Wiring the Neptune Theater

Fred was one of the more creative loons around back in the late seventies. He used to hang out with us when we worked at the Neptune Theater back then; we were showing the Rocky Horror Picture Show Friday and Saturday night at Midnight so there were big crowds and lots of action. Nerds like Fred and I always had a bit of a hard time finding any action, so the RHPS was nice: a big party every Friday and Saturday night, and we were effectively invited!

Fred bought wrecked Cadillacs for next to nothing and put together souped up over engined super charged big convertibles and traveled in insane style. He found an app note on how to build a 72v amplifier using new power amplifier ICs. He bought 8 of them and mounted them in big heat sinks and built in a preamp stage; when he was done the amplifier was almost oo heavy for one person to move - some serious metal and heft there.. We ran the projector's sound into that.

Next we took a few hundred feet of high end audio wire and threaded it through a pipe to the space above the booth. From there we crawled through the beams under the ceiling that support the lath and plaster shell below us, rolling out wire behind us as we went. Back stage we brought down the wire and connected it to 2 huge "corner horn" folded Klipsch speakers with 15" drivers and expensive horn mid-range and tweeters. The best bass money could buy at that point, it was used to simulate sonic booms. Good stuff, very loud. Very, very loud. You know how car stereo fanatics overbuild their car systems to the point that the bass is painfully loud and unavoidable even outside of the car? The Netpune was like that, only huge.

Friday night at 11:45 they'd start letting the kids in. We're playing a Zoro serial with Hendrix's "Hey Joe" for sound while the seats start filling up. We wait until they start yelling "turn it up" and then we crank it. Hendrix's licks screaming and wailing, drums thumping heavily. Rocky Horror rocks out like never before, guitars and keyboards punchy and loud, bass booming away and resonating like mad. Sellout crowds with plenty of liquor and drugs being noisy completely drowned out by the Frankenstein sound system. Pretty darn cool!

The loudest bass noises notes ring and resonate, booming out into the auditorium and shaking your gut and vibrating your seat. The Neptune's booth was a concrete bunker designed to keep the noise of the projectors from escaping to the auditorium, so it's pretty well sound proofed. Concrete walls and double glassed windows make it hard to hear the sound during the movie from inside the booth so we have an extra speaker in the booth that we can turn up if needed. The noise with the new amp and speakers was so loud that it overwhelmed the sound proofing, thundering into the booth, drowning out the projector noise and making all the film reels rattle and shake. The empty big aluminum reels were shaking right off of the work space table top and dropping to the floor. Fred's power amp was hardly even warm, those new transistors were amazing!

I wandered down to the lobby and hung out in the concessions stand as the movie wound down and the bonus "There's A Light"/"Sweet Transvestite" secion kicks in, the Neptune always used to replay reel 2 at the end so that the audience left on a triumphant high with Frank the sweet transvestite still strutting his stuff, rather than lying dead and murdered. As the final words of Franks big intro ring out - "I see you shiver with antici" "Say it!" "...pation." Loud using his trained singing voice: "What may be the rain," quieter "isn't really to blame, So I'll remove the cause" - chuckle and lips twitching, "...but not the symptom" and the button is pushed and he disappears up the lift. The lights go on, the curtains open and it's a wrap, the show is over and the crowd starts ambling out.

The crowd wasn't as amped up as usual, more like shell shocked. At the time I thought they were very quiet, now I realize they might not have been quite as quiet as I was thinking, since my hearing probably took a little damage. Their's did too, though, and I think it really was quite a bit quieter than normal. The show that night was more of a sensory overload than usual, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show was pretty much always a sensory overload with loud rock music and rice and cards and toast flying through the air and everyone singing along and screaming their favorite interjections on cue. We hasd to put some effort into it, but we managed to overwhelm everyone's expectations.

