#148 The Har Mar

I'm always a little sad when a movie theater closes. Even when the theater in question was an example of every thing that's wrong with the movie-going experience. The Har Mar 1-3 and 4-11 in Roseville were a dilapidated and musty relic from the days when the shopping mall cineplex was the place to see movies. Cinema Treasures has a nice history of the location.

The Har-Mar opened with "Two Mules for Sister Sara" and "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" to packed houses. In the early 70s, the Har-Mar was one of the most popular Saint Paul theaters, due to its proximity to Highway 36, its large parking lot and being modern and comfortable.

In 1974, the Har-Mar was the first suburban movie house to out-gross a downtown theater, the Skyway 2, playing the same film ("Earthquake"). It was by only very little, but it signified the death knell for Saint Paul's downtown movie houses and the rise of the suburban theater.

This got me wondering if the real future for movies is in a return to the urban milieu. As a moviegoer in Los Angeles, my first choices were always theaters in bustling locations like the Arclight, Grauman's Chinese and The Vista. Weren't shopping malls like The Har Mar themselves approximations of downtown city blocks, boasting restauraunts, shopping and entertainment all within walking distance? The new Rosedale theater that replaces the Har Mar (and gives jobs to the theater's staff) is only tangentially connected to the Rosedale mall. There's just enough barren concrete between the theater box office and the nearby pub to make the space feel alienating in that sterile big box sort of way.

Still, I have hopes for the gleaming new theater just across the freeway. I'm thinking we might get a year of good projection and sound out of the staff before they become lax and inattentive to their screens. I also wonder. What's going to happen to those bad-ass chandeliers in the abandoned theater?



Hopefully some sharp home decorator or interior designer will nab these beauties and give them a good home.

Finally, I'll post a picture I took in the Har Mar bathroom when I first moved to the Twin Cities a little over a year ago.



That's "Roseville Sucks" if squinting doesn't help.