Joho the Blog
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March 13, 2003
When I was in Austin earlier this week, I asked the woman at the front desk of the Radisson if there were any movie theaters nearby. "Well," she said, conflict playing over her face, "there's one. But it doesn't have stadium seating." "Huh?" I replied, "That's not a requirement." "Um, well, it just has regular seating." "I'm ok with that." Pause as she screws up the courage to blurt: "It's not in a good part of town." Aha! The light goes on. I don't know if this was a race thing, a socio-economic thing, both or neither, but clearly "stadium seating" was the name of a truck carrying some hidden cargo. Posted
by D. Weinberger at March 13, 2003 09:37 AM
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Comments
You misread the code if the person at the front desk wasn't (or possibly was, which gives it a different twist) African-American. She almost certainly mean that the theater served primarily a black audience. This is a pretty widely seen phenomenon where new theaters are only put into white parts of town. Significantly fighting that trend has been Michael Jordan, if I'm remembering right, who has invested in movie theater complexes that have the same quality as those found in non-black neighborhoods. This is a form of redlining -- both the location of theaters, which has little to do with the potential to sell tickets or the cost of real estate, and the front desk person's attempt to tell you the code.
Actually, in Austin, it might have been Hispanic/non-Hispanic, Chicano/non-Chicano, or whatever. Too many divisions to track.
Posted by: Glenn Fleishman | March 15, 2003 11:23 PM
The front desk person was white, and, yeah, I assumed that the socio-economic division was very likely also to be a racial/ethnic division of some sort. (I think it's Magic Johnson who opened up theaters. Maybe Jordan, too.)
Posted by: dweinberger | March 16, 2003 09:06 AM