Over the next week we installed stereo optical detectors for the sound in the projector using photodiodes and wired up a better input arrangement, giving us better sound and gain. We also turned it down a bit for the remaining weekends and only cranked it all the way up in private. We'd have a short stereo concert around 11:10 while the theater was empty, just before letting in the Rocky Horror Picture Show audience. A few buddies and I would play something by Chuck Berry or Led Zeppelin or a good synthesizer workout like "Funeral For A Friend" by Elton John (the system handled that sort of synthesized sine wave music brilliantly) and we'd go insane with the volume. We'd grab a soft drink and head up to the center of the balcony, front row, and enjoy our own custom built stereo cranked to painful levels in our huge listening room that seats more than 800 and feel like the coolest kids on the planet.

You never realize how good you have things at the time; I definitely had some peak experiences at the Neptune.

Concessions

My first regular job was as a concessionaire at the Neptune Theater. We sold over priced candy, popcorn and pop. The popcorn was manufactured in Eastern Washington, died yellow and salted, and sent to us in huge plastic bags. Nasty stuff. We kept a "butter" dispenser with this nasty greasy partially hydrogenated soybean oil in it for "buttering" the "popcorn."

The Neptune wasn't part of a local chain - the operators had a few screens tucked away here and there, but nothing within 100 miles of the Neptune. That meant we never bid enough to get the high demand movies, so we'd get the lesser films, the horror films and thrillers, and some soft core porn. Business wasn't great, but 2 people making barely over $2 an hour could run the place when the crowds were small, so they managed to stay in business.

I worked my way up to assistant manager pretty quickly - I had a key and the combination of the safe memorized and would open and close, do the paperwork and make the deposit. I also got trained as a projectionist, and even did a stint as a janitor. I even got to put the letters into the Neptune's sign above 45th there in the U-District.

In an uncharacteristically brilliant move the management decided to show "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" at Midnight on Friday and Saturday. I think Pam Sprowl, the Neptune’s manager, promoted the idea to Rayleh Burns and the head office. There had been an earlier run at a local theater but it ended pretty quickly. The amount of business that was too small for them to bother with looked good to the Neptune's management, so we started showing it.

I remember Pam nervously hoping for a reasonable amount of business as we got ready for the first show. People were showing up outside by 11:15, so we told them to wait until 11:30 and we’d sell tickets. There were already a dozen or more people at 11:30 and by the time we closed the booth and shut the doors we sold well over one hundred tickets. In those days we were making the $2.35 minimum wage with the projectionist and manager making a bit more so staff cost maybe $50-$75 for the movie so we were making money. On top of that we sold another $2 or $3 on concessions per person and that was 85% profit too. That first crowd was fairly quiet, but within 2 or 3 weeks the crowd size tripled and the crowd got much louder and rowdier.

We got more business each night than we normally got in a week or two. It was crowded, loud, and happening. The crowd would smuggle beer, booze, pot, and other drugs in and get hammered. The crowds kept increasing quickly and we started selling the venue out - in the neighborhood of 800 tickets, at up to $2.50 each, for a huge $2,000 haul. Concessions and the regular show added another $1-2,000. It was huge to us at the time, anyway. I remember being fascinated by the challenge of getting some of the bigger deposits into the little locking deposit bag.

I became the primary ticket seller for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I got very fast - I sold 800 tickets in 40 minutes, that's 20 tickets per minute. Things got crazy and out of control as the crowd got bigger and more drunk and stoned. After a particularly bad weekend with fights breaking out, repeated vandalism including toilet and sink destruction and drug addled customers threatening to get their guns and come back and kill us the staff decided that we needed a change.

We met with the management and they agreed to hire a rent-a-cop for security. Officer Bob Franzen joined us and things never got as out of control again, thank goodness. On the rare occasion that some idiot couldn't be convinced to leave then Bob dealt with them, efficiently and with a minimum of brutality. I felt my whole teenage cop hate (those bozos want to bust me and my friends just because we want to party) going away, and I came to appreciate having the man around to deal with hassles so we didn't have to. Much.

Show Time

When I was young I tried drinking beer a couple of times and loathed it. Joe and I snuck a couple of Dad's Rainiers out to the horse shed in the horse pasture I grew up next to and tried them. Out shivering on a cold evening, maybe 14 years old, whispering with Joe as we opened the bottles and sipped from them. We tried to hide our disgust but it was obvious neither of us could stand them. Blech!

