre marquee–two blocks to the east, were turned on as well, in a symbolic reference to the fact that the three marquees have been installed and lighted just within the last several years.

Even as controversy envelops the property one block east of The Screening Room, the north side of the 6th Avenue to Scott Avenue block seems to be on its way back to vitality.  The Screening Room’s bright, but appropriately-scaled marquee, is the new visual anchor of that block, but it is flanked by the new Zen Rock nightclub, and the soon-to-open steak restaurant, A Steak in the Neighborhood.

The Screening Room, a cozy independent cinema on Congress Street, now has a real movie theater marquee, as of Tuesday morning. 

Congress Street is narrowed to one lane between 6th Avenue and Scott Avenue, so that workers can complete the installation of the sign.  The marquee was paid for by the Arizona Media Arts Center (AzMAC), which owns and manages the theater, and by a matching Facade Improvement Grant from the City of Tucson.

As noted before in this blog, the marquee will give The Screening Room a much-needed boost in its visibility and profile.   The theater is the home of the annual Arizona International Film Festival, and what AzMAC calls “Extraordinary Films Not Shown on Ordinary Screens”.

A lighting ceremony is planned for Friday, October 30 at 6:00pm, 127 E. Congress St.

The Rialto Theatre Foundation and Rialto Block Project LLC (Don Martin and Scott Stiteler) have reached an agreement that will allow the Foundation to continue to occupy the so-called “Green Room” and office building at 211-215 E. Broadway Blvd., as well as the storefront bay at 316 E. Congress St., adjacent to the theatre lobby, until September 1, 2009. 

A release dated August 16 quotes Scott Stiteler, expressing hope that the two parties can come to an agreement “regarding a permanent resolution of matters related to the Theatre’s needs for space.”

The announcement gives the Rialto Theatre Foundation two weeks beyond an August 18 deadline to use the properties while it continues to negotiate for a longer term lease.  A judge had given the Foundation until August 18 at a July hearing that was held to determine if Stiteler and Martin could evict the Foundation from the spaces then.

While the spaces in question are owned by Rialto Block Project LLC, the theatre itself is owned by the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District, whose board of directors has been involved in the negotiations.   The Rialto Theatre Foundation operates the theatre on behalf of Rio Nuevo. 

The Foundation has used the spaces for free but has expressed willingness to pay rent.   The two parties have not yet agreed on a lease term, and there does not seem to be a shared vision of the long-term space needs of the theatre or the relationship between the theatre and the rest of the block.  Nor does there seem to be a shared vision of the relationship between the Foundation and its landlord, the City of Tucson/Rio Nuevo, a circumstance that is very puzzling.

Rio Nuevo and the City of Tucson, for which Rio Nuevo is a proxy, have an inherent interest in protecting their asset, one of the few completed projects in Rio Nuevo.  Rio Nuevo and the City also have an interest in fostering private-sector investment and development in Downtown, which means they don’t want to chase off Stiteler and Martin.   This apparent dilemma need not play out as if Rio Nuevo had to choose sides.  

Nonetheless, the theatre itself is a unique National Register asset, and Rio Nuevo has a compelling rational interest in seeing this asset protected and enhanced.  From an outside perspective, however, there appears to be a reluctance to demonstrate leadership in protecting one of Rio Nuevo’s four completed projects.

Judge Michael Miller has ruled that the Rialto Theatre Foundation has not committed “forcible detainer” of the spaces that it has occupied for its green room, storage, and administrative office, and can remain in those spaces until  August 18, at which time it must either have a new lease or vacate the premises.  Those spaces are owned by Rialto Block Project LLC, a partnership of Scott Stiteler and Don Martin;  as the plaintiff in a 2-day hearing concluded on Wednesday, Rialto Block Project had sought court approval of an eviction of the Rialto from the spaces within five days.

Essentially, the judge ruled that a 60-day notice agreement made by the Plaintiff Rialto Block Project LLC and the Defendant Rialto Theatre Foundation in early 2008 was in force, and that a 60-day notice period had commenced on June 19 when Rialto Block Project demanded a written lease or possession of the property.

The ruling means that the Rialto has bought itself a few more weeks to resolve the issue with a lease or to find alternative space.

The theatre is owned by the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District.

All right, the headline is misleading.  There is no official designation of “Heavy-Metal and Wine-tasting Week”, that I know of.   It’s actually coincidental event planning and marketing, coming soon to Downtown Tucson.

