S.F. Chinatown Theaters

This one goes out to the old time S.F. Chinatown massive. I have many fond memories of the Pagoda. I remember The Shaolin Temple, Jet Li's first film, premiere in the U.S. there.

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Pagoda Palace Theater redevelopment approved
Robert Selna, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, January 9, 2009

(01-08) 20:24 PST -- A gutted hulk of an old movie house in the heart of San Francisco's North Beach took a big step toward a new life Thursday when the Planning Commission approved converting the building into condominium dwellings and a Mexican restaurant.

The Pagoda Palace Theater is at the corner of Powell and Union streets - directly across from Washington Square.

It opened as a first-run theater in 1908; by the 1980s, it was showing kung-fu movies; since 1994, it has remained vacant.

In recent years the Pagoda Palace has been the subject of a neighborhood spat over what should come next.

Restaurateur Joel Campos bought the building in 2004 and subsequently proposed a variety of projects - including a new theater. None of the ideas satisfied enough lenders, preservationists or neighbors to get off the ground.

Campos' most recent proposal for 18 condominium units above a large restaurant and bar ran into fierce resistance from critics who argued that its design was inconsistent with North Beach's unique character and a nearby historic district.

The theater has been stripped of nearly all of its original design features, and does not have any recognized historical value. The Telegraph Hill Dwellers neighborhood association and other groups, however, complained that Campos' proposed design was out of step with the prevailing Art Deco and Moderne styles common in the immediate area. They also wanted the building to contain a new theater and feature a marquee.

Other neighborhood merchants and residents wanted to see Campos' project move along and viewed the Telegraph Hill Dwellers - particularly member Nancy Shanahan, wife of former Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin - as NIMBYs who would never be satisfied. Shanahan did not return calls for comment.

As it stands, the proposed development would be a five-story structure with one-, two- and three-bedroom dwellings on the top four floors and a 4,000-square-foot restaurant and bar on the ground floor, along with some retail space. Twenty-seven parking spaces would be tucked into an underground garage.

"I am so relieved that this is finally done," said Campos, who said he has spent more than $2 million on the property's mortgage and on architects and lawyers. "We plan to get to work on this right away - getting permits and financing."

Barring any bureaucratic or legal delays, he said, work could start in three or four months.

With only Commissioner Hisashi Sugaya voting in opposition, the commission voted 6-1 in favor of the special permit needed to convert the former theater into housing and a large restaurant.

"I don't see a down side to this project," said Commissioner Bill Lee.

Although Campos' project has obtained the permit to move forward, the development is far from a sure thing.

It is widely believed that opponents will appeal the granting of the permit to the full Board of Supervisors, which would then have the final say. The board's new president is David Chiu, who represents North Beach.

Planning Commission President Christina Olague said Thursday that Chiu had called her Wednesday to try to have the vote on the Pagoda Palace's permit delayed for further review.

"Typically we try to accommodate supervisors' wishes, but this has been going on for so long and there are so many people who have been waiting for this hearing that I think we need to go forward," Olague said at the commission meeting Thursday.

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I spent my teen years in the Great Star. I always have a pang of nostalgia when I walk past it. This is where I saw most of the great Shaw Brothers films and the last '70s Jackie Chan films like Snake in Eagle's Shadow.

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Great Star theater preparing to rise again
Sam Whiting, Chronicle Staff Writer
Adam Lau / Special to The Chronicle

The Great Star movie theater has been dark for 12 years and would be dark still if George Kaskanlian Jr. hadn't gotten into a fight with his girlfriend.

Walking it off, Kaskanlian passed from North Beach into Chinatown. Midblock in the mishmash of Jackson Street, he came upon a roll-up security gate blocking a theater foyer. His mind was instantly off his relationship troubles. Kaskanlian, a real estate refurbisher, could see the possibilities, though it took him a month just to track down the owner of the building and get a tour.

"It was dark and moldy," he says. "The fabric on the walls was stained and ripped up. The seats were filthy. The bathrooms looked like a scene from a horror movie. The projection room was filled with cobwebs and dust."

Thus it was perfect as a venue for "Another Hole in the Head," Kaskanlian's enticingly named film festival that he runs as an offshoot of SF Indie Fest. Kaskanlian, 35, and business partner Ken Montero, 36, got a 10-year lease and it has taken the first year just to clean the place, which seats 540. Next, they are taking on the 1950s-era Christie projectors with Xenolite lamps.