Years later I was working at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, selling 800 tickets in 50 minutes on a Friday in August, drenched in sweat on a hot summer night locked into a little glass booth out on the sidewalk on 45th.

I had my left hand on the ticket machine buttons and my right hand held the money - a wad of ones and fives. I had my money tray on my lower right side, ticket machine a big metal monstrosity in front of me (you kind of straddled it with your legs) and the FM radio's stereo speakers on the floor pointing up at me blasting away.

I had a system: the ones in my right hand were on the visible side where I could count them off quickly with my thumb and the fives were hidden behind the ones. When I needed a five I reached with my left hand and pulled it off the bottom of the stack.

As the customer stepped up and indicated the number of tickets I'd push the appropriate button with my left hand and start counting change out with my right, making additional passes with the left to the money tray to deal with tens and twenties if needed. As the cash piled up I would count up bundles of 20 ones and 20 fives while waiting for the customers to get to the window slot and tell me how many tickets they wanted. Eventually enough would pile up that I could bundle 20 twenties too. I'd fold the bundles of 20 and put them in the money tray.

By the time I sold out in 50 minutes I'd have the first pass of counting 90% or more done with a few left to count. I quickly recount my bundles, count and recout the loose money, fill in the paperwork and add it all up and sign off quickly, within the first 15 or 20 minutes of the doors opening.

As I was feeling parched, tired, and also satisfied - the numbers all came out correctly and the hard part of my evening was over - officer Bob came in with a trash can full of beer. He pulled open the fridge and started cramming in bottles and cans. As I finished and signed the paperwork he winked at me and went on back out of the office. I wandered over to the fridge and decided to try a beer one more time. There were several different types, so I tried one of the fancier looking types. It was good and cold, the RHPS fan must have bought it just before coming to the theater. It was so good it amazed me.

A good cold beer when you're hot sure hit the spot. One of the many lessons I learned at the Neptune.

The Ticket Booth

I spent a fair amount of my adolescence in a little glass booth on the sidewalk on 45th in the U District selling tickets at the Neptune. Almost every Friday and Saturday night from 1977 on past 1980 I sold tickets for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.



The booth was octagonal with glass from waist height up in front and to the sides, with a locking door behind. The booth was "outside" - the doors into the Neptune are behind it, and the public can walk all the way around the booth. The top of the booth approaches the bottom of the theater marquee so it looks built in and it's pretty solid.
The Rocky Horror crowd was usually pretty amiable. We had a good understanding worked out. They'd line up - claim their territory - starting from the right-most front door as you enter, which was my left-most door since I faced the street in the booth. The line would move back to the side walk, then West in front of the neighboring business, then wrap around the corner down onto Brooklyn. On a really nice summer evening at it's peak the line would then continue down Brooklyn along the Neptune and past it a further half block. A spontaneous block party every Friday and Saturday night, with cases of beer consumed and weed and pills and 'shrooms and who knows what all getting passed around and consumed.

I got along well with the crowd. I sold them their tickets and I was unfailingly nice and polite. An occasional belligerent drunk or really drugged out person needed to be dealt with, but I'd just hit the buzzer so that somebody inside would come out to deal with it. I was out there alone and couldn't leave the money unattended, so I was always somewhat isolated from the crowd. I was the dude who sold tickets but not the dude you drank or got high with. I kept a certain distance from the crowd and the fans. Not always, of course, but mostly, anyway.

I'd buzz along selling tickets and counting money and keeping an eye on the front of the crowd under the lights. We kept the crowd over on the West side so that the audience leaving the 9-ish show could leave using the East doors and avoid colliding with all of the drunk and stoned enthusiasts already camped out in front of the theater. We usually didn't have terribly large crowds for the regular movies so the doors wouldn't be open that long as the workers chased out the last of the regular crowd and restocked for Rocky. I almost never saw much of this end of things until after the movie started since I'd be out front selling tickets then locked in the office counting the money and filling out the forms.

I mostly got along well with the crowd, but we did run into one issue that was challenging. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is rated R which means nobody under 17 is admitted without a parent or guardian. This is a voluntary system in the US, so there is no actual legal requirement to enforce it. For the first year we pretty much ignored that and sold tickets to anybody who wanted them. We got complaints. More importantly someone complained to Twentieth Century Fox and the distributor. Our management was called and threatened with losing the film if we didn't enforce the limit.

