{"id":64482,"date":"2014-01-07T15:35:14","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T20:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=64482"},"modified":"2019-01-29T15:56:32","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T20:56:32","slug":"makeovers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/07\/makeovers\/","title":{"rendered":"Makeovers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere is a new hotspot for heavy petting on the Upper West Side,\u201d declared the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westsiderag.com\/2013\/07\/13\/amc-loews-on-84th-street-is-now-the-make-out-movie-theater\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">West Side Rag<\/a>, awesomely, some months ago. Widely considered the dirtiest, crummiest, saddest, and generally worst movie theater in Manhattan, the Loews Eighty-Fourth Street transformed itself in 2013 into an amorous teenager\u2019s paradise, instituting luxurious, fully reclining seats and removable armrests. Reported the <em>New York Post<\/em>,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The new loveseats are a huge hit with teens. Upper West Sider Richard Velazquez, forty, was seated in the same row as an enthusiastic teen couple at a <em>World War Z<\/em> showing last month. \u201cEven before the previews started, they were going at it,\u201d says Velazquez.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe was not entirely on top of him, but a quarter of the way there. When the movie ended, they were still at it. I was thinking, \u2018Get a room already,\u2019 but the theater was their room!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I don\u2019t know if this gamble\u2014or whatever it is\u2014has paid off. Did anyone want an unsanitary multiplex with business-class seats? Who knows? All I know is that the Love Theater is my local, a mere five-minute walk from door to door. They don\u2019t often show films I want to see\u2014I guess the lineup is more geared toward the tastes of the heavy-petting demographic\u2014but yesterday I crossed Broadway to see <em>The Wolf of Wall Street<\/em>, my thinking being that a comfy seat might come in handy in watching a three-hour film. <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Because the film is rated R, the teenager taking tickets carded me. All I had on me by way of ID was an expired learner\u2019s permit from 1996, but this seemed to satisfy her. Or at least prove that I was thirty-two and a half.\u00a0\u201cDo the kids get too frisky in the R-rated movies?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have to check ID,\u201d she said unhelpfully.<\/p>\n<p>The theater was nearly empty, so I disregarded the seat assignment on my ticket and took one of the isolated pairs which, a sign informed me, was intended for companions of those in wheelchairs. I was wondering whether anyone actually respected the seat assignments when a furious old man demanded a couple relocate so he could have the perfectly ordinary seat he\u2019d been assigned. I reclined my seat fully, which was sort of uncomfortable.\u00a0An old lady with a walker took the pair of seats next to me.<\/p>\n<p>Three hours\u2014spoiler alert\u2014hundreds of quaaludes, and dozens of hookers later, numerous people had been bilked out of money, DiCaprio was leading motivational seminars, both the angry old man and the lady with the walker had left, and I had seen exactly zero percent offscreen amorous activity. The sparse crowd trickled out, looking depressed and tired.<\/p>\n<p>I walked a block east to Amsterdam and three north and stood in front of the Popover Cafe.\u00a0<small>LOST OUR LEASE!<\/small> declared the sign papering the window. <small>FAREWELL AND THANK YOU FOR 32 1\/2 GLORIOUS YEARS!<\/small> The sight was unspeakably melancholy. It was not that I had eaten so regularly at the Popover, which was scattered with stuffed animals and whose menu consisted largely of items which I, at any rate, did not generally want to eat accompanied by popovers; spaghetti squash primavera, say (with a popover) or a blackened fish taco, served with a popover. But it was the sort of Upper West Side institution, like the yarn stores, or the Sensuous Bean, which had started and then persisted in the face of reason and commerce.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDid we go there when I was a baby?\u201d I asked my mother later that night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t our spot. We went to the \u00c9clair. Or the Golden Ass.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Word on the street\u2014and I do mean that literally, a neighboring business owner told me\u2014is that the owner of Popover lost a great deal of money in the Madoff scams and never really recovered. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true; I hope not.\u00a0Now, the blogs have it, the space will be some kind of twenty-four-hour bistro. In <em>The Wolf of Wall Street<\/em>, we are treated to a great many cynical speeches about money and opportunity and taking advantage of people. \u201cCreate demand,\u201d instructs the protagonist of his trainee traders. Would that life were so simple.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThere is a new hotspot for heavy petting on the Upper West Side,\u201d declared the West Side Rag, awesomely, some months ago. Widely considered the dirtiest, crummiest, saddest, and generally worst movie theater in Manhattan, the Loews Eighty-Fourth Street transformed itself in 2013 into an amorous teenager\u2019s paradise, instituting luxurious, fully reclining seats and removable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4393,13115],"tags":[124,12482,12483,347,12481],"class_list":["post-64482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-person","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-new-york","tag-popover-cafe","tag-the-wolf-of-wall-street","tag-upper-west-side","tag-upper-west-side-story"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Makeovers by Sadie Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"January 7, 2014 \u2013 \u201cThere is a new hotspot for heavy petting on the Upper West Side,\u201d declared the West Side Rag, awesomely, some months ago. 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