"The goal is to revitalize it and to do local community Chinese events and bring in concerts and film festivals," says Montero, who, like Kaskanlian, grew up in San Francisco but has no previous connection to Chinese culture.

"I never hung out in Chinatown once," Montero says. As such they had no idea that the musty old Great Star may be the last of its kind in America - a Chinatown theater that shows both Chinese-language films and Chinese opera.

There ought to be a documentary about that, and coincidentally a documentary that features the Great Star will receive its North American premiere Saturday at the Asian American International Film Festival. But it is not a documentary about Kaskanlian and Montero and doesn't even mention their heroics.

"A Moment in Time" is about the tradition of Chinese movies and their effect on the population of San Francisco's Chinatown. The one-hour film is by the husband-and- wife team of Ruby Yang and Lambert Yam, who were both born in Hong Kong and came to America to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, where they met in the 1970s. At that time, there were half a dozen theaters in Chinatown showing filmed opera and action. Anyone who frequented the Great Star wouldn't forget the experience.

"That place was run by gangs and very dirty, but they were showing some good films there," says Yang, who turned out to make some good films of her own. Four years ago, a short documentary she directed, "The Blood of Yingzhou District." won an Academy Award in the short-subject category.

In 2003, Yang and Yam started working on a film about the Chinese movie theaters that had by then closed down and been converted to shopping malls. But the Great Star is still there. Yang and Yam rented it for a screening of "The Legend of the Purple Hairpin." They invited customers Yam had known from managing both the Great Star and the World Theater, and filmed the old Chinatown crowd watching the film.

This was before Kaskanlian and Montero took over and cleaned the place, a development that Yang had not heard about when reached by telephone. For five years, Yang and Yam have lived in Beijing, but they both keep their 415 area codes on their cell phones, as if they will be back any day now.

As it is, they are here for the premiere of their film, which would have been a perfect time to premiere the Great Star under new management. That way the audience could watch a film at the Great Star that includes scenes of the people watching a film at the Great Star.

It would have been the most site-specific premiere since they screened "The Rock" on Alcatraz 15 years ago. "We tried to work it out, and they tried to work it out," Montero says. "We just couldn't pull it all together."

Too bad, because there is no other way to convey the deprivations involved in watching a film here. Though built in the 1920s, the era of the great movie palaces, there is nothing palatial about the Great Star. All four sides are concrete and when empty the place is cold and dank.

Whatever warmth there is must be created by the bodies in the seats, sitting shoulder to shoulder. That's how it was heated Sunday for a five-hour Chinese opera put on by an independent promoter. These stage events, which have happened sporadically through the dark years, will bolster the film program, which they expect to be underway by June (www.greatstartheatre .com.)

Kaskanlian was able to save the Great Star but unable to save the girlfriend. "We're done," he says with a laugh. "She dumped me."

A Moment in Time: 7 p.m. Sat., 6 p.m. Tues. at the Kabuki. The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival runs through March 21. (415) 865-1588. www.asian americanmedia.org.

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Nice thread, Gene.

For me, the Asian theaters down here (S.D.) were the Trieu Thanh Theater (formerly the State Theater); the Ta Hwa Theater (formerly the Broadway Theater). The Trieu Thanh lasted only a few years, from mid-1982 to at least the end of '84 when I moved to Taiwan. The Ta Hwa only lasted about a year, from '82 to '83. Each showed tons of Shaw Brothers, HK and Taiwanese independent KF films, mainland China films, and some Golden Harvests, etc. Jackie Chan releases were always treated as a big event. Trieu Thanh had unlisted quadruple features, so sometimes you got stuck sitting through Taiwanese Bridget Lin/Chin Hsiang-Lin romance films or war-era Vietnamese films in order to see the good stuff. Majority of patrons appeared to be Vietnamese and some Chinese. All films subtitled.

There were always technical problems. At Trieu Thanh, the films occasionally would stick, then you'd see the holes form as the film melted and broke. Then another 15-minute delay. Rarely, they'd simply start a different film without finishing the broken one. :) The place stank; if the rear doors were open you could hear the Pac-Man machines in the lobby. Once the front of the theater flooded, and as we watched the movies, it was reflected in the huge puddle covering the floor beneath the screen.