I was told not to sell tickets to anyone below 17. I got some reaction from the crowd, but I told them we had to enforce it or we'd lose the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fortunately there was a crowd of sympathetic fans standing around so I'm sure the kids got in anyway by having somebody else buy their tickets. I no time the average purchase went from 2 tickets to 6, and I don't think the crowd got any older.

We got further complaints, though, and the manager asked me how the underage kids were getting in. I told them the obvious answer - their friends buy their tickets. So the rules were revised: only 2 tickets per customer.

I didn't make the rule, and as a recent 16 year old myself I didn't appreciate the attempt to "ruin the fun" but I was honest and did my job as directed. For the first time I had to deal with a fair amount of annoyance from my customers and there wasn't that much I could do about it. I took it as a challenge to be unfailingly polite and positive, even chipper, about the whole thing. That mostly helped keep people from getting too upset so the most common unfavorable response was a "that sucks/is stupid" or an expletive or a grumble. I'm sure the kids mostly still got in, but at least we had finally made it a slightly obnoxious process. Apparently that was good enough because the distributor quit complaining and threatening to yank the film.

I finally had one asshole customer who got terribly upset by the 2 ticket limit and couldn't be calmed down. After arguing with me for 3 or 4 minutes he finally gave in and bought his 2 tickets. I handed him the tickets and change and he punched the glass window of the booth right in front of my face and cracked it. After 3 minutes of being nice to this asshole's escalating unpleasantness I was incensed. If I could have reached him I would've grabbed him and started pounding. Unfortunately he was on the other side of the cracked glass, I was locked into a little booth and surrounded by drunk and stoned fans who hadn't even noticed the action, and I couldn't leave the booth and the money. I hit the buzzer and held it down. In the minute it took for someone to come out the asshole had disappeared down the street and around the corner. We never saw him again.

Working in that booth taught me important lessons about empathy. I was stuck implementing a policy I didn't particularly like or believe in, that's how it works when you're the peon who has to deal with the public. The geniuses who dream thesre policies up won't get caught within a mile of the public, perish the thought. So when you're tempted to take your petty annoyance out on the poor employee who has to deal with you remember that he or she probably has to deal with ten or a hundred times more annoyance than you do. It's not their fault, and while being an asshole to someone who doesn't deserve it may make you feel better it also makes you an asshole.

I also learned positive lessons in empathy. By consistently being friendly, positive, and professional no matter how outlandishly the customer wsa dressed, no matter how freakish their behavior, no matter how drug addled, and just getting the needed business done cleanly and correctly with a minimum of fuss, I actually enjoyed a fair amount of empathy and sympathy from the crowd. I was able to use that to get the crowd to respond to my orders on several occasions.

I remember a late Fall day around 11:30, it had gotten dark early and was cool and damp. The crowd by the front door was up to it's usual antics lighting up bong hits. They were behind me and to the left and the crowd blocked the view from the street, so they felt pretty safe toking away. They knew the routine - the doors wouldn't open for 10 minutes yet so they were aggressively getting their buzzes on. I was facing away from them and politely not watching, but I could see the flickers of the lighters reflected in the window that faced the opposite direction. It made an interesting orange flickering overlay on the angled panel, moving and flickering for 5 or 10 seconds then stopping as the next bong hit was completed. Then I noticed another flickering orange light that lasted a bit longer and started to spread. Huh? I turned and looked and I saw that one of the regulars was holding his lighter up to the "You will be subject to search on entry" sign on the front door.

I could picture it: stoned, buzzing, a little reaction to the authoritarian tone of the sign, a little pyromania, the next thing you know you're lighting the sign and the flames look cool as you buzz along...

I sang in the choir at school since the 7th grade so I knew how to use my diaphragm and had training. I took a deep breath, leaned back in my chair against the door, opened the lock and stuck my head out the door towards the corner where the bone head was lighting the poster-board and boomed out "Hey asshole put that out right now!"

