It's All Performance Art 28

I just learned that the vintage Hollywood Theatre on West Broadway is soon to reopen.  With a liquor license.   The excuse?  That is the only way they can afford to stay open.  Rents are incredibly high in this city, as will be the patrons putting their bums in the plush velvet upholstered seats.   This is actually sad in so many ways.  I just heard on the radio the newscaster suggesting it might be kind of fun getting a little bit sozzled and enjoying a nap in those comfy seats, but the program host was more restrained and I could tell by her tone that she isn't likely to endorse this kind of measure.

The fact is, we live in a culture of addiction, particularly of alcoholism.  A lot of people, those with the disposable income after rent, that is, are only too happy to go out and drink.  Alcohol consumption is approved and celebrated in our culture and there is nothing at all unusual about drunkenness, public or private.  All the statistics about liver damage, cancer, heart disease, as well as the psychological, emotional and public fallout of alcohol consumption continue to go ignored and unnoticed.  Even our own public broadcaster endorses alcohol consumption.  Sad, eh?

There is no way I would willingly sit in a theatre full of drunks.  That is something I will not pay to have to endure, I would not do it for free, not even if someone paid me.  Yes, it is partly because I am an ACOA, or, Adult Child of and Alcoholic, and of course I just don't want to be around it.  But drunk people are not relaxing, or safe to be around.  Even if they are only lightly fazed by a couple of glasses of wine, there is no telling what might end up happening.  Listen, I have seen the fallout of drunkenness in confined spaces, especially on airplanes and it ain't pretty.  Not to mention, when people are drinking, they get loud.  Who wants to sit in a movie theatre full of loud obnoxious drunks!

Oh yes, but the world is going to hell, we say.  I just heard yesterday how the world is more tense and distressed and anxious than any time since the Second World War.  I still think that's hyperbole, and that what is really making us anxious is the superabundance of rapid fire news that keeps hitting us twenty-four/ seven, thanks to digital news and the internet.  No one can cope with such an intense deluge of misery, fear and horror.  So, a lot of folk are going to escape into their lovely glass of wine, their craft beer, their scotch on the rocks or whatever their poison de jour, because that is how most people like to cope with stress.  They run away like frightened little rabbits and drink their ass off.  How sad.  How tragic.  And how painfully obvious that we are nowhere near ready for whenever the time comes when things start to get really bad.