The Ta Hwa, located downtown, attracted more of a mix of Chinese, plus the typical American grindhouse crowd. Triple features, mostly Shaws, some HK/Taiwan KF independents. At the time, HK/Taiwanese gambling and gangster movies were also very popular. All films subtitled. Not as big as the huge Trieu Thanh.

There were also still the long-time American grindhouses showing the English-dubbed Shaws, independents, etc. Which was always interesting. At the grindhouses, you'd get an odd mix of Navy, homeless, addicts, gangbangers, weirdos, even the rare frat-boy types. As dirty as the Asian theaters could be, these were filthy and you'd come out stinking of other people's pot. And the floors smelled like p!ss, popcorn and old nachos. Arguments and even fights would break out, but when a KF or horror movie was really good, you could never recapture those reactions in a theater today. Now is just too tame.

All these are long-gone. Some were remodeled and are upscale boutiques; one is an ice cream shop; one reopened as a theater for live events. The former Trieu Thanh building is gone and replaced with a huge Asian shopping center.

Seeing M.A. or action movies in theaters now is totally different. Audiences now seem jaded and rarely respond much to anything, no matter how thrilling, except to laugh at something funny. Although some of those places were freaking dangerous back then, I kinda feel sorry for younger M.A. movie fans who never had the chance to have those experiences.

Well, how's that for rambling? :P

Greetings,

I miss the Chinatown movie theaters. It was safer for me to go there than to go to 42nd street.
NYC Chinatown had the following theaters:

Music Palace
Pagoda Theatre
Sun Sing
Chinatown Theatre
Rosemary Theatre
Canal Cinema (mostly soft pron, did show the 7 commandments of kung fu and the goose boxers)
East Broadway Theatre
Essex Street Theatre: outisde of Chinatown (showed soft pron)

The subway project is going to be such a mess.

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Pagoda Palace Theater nearing its end
C.W. Nevius, Chronicle Columnist
Updated 9:04 am, Thursday, February 28, 2013

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The Pagoda Palace Theater at Columbus Avenue and Powell Street in San Francisco's North Beach may finally have a date with the wrecking ball. Photo: Sarah Rice, Special To The Chronicle

There ought to be a plaque. If the Pagoda Palace Theater is finally torn down - and demolition could start as soon as April - something should mark the end of this colorful, contentious and incredibly frustrating chapter in San Francisco neighborhood lore.

The Pagoda began life in 1907 as a vaudeville theater and was transformed into a movie palace in the '20s with the advent of talkies. After that it was a little bit of everything, from a launch pad for a loopy, free-form flower-child performance troupe, to a showcase for campy kung fu movies, and finally, a potential neighborhood pharmacy. Incredibly, it was the latter that created so much controversy that it led to its most infamous role in North Beach.

Nothing.

For more than 20 years, in the vortex of the hottest, most expensive real estate in San Francisco, the Pagoda has stood vacant. Plans have come and gone, millions have been spent, but the only residents are pigeons, the only use is as a canvas for graffiti.

"It is a symbol of the complicated gestalt of North Beach," says Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, who represents the neighborhood.

In fairness, naysayers will point out that the location has been ready for development for years. Chiu says the final permissions were secured the day he came into office, Jan. 8, 2009. Unfortunately, that coincided with the nationwide economic downturn.

Finally, Chiu brokered the deal this year that changed the extraction of the Central Subway boring machines from the middle of Columbus Avenue - a horrible idea that would close North Beach's main street for weeks - to the Pagoda site. It gets the machines out, razes the old relic, and even clears the way for a potential North Beach subway stop.

It will increase the cost by some $9 million, but the city's Municipal Transportation Agency plans to pay that out of reserve funds and is confident it can replenish those funds, either with additional federal money or increased local revenue.

It has passed all the local hurdles, but still must pass scrutiny under the National Environmental Policy Act - and North Beach opponents are trying to use that process to stop the project. If they don't prevail, it looks as if the Pagoda, after closing in 1994, finally will disappear.

And let's be honest, not all the memories are bad. Take the days when it played kung fu films.

"I opened my first office in North Beach in 1982," said neighborhood activist and product designer Julie Christensen. "My first memory was that the Pagoda would broadcast whatever sound there was from the movie they were playing out in the street. So here, in this very Italian neighborhood, was this bubble of Chinese."

Ken Maley goes even further back, remembering the late '60s and '70s performances of the ****ettes, an extremely offbeat Summer of Love troupe.