The acoustics out there are pretty good - a stone floor and a reasonably low and sonically "bright" roof to enclose sound, and the idiot was in the corner where the walls would focus my voice.

He literally jumped in the air at my voice and whipped his hands out and brushed out the fire before he landed. He turned away from me and his head slumped - he did not want to meet my eye. I knew this guy from selling him tickets 20 times already even if I didn't know his name, and he knew me too. He didn't want to get permanently kicked out and I knew he'd never do anything like that again, so I just pulled my head back in, locked the door, and turned to the next customer and said "how many tickets?"

It did give me an odd perspective - I always thought of myself as the lowest of the low, the guy they send out to deal with the public so they don't have to. I hadn't really noticed that still left me in a position of power as far as the public was concerned.

The window getting cracked in my face was my worst experience in the booth, and considering I sold tickets to over 100,000 Rocky Horror fans who had been drinking, smoking and drugging for an indeterminate amount of time I'd say I got off pretty lucky.

I took one day off on a Friday so I could get to bed early since I had to take my SAT at 8AM in the morning so they had someone else sell tickets to Rocky for the first time in over a year. That night some big dude got thrown out for fighting and decided to try to break into the booth by kicking in the back door. My coworker told me about sitting in that little booth, watching this 6' 6" dude taking huge front kicks at the door, watching the door bow and crack as he held the button down for dear life, praying for officer Bob to get out there quick and deal with the situation. Nothing that bad ever happened when I was there. Apparently officer Bob came out before the nut job could get through the door and proceeded to take him down and sit on him until backup police came and cuffed and arrested him and hauled him away. I'm almost sorry I missed it, but being there for violence always turns out to be an unpleasant experience, more funny in the telling than the living. I just don't like being around violence.

Most Friday and Saturday nights weren't that crazy, though. On most weekends a loud verbal altercation or a puking idiot was about the worst you dealt with.

After letting the crowds in 3 or 4 of us would go out in a group and bag up all the trash and sweep up the broken glass. A few hundred people can consume an amazing amount of beer and they weren't shy about it. Since we'd hired officer Bob they couldn't bring it in any more, so they just got there an hour early with a group and drank a case or two before getting in.

I suppose most people wouldn't fondly remember sweeping up broken glass and cleaning up puke but for me it was an integral part of a fascinating adolescence. It kept me out of trouble, anyway.

How I Got My Job

Paul and I were friends since grade school. His parents were part owners of a chain of theaters that included the Neptune, so we'd bus down to the Neptune from our homes in Edmonds, hang out in the U-District, and watch the shows. I thought that was pretty cool.

One weekend Paul asked if I could count the number of people coming through the door. "Don't be too obvious about it" he told me.

I didn't think too much about it, saying "sure, I can do that." I sat up the ramp towards the balcony with my back to the wall and kept a tally as the doors opened and the customers trickled in. There weren't all that many, less than 50, but I don't remember the total after all this time.

I hadn't considered why I was asked to count, I just figured they were nice enough to let me see movies for free so I was happy to help out.

Once the show started I gave the tally to Paul, who handed it over to one of the owners. Shortly after that the assistant manager (who took tickets at the door) and the cashier (who sat in the box office selling tickets) were called into the office.

After a while they came out looking upset and left. It turns out the owners had been suspicious that the employees were stealing box office revenue, but every time they came and kept count the numbers matched. Yet if they weren't there the box office always dropped by 20 or so people, so they figured the employees were smart enough to stop stealing if the owners were there.

They didn't see me as a threat since Paul and I were there fairly often, so they went ahead and stole and got caught and were fired. The scam was pretty obvious. As the assistant manager stood at the door and took tickets she was supposed to tear them in half, giving half back to the customer. Many customers don't pay attention to this or don't want the stub, so she'd palm the un-torn ticket, wait for a pause in the flow of customers, and take the tickets out to be re-sold by the cashier.

Now the ticket numbers and the counter in the ticket machine would show fewer sales than they had actually made, and they would pocket the difference, splitting it between them, when they counted up the receipts.

I felt a little guilty about getting someone fired - I had been completely blank about why they asked me to count people. The owner then turned around and offered me a job on the spot, which made me feel a bit more guilty - but not so guilty that I didn't take the job.

