Here in Chicago I patronize the Logan for domestic releases and Music Box for international stuff.

But I’m not here to talk about those. I’m here to talk about the Empire 6 in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. When I was young, it was a normal mall cinema, they sold concessions, you saw new releases, there was an arcade across the way.

But then the mall started dying. The Empire 6 couldn’t compete with the big new multiplex in town, either, so they either had to close or do something different; they stopped showing expensive new releases and started showing cheaper films. They had a classic movie night. They did second runs of popular films. They showed indie films; before My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a hit, I saw it at the Empire 6. You could rent it for private screenings. And tickets were half the price of the other cinemas in town.

And that was great, and I have lots of fond memories. But. This one time, a local hip-hop group collaborated with some local skaters and a filmmaker to make this forty-minute montage of tricks and lines around town set to the group’s music. Everyone involved was under twenty-five. And they somehow convinced the Empire 6 to host the premier screening.

This was in the early aughts, in South Dakota. Weed was not legal, but the theatre was full of smoke. Drinking, too, and as for sneaking in snacks… it was chaos. Beautiful chaos. We laughed! We cheered! We we there, the whole scene, as a fucking community, legitimized in a way I’ve never really felt before or since by the fact that a real-ass cinema was showing this movie about local guys busting their kneecaps at local spots to local jams.

The Empire 6 was a local theatre that day, not just another business.

The mall kept dying, as all malls did, with the movie theatre being one of the last shops to hold out. I went to college, and stopped coming home summers after a couple years. Eventually it wasn’t home anymore, anyway. But for one wild afternoon, the Empire 6 was the best place to be in the whole known world.