This week, two downtown venues will test the validity of stereotypes of the heavy-metal music demographic and stereotypes of the wine-drinking demographic in Tucson.  Well, no, they’re not actually testing anything.  They’re merely finding new and clever ways to draw customers to their businesses, but the upcoming heavy-metal and wine-tasting events at Old Town Artisans and Club Congress will give at least anecdotal evidence of the compatibility of these cultural phenomena.

More perplexing than the idea of an event pairing heavy-metal music with wine-tasting, perhaps, is the fact that two entertainment programmers in Downtown Tucson had the same idea for this unusual combination, booking them within a week of one another!

Neither David Slutes, the entertainment director at Club Congress, nor Beverly Bethel, the entertainment coordinator at Old Town Artisans, knew the other was planning such an event;  nonetheless, within five days, Downtown has two such fiestas.

Bethel has scheduled “For Earth Below”, a Black Sabbath cover band, to perform Friday, July 24 in the courtyard at Old Town Artisans, 201 N. Court Ave., at the same time she’s booked Frank-Lin Beverage’s wine-tasting, a flight of five wines for $5.  The event runs from 7 to 10pm, with a $2 cover, $6 more for a La Cocina buffet. 

But wait, there’s more!  Someone named Cliff will be creating body-art painting at 6pm, and Hippy Dippy Ice Cream Co. will be serving in the Old Town breezeway. 

Meanwhile, Slutes of Club Congress has brought together the Gods of Metal and the Gods of Wine on Tuesday, July 28, with a show by The Metal Shakespeare Company, a band out of Oregon, and a wine-tasting event hosted by Peltier Station Winery of Acampo, California.

The wine-tasting will set you back $13, but the Metal Shakespeare show afterward is free.  Wine-tasting starts at 6:00pm, and doors for the show open at 8:00.  Drink specials will be offered to those wearing their metal best attire.

So bring your leather and enjoy the bouquet.

It’s not often that a benefit event is held in one city to support an institution or facility located over 100 miles away, but the Saturday, July 25 Veterans Benefit Concert at Hotel Congress is just that.  The concert features Tucson’s own classic rock band Still Cruisin’ and the 60’s-style “girl group”, The Shear DeLites, and benefits the Merritt Center and Lodge in the cool Mogollon pines of Payson, Arizona. 

The Tucson connection to Merritt?  Local veterans often attend retreats at Merritt, in a special program series designed to help returning combat veterans “learn to recognize the triggers of negative combat experience and learn ways to release negativity and reorder their personal priorities” (www.merrittcenter.org).  You will undoubtedly hear more about the Merritt Center and this event by fellow TucsonCitizen.com blogger Mike Brewer of Veteran Veritas.  Brewer has brought several veterans up to retreats and other programs at Merritt.

Hotel Congress’ entertainment director David Slutes says that planning for the event has inspired him to host a veterans event every year.  “It’s so great to be honoring those who’ve served and to do something tangible to help them get back some of what they left overseas for us,” said Slutes.  “This is a great way for us at the Hotel Congress to fulfill our mission of community outreach.” Classic rock isn’t the usual Club Congress musical niche, but there is an All-American appeal to that type of music that crosses generational boundaries.

The cover charge for the 6-10pm event is a requested $5 donation to Merritt, a 501c3 organization.  Veterans get in free, and several program graduates will be in attendance to answer questions about the program. 

For more information, call Brewer at 520.808.3907, or the Concert Message Line at 520.540.7000.

As negotiations continue for the lease of the green room on Broadway and two small storefront bays on Congress Street, the Rialto Theatre has been recognized by Pollstar, a concert industry trade publication, as having sold more tickets than all but 41 nightclubs the world over in 2009.

Pollstar ranks the Top 100 Worldwide Club Venues by tickets sold, and for the first six months of 2009, Tucson’s Rialto Theatre is in 42nd place, with 36,828 tickets sold.  That’s more tickets than the Vic Theatre or Park West in Chicago sold in the same time period, more than the Palladium Ballroom in Dallas, Las Vegas’ House of Blues, Portland’s Aladdin Theater, and the McMenamins Crystal Ballroom of Portland.

The Rialto moved up from a prior ranking of 58.  The rankings were published in the July 20 issue of Pollstar.   Number one on the Pollstar ranking is the 9:30 Club of Washington D.C., which sold 135,386 tickets.  A large gap separates #1 from #2, as the second-ranked club, Brussels, Belgium’s Ancienne Belgique, sold 98,215 billets. The club ranked #100, Birmingham, UK’s 02 Academy Birmingham, sold 15,177.