"I would call it artistic chaos," Maley said. "The story line often changed - sometimes during the performance."

A check of online videos shows gauzy costumes, creative arm-waving, and plenty of sequins. The ****ettes became such a sensation that they were invited to New York. Unfortunately, they bombed and broke up soon afterward.

In many ways, the signature moment for the Pagoda came in 1997, when chain pharmacy Rite Aid proposed moving to the site. North Beach neighborhood organizations raised vociferous objections.

"A guy from Rite Aid shows up for a meeting," recalls longtime North Beach resident Richard Hanlin. "There must have been 500 people there and they pilloried the guy."

The Pagoda plan was shelved, which was a popular decision at the time. But as the years went on and neighborhood groups seemed opposed to any development, the plywood-covered Pagoda became a symptom of obstructionism. When a North Beach activist named Lynn Jefferson ran for supervisor, her motto was: "Enough with the plywood."

With an end in sight, some members of the North Beach community say they will raise a glass when the first jackhammer hits the Pagoda.

"I'm going sell tickets to the demolition," says Hanlin. "And then market the pieces for sale, like the Berlin Wall."

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Martial arts films at Great Star
By G. Allen Johnson Published 2:36 pm, Tuesday, June 28, 2016

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Bruce Lee’s final film, “Enter the Dragon,” screens at his old hangout, the Great Star Theater in Chinatown. Photo: AP

(Not Just) Hong Kong Action Film Series: This could be the awesomest film festival of the summer. For the month of July, Chinatown’s 91-year-old Great Star Theater is open for business, once again serving up old school bone-crunching martial arts action courtesy of the folks at IndieFest.
So drop into the neighborhood for dim sum, then get some: There’s plenty of Jackie Chan and Jet Li on display in these 21 films.
But the Great Star meant the most by far to one particular star in this series, Bruce Lee — represented by the great “Enter the Dragon” (July 9 and 16). Lee was born at the Chinese Hospital in Chinatown, and his parents acted in Chinese opera productions at the Great Star (young Bruce would sleep in the back). Later, despite his groundbreaking role as Kato on the ABC television series “The Green Hornet,” Lee had to go to Hong Kong to start a movie career. Back in San Francisco, the Great Star played new Hong Kong movies the same week they were released in China, including Lee’s films.
The series opens Friday, July 1, with Jackie Chan in “The Legend of Drunken Master” (7 p.m.) and “Ip Man” (9 p.m.), the 2010 kick starter to Donnie Yen’s great modern series.
Other highlights: “Death Machines” (9 p.m. Saturday, July 2, and July 24), a 1976 actioner in which a dragon lady (Japan’s Mari Honjo) unleashes a multicultural zombie assassin team; “Zu Warriors” (July 9 and 29), Tsui Hark’s thrilling and underrated 2001 remake of his own 1983 original; and “Return of the Street Fighter” (July 24 and 31), the second installment of the 1970s Japanese series starring Sonny Chiba.

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Man, I hope I can make it up to SF for one of these. Seeing a Kung Fu flick in that revered old house would bring back so many memories...

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Notice this Chinatown movie theater? It has a fascinating history.
By Susana Guerrero, SFGATE Published 4:00 am, Friday, July 21, 2017

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The Grandview Theatre in Chinatown, San Francisco, which showed Chinese films imported from Hong Kong, circa 1955. Photo: Orlando/Getty Images
Photo: Orlando/Getty Images

Upon first glance, the Buddha Exquisite in Chinatown blends in with the neighboring businesses, which are tightly packed in the bustling corridor. A sea-foam green marquee rests atop the store’s entrance with an image of Buddah adorned by rosy lotus buds.
The business, located on 756 Jackson St., operates as a paper goods shop. But back in 1940, the Grandview Theater occupied the location and was considered Chinatown’s first modern theater, according to an article by SF Weekly.
Today, the only signs of its former heyday are the marquee and a neon-lit sign. The structure's interior was remodeled, but it once held 400 seats and carpeted floors.
The Grandview Theater opened in 1940, when filmmaker Joseph Sunn Jue envisioned a movie theater that catered to Chinese audiences.
He presented films shot in Hong Kong but also Cantonese-language films that Jue produced in San Francisco, the San Francisco Chronicle’s G. Allen Johnson wrote.
A former nightclub located in an alley off Grant Avenue was converted into a movie studio called the "Grandview Motion Picture Company,” where Jue created his films, the Chronicle wrote on Sept. 21, 1947.

