This Blog is not Dead

This blog is not dead and I can prove it. Just last week I was out in the field digging up the remains of old movie theaters which will be written up into drivulous little essays in due time. At this point I've got a backlog of material dating to 2015, October, which I've neglected to get around to for one reason or another.

Actually, the reasons are two fold. One, as I stand awkwardly on the doorstep of middle age, I've begun to care a bit more about my personal finances. Meaning I'd like to have some to speak of.

The second and more pressing reason is that what's left of my creative juices are being squeezed out into a book on Thailand's movie theater. In fact, it's called just that: "Thailand's Movie Theaters: relics, ruin and the romance of escape." After many delays and restarts, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel. Writing for a book, unlike writing for a piss-ant personal blog like this, is no easy feat. Not for a mediocre like me, anyhow. So rather than squander my creativity on senseless blog posts, I've been rerouting them to said book. Again, no easy task.

But in the name of keeping the SEAMTP faithful happy (if any of you still exist), here is a mini-post to prove, once and for all, that I still love doing this work, and that as long as there's a few people out there willing to read what I write and look at my pictures, I'll fulfill my end of the non-existent social contract we don't have between us.

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Welcome to carbon monoxide corner. Better known as Rangsit. Thailand's tailpipe. The most charmless blotch of civilization ever. Within this context of ten-lane, at-grade highways and sub-brutalist retail blocks - completely devoid of plant life - stands an equally charmless stand-alone movie theater.

Say hello to the Petch Rangsit Theater. In its current condition, it's the type of place where street dogs go to die, but not before defecating in it while they're living. Whatever type of grace-saving signage this building once had has been removed, leaving a featureless concrete box covered in soot and tropical mold.

Rangsit was apparently once a relatively charming Bangkok hinterland. An agriculturally productive area highlighted by the eponymous Rangsit Canal. When built, the canal was one of those key infrastructure projects that solidifies a place's economic clout. After completion in the early 1900's, the canal helped further centralize Bangkok as the nation's commercial hub by connecting the Chao Phraya River with the Nakorn Nayok River and opening up huge swaths of land to agricultural production.

The canal made Rangsit into a junction from the beginning. But since the arrival of the highway system, Rangsit has been transformed into one of the country's biggest transit corridors, hence the pollution and general lack of charm.

By the looks of it, The Petch Rangsit Theater was built in the early 1980's, part of the larger commercial quarter described in not-so-glowing terms above. An edge city development predicated on cars and buses from the get go. The lot in front of the theater, in fact, is now a local bus terminus, which indicates that the theater was built to capture that transitory population.

In its working days, the Petch Rangsit was a second run theater that was routinely programmed with triple features, a business model which fits the come-and-go needs of a transient clientele.

Of the several thousand people that pass it on a daily basis en route to or from Bangkok and points beyond, very few likely have an inkling of what it was, or that it once made this slice of automotive hell a little bit better.

The Charoenpon Rama - Pathumthani, Thailand

Timing is everything. In the context of architectural photography it can mean the difference between a functional structure flush with activity and the lifeless grubwork behind ruins porn. Don't get me wrong, whether its called "ruins porn" or abandoned photography, in this post-industrial/post-modern era the detailed documentation of abandoned structures has become an accepted genre and, more critically, an effective tool for preservation.

But that's not the point. The point is that timing is everything. When presented with knowledge of an active stand-alone movie theater in the twilight of its existence one should not procrastinate. Chances are that that golden opportunity will slip away. It certainly did in this case.

Word of the Charoenpon Rama first reached me about 6 years ago. Back then it was an active double feature theater in the workaday Bangkok suburb of Pathumthani. There were roughly 10 such theaters in and around Bangkok when this project commenced. A fact which I suppose I took for granted. By the end of 2013 none of them were left, including the Charoenpon Rama, which, although on my radar since 2009, I had neglected to document while operational. The multi-legged bus journey necessary to reach it from central Bangkok always put me off.

In mid-2012 I was informed the theater had closed.  

The Charoenpon Rama - the last operating stand-alone on Pathumthani Province, now closed.

So, in October 2015, with prior knowledge of its defunct state of existence, I braved the confounding bus routes to see what there was to see. 

The Charoenpon Rama is, or was, the anchor business of Pathumthani's main wet market and bus depot. A soot stained, grime coated kind of place rife with mangy strays and foul smells. At least half of the market stalls were unused, an occupancy rate about on par with the shop-houses encircling the market. Might the theater's closing have had a ripple effect of the overall economy of the quarter?

Inquiries among vendors as to the owner of the theater led me to a nearby internet cafe. I opened the door and was greeted with the co-mingled aroma of BO and flat soda. The shop's young proprietor - owner of the BO - was kind enough to peel himself off his ragged pleather recliner and his on-line strategy game to call his landlord on my behalf. Same owner as the Charoenpon Rama, the landlord. The theater owner picked up, but the conversation went nowhere. He was perfectly disinclined to leave the comforts of his home - apparently just around the corner - so that some sweaty photographer could take pictures inside his forlorn family business. 

"Just shoot it from the outside," he advised smugly over the phone. 

That is unfortunately all that I was able to accomplish on that hot and sticky day. A few half-decent exterior shots of the Charoenpon Rama. While the structure itself is rather standard for a 1970's Thai stand-alone, the dimensional rooftop signage is extraordinary. That font maybe the most dynamic I've ever seen anywhere. It's almost cartoonish in its overwrought extremism. Whoever designed it had a vivid imagination. 

Exquisite signage on the Charoenpon Rama. The light sconces at the top of the International Style pilasters are also a nice touch.  

Amazing signage aside, the highlight of this entire failed excursion was, of all things, the bus ride up and back. That same bus ride that had turned me off to the trip in the first place. On the bus to Pathumthani, the fare collector struck up a conversation as to the freakishly non-touristic route that this Thai speaking foreigner had embarked upon. When he learned that my journey was in the name of movie theater documentation he scratched his head, but then became quite enthusiastic. As it turned out, he had grown up in the Nang Loeng quarter of Bangkok where he regularly attended films at the neighborhood's eponymous theater. Stricken with nostalgia, the overjoyed fare collector ranted on and on about the Nang Loeng Theater, recounting stories of his teenage years, sneaking in, smoking cigs, hanging with his homies in the ancient wooden movie hall.

When the bus reached the last stop, he bade me farewell before pointing me in the direction of the Charoenpon Rama, where the above anti-story unfolded.

Timing being what it is, however, on the return trip, about two hours later, I boarded the same bus with the same fare collector. This time excited by the idea that I had fulfilled my documentary duty, he refused to charge me for the ride. "No, no, no," he insisted. "I like what you're doing. This ride is on me."

Ten minutes into the return journey, bantering  back and forth with the jovial fare collector as he collected fares, the bus company supervisor boarded to inspect tickets. I shot my fare collector friend a nervous glance, worried that my lack of a ticket would get him in trouble. He winked, indicating not to fret. Keep cool, my man! Stay calm! 

The supervisor made his way from passenger to passenger inspecting their tickets, getting closer with each step. When he was just one passenger away from reaching free-ride me, the nostalgic and ever-so-sly fare collector slid between us, stealthily placing a fresh ticket in the palm of my hand. 

Funny how chance and timing work.