Rialto Foundation Executive Director Doug Biggers credits GM and booker Curtis McCrary for bringing in quality artists that have attracted strong ticket sales.  “(McCrary) continues to amaze me,” said Biggers.  And, he offers a shout-out to the Rialto’s strong sound quality and its “fabulous audiences”. 

The Rialto is managed by the non-profit Rialto Theatre Foundation, operating in a 1919 theatre building that is on the National Register of Historic Places.   The theatre building is owned by the Rio Nuevo Multipurpose Facilities District.

I had never seen “The Great Escape” until seeing it Saturday night at the Fox Theatre, but I swear I’ve seen every episode of “Hogan’s Heroes” at least 15 times, so it was like old times watching the ingenuity of the prisoners as they plotted their breakout from a Nazi prison camp. 

For all the talk on “Hogan’s Heroes” about going to “the cooler” for punishment, I don’t remember ever SEEING the cooler on that show, but Steve McQueen’s character in “The Great Escape” got to know the stark bunker very well.  Good thing he had a baseball and glove to help him pass the time.

Like the ridiculous TV series about POW’s out-smarting their buffoonish Nazi captors, “The Great Escape” provided a lot of laughs at the expense of the Germans.   But unlike the TV series, which went on the air a few years later, the film mixed the gags in with some heavy drama.  The war had been over just 18 years when this film was released, and knowing how raw some of those wounds must still have been, I felt rather guilty for enjoying the humor in the middle of all the senseless tragedy. 

The movie title was apt for what we did in escaping the evening triple-digits in the Fox’s air-conditioned comfort for three hours on a monsoon Saturday night in Tucson.  Fox historians know that the air-conditioning was one of the selling points for the theatre in its early days, as it was Tucson’s first cooled public building.

According to the summer film series’ organizer Herb Stratford, the attendance was about 300; that may not seem like a huge number, but all the best seats were filled, for sure, and it had the feel of a good crowd.   It was probably enough to make a modest profit.  I saw at least two members of the Fox board, which is nice to see. 

Stratford introduced the film from the stage, with his stalwart volunteer Tom at his side.  The audience associates Stratford with the Fox; his presence seems reassuring and familiar to the crowd, even to those who don’t know him well enough to consider him a friend.

Before leaving home for the show, I had seen Facebook messages from people who urged others to join them and their friends at the movie.  Viral marketing is free and effective, something that the Fox must use to get the word out with the very little working capital it has now.

Driving past the theatre looking for parking, we saw a line of movie-goers waiting to buy tickets at the Fox box office; the line stretched to the legacy box office midway across the entry area.  That was encouraging.  The box office folks said that only about 10 tickets were purchased in advance, so virtually all of the 300-ish tickets were sold at the door.  Good thing two ticket windows were open.  Tucson is a late-arriving town, and we were no different.

I was glad to see that it wasn’t super-easy to find a spot to park on the street; it would have been disappointing if spots were vacant within a block or two of the theatre on an event night. 

Alas, I got lucky and found a spot on Scott Avenue next to the old Indian Village Building that had just been vacated (the parking space, not the building, which was vacated about 3-4 years ago).  I was looking for the free spots on the street, though I know there are plenty of off-street spaces available. 

On-street parking is always free after 5:00 and on weekends in Downtown.  If you have to walk two blocks from either a garage or a curb-side space, it’s still a shorter distance than you would walk from your car to the mega-plex.  And there are fewer panhandlers downtown than at many strip centers around Tucson.  No, really, I’m serious about that.  It used to be my job to worry about such things.

It Happened One Night

Next Saturday the feature is 5-Oscar-winner “It Happened One Night”, a 1934 Frank Capra film starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.  Show time is 7:30pm.  Regular admission is $8, and it’s just $6 for students, seniors, and military.  The air is cool, the theatre is even cooler, and the popcorn is cheaper than at the mega-plex.

Saturday’s 1:00pm matinee will be Chapters 5-8 of “The Undersea Kingdom” serial.  All tickets are $5.

It’s a good thing Herb Stratford took a break from his sabbatical to put on the summer film series, otherwise Tucson’s movie and performance palace would be dark for what, five months at least?!?

I saw on the Fox website that there is a “concert” scheduled for October 14, featuring Lisa Williams.  I wasn’t familiar with her, but I clicked for more information, thinking I would read about what musical style Ms. Williams performs.  Alas again, Lisa Williams is not a musician at all, but a “medium” or “clairvoyant”. 

I wonder if Ms. Williams can predict if there will be other shows at the Fox this fall.  Or if she can divine when the Fox will emerge from this strange limbo it’s in.  The overhead is gone, but so is the programming (other than the summer movies).