Vanishing Chicago: The Hub

Back in the days when I could better tolerate going to movies alone--unlike now, when catch the likes of Identity or X2: More Pretty People in Form-Fitting Leather, I'm pretty much on my own (makes the after-movie discussions over pints of cider rather one-sided, it does)--the theater I spent the most time haunting was the Hub.

The Hub was conveniently within walking distance of home--"home" then being in Ukrainian Village--on Chicago Avenue just east of Wood. It showed Spanish-language versions of first-run movies for a while (I still regret having skipped the experience of Return of the Living Dead en espanol) before becoming a second-run venue. And, best of all, it was incredibly cheap--on Tuesday nights, you could catch a double feature for two dollars. Less than it would have cost to rent the damn movies at Blockbuster.

It wasn't a great theater. It was small. The screen had holes in it. The seats were hard and uncomfortable, and one whole section of seats was blocked off because they were unsafe to sit in. The place smelled like a popcorn-scented sweatsock. And I always expected to see a rat come scurrying up the aisle, but never did. (Oddly enough, the only time I saw any rodent activity in a Chicago movie house was in one of the more expensive downtown venues, where they charged three times as much for seats just as hard.)

But the Hub was a throwback to a time when nearly every Chicago neighborhood had at least one --and usually several--movie houses. The popcorn was cheap. The service was friendly. And the price allowed me to catch movies I might otherwise have skipped altogether. Like Delta Force 2 with Billy Drago as--surprise!--an evil drug lord. Or Exorcist 3, which wasn't a bad idea for a movie (a serial killer capable of carrying out his crimes by possessing others) and had one of the best "jump" moments in any horror film ever, but it would have been better off not being touted as a sequel to one of the classics of the genre when it had, at best, peripheral ties to the original and opaque, leaden direction by Exorcist author William Peter Blatty. Or Blind Fury with Rutger Hauer as a blind Vietnam vet/martial arts master (aren't they all?). Not all movies have to be great or even good to be fun. And I had plenty of fun at the Hub.

TUESDAY NIGHT AT THE HUB
The four year old with
the black crewcut does
laps around the theater
while the teenage girl
up the aisle from me
points out the narcs in
the audience to her friend
who nods attentively and
eases down in her red
vinyl seat not nearly as
gum-crusted or cracked
as you would expect at
a dollar double-feature.
The Roger Rabbit short,
whose print is so grainy
that it almost looks like
the Forties cartoon it
strains to imitate, pops
onto the taped-together
screen before the house
lights are flipped off,
before the man with his
next three changes of
clothes in the shopping
bag under his arm and
the pastel-flowered fishing
cap screwed on tightly
over sharp and darting
eyes can settle and wrestle
down the seats he needs.
Finally, the lights fade
to black, the fishing cap
stops bobbing from row to
row, and the first show
booms Danny Elfman licks
out of buzzing overhead
speakers and spills primary
colors onto the cobalt
ceiling as Warren Beatty
yanks on his comic-strip
yellow trenchcoat and
fedora and huge matte
skyline paintings answer
the question: "What if
the Tribune Tower and
the Merchandise Mart got
together and had lots
and lots of children?"

All good things must end, it's said, and so it was with the Hub. It closed as a theater about ten years ago and was converted into some kind of storage space for Catholic Charities. At least they didn't tear the porr thing down--you can still go there and dig on the primitive faces carved into the facade (for now, anyway), even if the marquee, hard seats and cheap popcorn are long gone.

Bet it still smells like a sweatsock, though.