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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2015
PARTING SHOT
A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers
Christopher Morgan, left, and Grant Artz, right, both with the U.S. Coast Guard Color Guard, stand under the shadow of the Astoria Bridge before the start of the Seamen’s Memorial
ceremony last week.
Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian
ODDITY
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Angsty spats
over where
to sit at the
movies
By LEANNE ITALIE
Associated Press
NEW YORK — Too
close! Too far back! Middle?
No way, aisle.
When it comes to where
you plant yourself in a mov-
ie theater, you’re either a
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you’re with one.
And if, by some miracle,
you and your date, spouse,
friend or gang from work DO
agree on where to sit, chanc-
es are you’ve been privy to
an angsty pre-show spat or
two among the seat-selecting
stressed.
Are movie-seat beefs legit,
in the scheme of not-huge-
ly-important problems, or
have we lost our minds to the
point where not even assigned
seating can save us?
“My best friend has very
strict rules on movie theater
seating and it drives me in-
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she would make us change
our seats multiple times until
she was happy.”
But wait. Said best friend,
Caitlin Quagliato, has her rea-
sons.
‘Super picky’
“I’m just super picky. I try
to avoid distractions. I don’t
like to sit too close because
my neck strains. I don’t like
to sit too far away because I
can’t see,” she said. “It drives
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headaches and nobody wants
The seats he seeks from
friends and surreptitiously
angles for with dates are on
an aisle or front row, second
tier behind the rail in theaters
that have raised sections sep-
arated by a wide walking
aisle.
“It’s embarrassing. My
friends will say, ‘It’s only two
hours’ and I’m, like, ‘I know.
I’m not doing it on purpose!
This way I can just hop over
the rail without kicking pop-
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ping on some old person’s
shoes.”
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arise for prime real es-
tate-seeking Onyema, who
goes to three or four movies
a month.
“There are some friends
who want to be in the middle
AP Photo/Julio Cortez
and they worry that if we’re
A wide awake crowd watching the 2012 premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises” inside the Liberty Science Center IMAX on the aisle people are go-
theater in Jersey City, N.J. When it comes to where you plant yourself in a movie theater, you’re either a seat-specific ing to be bothering us to get
Goldilocks or you’re with one.
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take,” he said. “If it’s ‘Lord
to deal with me during mi-
There are other things that of the Rings’ length or some-
So where is his sweet spot? Temptation,”’ he said, regu-
graines. That could be what
“For at least the past 15 larly dragging his wife and make Pomes a “bit batty” thing like that, I’m going to
push to be on the aisle or the
started it.”
to 20 years, I have very per- 18-year-old twins to theaters about movie seating.
The two 24-year-olds who sistently insisted that those at least an hour ahead of show
“I don’t like there to be railing. If it’s a shorter movie,
met in college about four with whom I see movies in time.
lights coming in from anoth- I’ll say ‘OK, I’ll let you have
“When we don’t get the er room that you see on the this one.”’
years ago remain regular a theater join me smack dab
Daniel Collins and his wife
movie companions, but they in the middle of the aisle good seats we want, the whole screen. It’s ritualistic and it
now stick mostly to a theater somewhere between 10, but feng shui is just blown,” he should be. I mean Scorsese don’t get to the movies that
that allows for assigned seat- no more than 13, rows away said. “To me it’s art. I would once talked about it being like frequently, but with his long
LQJWKRXJK²0D]]RQHVDLG from the movie screen,” never go to a museum gallery how he felt when he was a kid legs, the distinct possibility
and not look at everything.”
— “she still complains.”
in church. But my wife does of a work call he can’t miss
Pomes said.
Does this, er, fever have an think sometimes that I go a and some prostate issues at
Anthony Pomes, 43, in
Irene Myers, 34, in Phil-
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the Suffolk County hamlet of adelphia isn’t having it. She origin?
little beyond,” he said.
there early enough to nab a
“It’s some kind of weird
East Northport, N.Y., doesn’t goes to a movie most weeks,
Pit stops
good one isn’t fun.
complain so much as feel about 60 percent of the time hybrid of, like, elitism and
Afam Onyema, 36, in Los
“My wife, who should be
very, very passionately about by herself to avoid the “where- sort of trying to get home
again, because I do regard Angeles, has other things on teaching master’s courses
the subject. And he doesn’t are-we-sitting conversation.”
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It’s all about control when ¿OP DV SULPDO´ 3RPHV VDLG his mind. He’s a big guy, a in procrastination, can be a
assigned seating.
grouped with a huge theater “My older brother took me to former college linebacker, challenge to get out the door,”
It’s all about “maximum full of strangers, she surmised. see ‘Star Wars’ in 1977. I was with a wee movie-going bath- said Collin, in suburban Bal-
5 or 6. It has that shot of that room issue. He can’t make it timore. “But she’s working
movie-ness,” he said, noting
A religion
ship that just keeps going over through one without a pit stop hard at improving, and I’m
in particular the importance
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of center screen viewing and
sound balance for digital sys- buff like Pomes, is “as near to rows 10 and 13. I remember in seating negotiations all the ‘If we’re not 15 minutes early
a religion as Scorsese’s ‘Last WKDWVSHFL¿FDOO\´
we’re late.”’
time.
tems used in theaters today.
W hile other n ew spa pers give you less, The D a ily Astoria n
GIVES YOU
M ORE
O u r n ew
C APITAL B UREAU
covers the sta te for you
From left: Peter W on g, H illa ry Borru d , M a teu sz Perk ow sk i