Working at the theater seemed like a cool job - the work wasn't hard or boring the way the paper-boy job I had the prior summer or the lawn mowing I did on occasion were, and the perks were very nice. I could usually get into other theaters, as long as they weren't selling out, by having the manager call the manager of the other theater and ask them.

I saw quite a few movies as a teen, and I didn't pay for very many at all. Occasionally a movie I wanted to see like Led Zeppelin's "The Song Remains the Same" would be "no passes" and I'd have to pay, but that was OK.

So I got my job by unknowingly getting someone else fired, probably a pretty apt metaphor for life in corporate America now that I think about it.

How I Lost My Job

I went to work at the Neptune when I was 15. I was employed in concessions and as a cashier, projectionist, janitor and assistant manager. From the age of 15 to 20 I never missed a day.

I got my first girlfriend a job at the Neptune. Eventually she got to be the assistant manager and we broke up and working together was a drag. One weekend day I missed the bus to the U-District. The next one was in 30 minutes, so I was late. I called in and said I wasn't going to be able to make it on time. She said then don't bother coming in at all, you're fired.

It surely was for the best, we both needed to move on, but I took it poorly. I got crash space from my sister and would lie around feeling sorry for myself. Eventually Greg dragged me to a fast food joint where I got slightly better than minimum wage for an honest if unpleasant job. Mopping p, cleaning the fryer, frying burgers, and deep frying stuff was all mildly unpleasant, but the worst job by far was changing the grease out of the fryer.

I don my protective vest and apron, then lower the face guard and put on the big hand guards so that I can lift the vat of blisteringly hot oil, straining to hold the hot metal with sloshing frying grease away from my body and steady enough that it doesn't slosh out, as I shuffle across the room, out the door, and across the parking lot, with my arms and shoulders getting tired and cramped, the nasty crackling sound as the hot grease hits the water that has condensed over the prior layer of grease in the barrel and splatters - nothing has ever got me more motivated to do a high tech job: they pay so much better, the conditions are much nicer, and the job is much more fun.

Pretty quickly I was able to find gainful employment programming robots, but that's a different story for another time.

Give Me A Lever And I Will Move the Observable Universe

Lane had to be one the worst managers they ever got at the Neptune.

One of the funnier things I ever saw happen was when the most attractive candidate (who else would Lane pick?) who was running the projector had a problem. She threaded up and started the film normally, but the image was not centered and reached over off the screen.

A janitor and another dude, both reasonably big guys, volunteered to help out and were soon wrassling with the projector, the huge, operating, cast iron base tipping and sliding a bit as they worked at it.

I was out in the booth selling tickets. I was the most experienced projectionist there that day, but Lane gave the position to the cutie who had little training. One of the concessionaires was watching through the curtain and saw the whole image tipping and moving, and a curious saw wave looking thing over to the side, all moving around and jumping, and figured "that can't be right!" and came out and got me.

As I came in and ran up the ramp I saw the image tip and fall back through the curtain. Awesome, if scary! The sound track was clearly visible, a vertical bar that thickened and flickered if there as any sound. The fix for this sort of thing was always in the aperture, that little square metal window right at the light focus next to the film that determines where the light is cut off. It should always cover the sound track.

I ran on up to the booth and in, and told the boys to step away from the projector. Moving up beside the projector and opening the cover over the film path I reach in to the aperture and pull out the removable frame which was loose, clean it, and put it back in until it locked in place. Now the image was properly framed and the sound track was hidden, but it was way over to the left, partially off the screen.

I stepped to the back of the booth and picked up the funny looking fat club, put it under the rear of the projector and lifted and levered the base back maybe a quarter inch. Dropping the club and moving it back, then up and to the left again I did another quarter inch. It took 10 or 12 passes to undo the 3 inches and line it back up in the center of the screen at the front of the auditorium.

I didn't say much, just left the club and walked back out of the booth, down the ramps and out to the box office.

Corporate Jungle and Carnivores

We had quite a few different managers over the years at the Neptune. Most of them were easy enough to work with, so as long as you did your job well they were fine with you.

