Pao­lo Ker­na­han

On the tow­er­ing screen, the pro­tag­o­nist Jet Li walks ten­ta­tive­ly through a teem­ing mar­ket, the busy ven­dors seem­ing­ly un­aware of the awe­some pow­er of the Shaolin in their midst. In the fore­ground of the frame, a mar­ket cook en­er­get­i­cal­ly ag­i­tates a wok sit­ting on a vol­cano of flame.Sit­ting be­hind me in the the­atre, a man mut­ters im­pos­si­bly loud­ly: "Dem Chi­nee does cook wit rell #%^*()@ fyah boy."It was a Wednes­day night, or what my friends and I used to call a "mid-week." I got a call from a friend, Tim­o­thy Paty. He was up for a Gold­en Har­vest "deb­ble fetear" at Globe, and me? I was up for a Gold­en Har­vest flick any day of the week.

The man who made that re­mark be­hind us was one of those the­atre em­ploy­ees whose job clas­si­fi­ca­tion was prob­a­bly "tick­et tear­er." I sup­pose on a slow night he'd just watch the movies along with every­one else. His com­men­tary came in spurts through­out the en­tire evening, mak­ing the price of ad­mis­sion well worth it. "What!!!!! you takin' dat!...Watch how he go cut every­body a-- and goh back an' eat he soup kwart kwart." It's a gen­er­a­tional thing; the Movi­eTowne set would not get it.The news about the ap­par­ent demise and of­fer for sale of Globe cin­e­ma trig­gered a flood of mem­o­ries. Be­ing one of the more pop­u­lar cin­e­mas in the north, as teens my friends and I were drawn to this land­mark when the big movies came to town.

It was al­ways great if you could snag seats in bal­cony. That would de­pend on the film though. If you were go­ing to see a kick-up, trust me, you were go­ing in "house." House was where all of the blow-by-blow com­men­tary was.This was where the pa­trons would in­ter­act with the ac­tors on the screen as if it were a play, warn­ing them of po­ten­tial pit­falls, or the vil­lain hid­ing be­hind a door. "House" was for the rough­necks and bal­cony the do­main of more gen­teel folk.A friend vis­it­ing from Cana­da laughed hearti­ly when he saw the mar­i­jua­na ad­vi­so­ry em­bla­zoned on the screen. Re­al­is­ing that this was no joke, he whis­pered: "Wait, peo­ple need to be re­mind­ed not to smoke weed in here?" Most folks per­haps don't know that the warn­ing was le­git; I ac­tu­al­ly saw two of­fi­cers dressed as civil­ians spring up out of their seats and cart off two youths, the mar­i­jua­na smoke trail­ing be­hind them like a two lo­co­mo­tives, two lo­co­mo­tives in se­ri­ous trou­ble.

For me, Globe was the home of Gold­en Har­vest; a Hong Kong-based pro­duc­tion that was the pin­na­cle of Kung Fu movies.Sure they pro­duced many of Jack­ie Chan's movies but he was a clown. Jet Li was se­ri­ous like a plane crash and just as de­struc­tive.When he flew all the way across a five-acre rice pad­dy to land a kick on the chest of an op­po­nent with dev­as­tat­ing pre­ci­sion, you knew this was re­al (no wire work!). In our minds it was com­plete­ly plau­si­ble be­cause Shaolin monks train them­selves to ac­com­plish feats be­yond the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of mere mor­tals.

A 4ft 6ins Jet Li would hit a six-foot gen­er­al a kick in the face with the soft­est Chi­nese slip­per on the mar­ket and you would still hear bones break­ing and count the teeth fly­ing.

Af­ter a Gold­en Har­vest dou­ble fea­ture we would be kick­ing every garbage can and street sign from up­per Hen­ry Street all the way down to the Diego Mar­tin maxi stand onIn­de­pen­dence Square. Sure the lines were long; oc­ca­sion­al­ly you had to en­dure the sting­ing sen­sa­tion in your nos­trils of street-ripened urine around the build­ing, but man Globe was al­ways kicks, even if the movie was rub­bish. I got the first of many blanks to come from a girl.I laughed un­til tears soaked my shirt, and that was watch­ing Bat­man. A bag of pop­corn with more salt than the Dead Sea and a cold Pear D was the right for­mu­la to gear you up for the sec­ond cel­lu­loid thrill ride.

The own­er of Globe isn't say­ing much be­yond ad­mit­ting that the prop­er­ty is for sale. With a price tag of $25 mil­lion you can rest as­sured that any­one mak­ing that in­vest­ment would not do so with con­ser­va­tion of the build­ing as a pri­or­i­ty.That is a re­al pity be­cause in a desert of ar­chi­tec­tur­al ho­mo­gene­ity, the Globe build­ing is an oa­sis of aes­thet­ic bliss. While we can't be sure, it is quite con­ceiv­able that stiff com­pe­ti­tion from Movi­eTowne and the crime fear-fac­tor have stran­gled Globe's for­tunes.This de­vel­op­ment al­so sig­nals some­thing more sig­nif­i­cant–the grad­ual re­treat from the cap­i­tal city as a gath­er­ing place is al­most com­plete. In­stead of cel­e­brat­ing Port-of-Spain as a hive of af­ter­hours ac­tiv­i­ty, with the ex­cep­tion of a few bars and fast food joints, our cap­i­tal city is fast be­com­ing a dead zone at night.It will be sad to see this in­sti­tu­tion go, though it was not un­ex­pect­ed.In life, we all un­der­stand that death is a cer­tain­ty; that un­der­stand­ing does not make ac­cep­tance any eas­i­er.