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“Joseph Jue is the only organizer and president of America’s only company that produces Chinese films, and that company is right here.”
When he wasn’t busy directing films, he was an usher at the Grandview Theater, the Chronicle wrote on Nov. 25, 1940.
His films covered various genres including detective stories, zany comedies and historic dramas, the Chronicle noted.
In 1940, Jue produced about 18 films a year and categorized features as “supers” or “quickies.” The budget and timeframe for these projects depended on the category.
“’Supers’ are budgeted at between $40,000 and $60,000 and take from three to six months to produce. ‘Quickies’ cost $15,000 to $20,000 and are rushed out in three weeks,” The Chronicle wrote in 1940.
In the same article, the Chronicle said the latest film Jue produced was called, “They Get What They Wanted.” Jue believed the film was “somewhere better than a quickie” but by no means a “super.”
Perhaps what made the Grandview Theater successful was that it had a strong hold in the Asian community. First generation Chinese-Americans spoke little English and Chinese movies were among the few diversions available, SF Weekly wrote.
In fact, Jue’s films were popular with viewers outside of San Francisco. According to the Chronicle, Jue’s films were a hit in several countries including Cuba, Mexico, Panama, South America, Hawaii, the Philippines, Australia, and Madagascar.
In the 1960s popularity for Chinese movie theaters started to fade as some in the community started to prefer American movies.
“Second-generation Chinese-Americans generally stayed away from Chinese movie theaters, going only on occasion and in the company of an older relative,” SF Weekly wrote.
Still, that wasn’t enough to sustain the theater and in the mid-1980s, the Grandview Theater finally closed its doors.
Eventually, the theater was sold and works produced by Jue were thrown out of the attic where they were stored, erasing the historic record of 20th century San Francisco, the Chronicle’s G. Allen Johnson wrote.

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I started going to Chinatown theaters with my Kung Fu siblings around the late 70s but I only have very fleeting memories of the Grandview.

This isn't SF but worthy of mention here. Perhaps I'll take the SF off the title of this thread someday if there are more such news items.

Any Philly members remember this place? I hear it's always sunny there.

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Kung fu to zombies, remembering the Trocadero
By Peter Crimmins March 15, 2019

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The Trocadero theater on Arch Street in Chinatown. (Emma Lee/WHYY)

A beloved Philadelphia music venue is closing.

Several news outlets, including Philly.com and PhillyMag.com, are reporting that the Trocadero will cease operations as a concert hall at the end of the month. The owner has not commented.

The Trocadero has been through many phases in its 150-year history, from opera to burlesque. Because it is in the heart of Philadelphia’s Chinatown, in the 1970s it served that neighborhood by primarily screening Chinese movies.

“My parents would take us to the Trocadero to see kung fu movies, and they sold popcorn,” said Albert Lee, a longtime civic booster and digital content manager for the Office of the City Representative who grew up in Chinatown. “We would watch kung fu movies with no subtitles. That was the thing. That was what my parents took us to.”

Since the late 1980s, the Troc has been a rock venue. With capacity for about 1,200 people, it was a mid-sized concert hall, a little rough around the edges, and tickets were relatively cheap. The drinks were, too. So you could see bands when they were breaking, like Pearl Jam, Living Color, or Sonic Youth, and not break your bank.

The Trocadero also had all-ages shows, so you could take your kid sister to her very first concert. That’s what Ken Travis did in the 1990s, when his younger sister wanted to see the hard industrial band Pigface, known for noise and dark lyrics.

“She was specifically interested in this show. At the time she was probably 15, so, you know, not a little kid but still not old enough to get permission from our parents to go to a concert in Philly by herself,” said Travis. “So I’m, like, ‘Yeah, I’ll take you.’”

Travis’s sister, Jennifer, absorbed some of her older brother’s taste in music of the time, leaning toward dark industrial: Skinny Puppy and Ministry. Travis said he frequented the Trocadero for decades because the theater’s grand but slightly grungy aesthetic suited the music.

“I think that was part of the allure,” he said. “The venue suited the band, and I think they fed off of that, as well.”

The Trocadero also hosted the annual Zombie Prom, wherein clubbers dressed up in high school finery and bloody zombie makeup.

There are concerts lined up for the next couple weeks. It’s not known what will happen to the theater after that.

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