Mourning the Manor: Time spent there was unlike any other movie-going in Charlotte.
I thought when Kickstand Burger Bar closed in Plaza Midwood I would never forgive Charlotte. It was the perfect casual sports bar, with enough TVs for everyone to watch what they liked and better food than most establishments of its kind.
I told one of my editors at the time that I wanted to write an “ode to bar food” in its memory. She told me to put together a pitch, and I never did. I was sad, but I was also busy. I moved on.
The Regal Manor Twin is different, and now life for me is, too. The 73-year-old movie theater, which announced last week that it will not reopen after the coronavirus pandemic ends, is the oldest art house in town.
Charlotte Film Society program director Jay Morong told The Charlotte Observer that it’s the city’s “artistic bedrock.” He’s right.
As for me, I’m decidedly not too busy anymore. I have nothing to do but stay home and mourn a place I never thought would cease to exist.
‘Places don’t matter, especially during a pandemic’
In the grand scheme of things, places don’t matter, especially during a pandemic. Lives do. I’m clear-headed enough to understand that.
Yet, when I think about the Manor, all I think about is life, because a weekend there was unlike any other movie-going experience in the city. The Providence Road theater had a rhythm, a pattern, a community.
If you arrived for a late afternoon show, you’d catch the beginning of the evening’s rush. That’s when the older, likely retired crowd lined up outside the box office to buy tickets to whatever independent film was the flavor of the month. These were my favorite showings because you could really sense the Manor’s brand, if “brand” is even the right word for a place like the Manor. No one was there to be impressed. They were just excited to experience something different, maybe a little edgy. They were there to have fun.
As the evening wore on, people would stream in and out of the theater laughing, sniffling, and looking for the bathroom, which was always too cramped in that upstairs hall. Many would shuffle over to Bond Street Wines, which is on the same strip, to talk about the film over a glass of red. I remember going there once two years ago, and the bartender telling me, “Good thing you weren’t here last week when ‘Boy Erased’ came out. People were a mess.” Rightfully, a mess.
A year earlier, when the Manor screened “Darkest Hour,” I saw it with my boyfriend. As we walked home afterward to my little apartment in Elizabeth, someone honked at us. We ignored it, then stopped at Earl’s Grocery to buy dinner — pho, I believe. A couple 20 years our senior walked in. “Hey! We honked at you two,” the man said. “Didn’t you hear us?” Not knowing him, we laughed and smiled awkwardly. “You two were at the Manor tonight,” he said, clearly not cluing into our bewilderment. “Didn’t you love that film?” We had.
We chatted with him for a while, and he went on to recommend that we watch “Dunkirk” next. We rented it on my laptop that very same evening. This story is somehow not unusual for the Manor.
My only regret with this in memoriam — that is what this is, an in memoriam — is that I don’t have a lifetime of these stories to share. I was 26 when I discovered the Manor. I’m just shy of 29 now — too young to have the amount of memories some people do. Those patrons at the 4 p.m. shows, the ones I loved so much, were longtime Manor-goers. I’m sure many have decades of popcorn purchases under their belts.
Still, from the moment I walked into the theater, far too late and with only a few short years left to enjoy it, I was a part of something — not history, although that’s there too, but an open secret that even if you purchase the best seat in the best movie theater in the best part of town, it won’t feel half as good as knowing everyone around you loves being exactly where they are.
There are certain landmarks in Charlotte that most locals would feel lost without. The sign for The Penguin. The Firebird. Those giant loops that look like onion rings on the corner of Randolph and Wendover roads. For me, it was driving by the “Manor Theatre” marquee to see what was showing, because why would you look it up when you could just drop in?
This story was originally published May 24, 2020 at 12:57 PM.