One in particular was more dishonest and lousier to work for than most. He'd give the higher paying position to the most attractive woman almost every time, even though I was much better at the job and would have to bail the woman out if she didn't know what she was doing. Bear in mind, this isn't a sex based thing on my part; it is from the manager's point of view - he selected them based on his preferences. I resented them for being lousy at the job that I was better at, that paid more, that they didn't deserve. Having to show them what they were doing wrong just rubbed the unfairness in. I'd have felt the same way if it were men he was appointing.

This manager was actively dishonest. He ran the normal ticket reselling scam at least 2 or 3 times that I know about, so I assume he ran it way more than that. He held an employee meeting - morale was low, and he didn't understand that his poor qualities as a leader were largely to blame. He decided to pump us up.

"I don't mind stealing from the company. We can all do well if we steal from the company." Words more or less to that effect. Pretty mind boggling. He was older than the rest of us, the only adult in a sense - we were all college or high school students at least a few years younger than him. He confused younger with stupid and/or safe, which was a mistake.

His words were recorded by a tape recorder hidden in a jacket. I was at the meeting where the recording was played to Rayleh, the corrupt manager's boss. I suppose I was there as an additional witness to the dishonest boss's statements, they all new I was painfully honest. Rayleh fired the manager and hired the college kid who had the organization and skills to record and turn in the boss as the new boss.

He ended up being one of the better bosses and was completely honest as far as I could tell. It probably comes as no surprise that he ended up being a lawyer. Given the adversarial nature of our system of justice, the guy who rose to the top of the Neptune heap may be the best bet for your lawyer.

His path to the top reminds me of how I got my job at the Neptune, over the figurative corpse of your competitors career. As I said there, a pretty apt metaphor for life in corporate America.

Bat Out of Hell

We had been showing the Rocky Horror Picture Show for almost a year and we were selling out regularly. Meatloaf was going to be in town for a weekend show so we got some tickets and I arranged to have someone else cover the earlier shows at the Neptune for me that night. I suppose not everyone is into the Rocky Horror Picture Show so I should spell it out: Meatloaf plays Eddy, the biker/sax player, in the movie.

Dave A. was a friend at school who was in the choir with me and I ended up bringing him along to the Meatloaf concert and then to work. The Meatloaf show was great - it was a KZOK Rising Star show so it only cost $1.02. It was at the Paramount, I venue I've always liked. A big old school classy palatial theater with a huge balcony and ornate light fixtures and details and interior multiple floor open spaces with balconies above concessions that seats several thousand or at least over 1,000 - one of the coolest venues left in town. I think a Microsoft millionaire bought it and restored it, so it's a better venue than ever now.

The band came on first and was doing a simple vamp. The pianist Steinman came out and made an elaborate production of taking off his two sets of gloves, putting on a clinic in psyching up the audience through physical showmanship and flamboyant piano performance. He got us yelling and brought the emotional temperature up, and Meatloaf didn't disappoint us - he took the temperature even higher.


He had an amazing voice, loud, strong, powerful, and on pitch. Paradise by the Dashboard Light was a high point featuring Meatloaf and a powerful (and gorgeous) alto going toe to toe singing, more musical theater than rock show, but definitely in a rock musical vein. Bat Out of Hell rocked out, 2 Out of 3 (Ain;t Bad) was OK, and All Dressed Up With No Place To Go featured Meatloaf throwing his mike aside and bellowing at the top of his lungs, still able to be heard above the amplified guitars, bass and keyboards. Definitely one of the better vocal performances I have ever heard, especially in terms of power and volume.

After the show wrapped up (and boy did we get our monies worth!) we piled back into the Dodge Dart and drove back to the Neptune. Dave went in and sat down while I went out and sold tickets to the freaks. After 30 minutes a weaselly looking guy in a black leather coat shows up. "I'm Meatloaf's manager and he was wondering if he could come in and visit with the crowd."

It sounded like a good idea to me, so I hit the buzzer to call for help from inside and when someone came out I told them "this is Meatloaf's manager, take him in to see our manager so that he can arrange to talk to the crowd" and in he went. A while later, after the doors were open and the last of the crowd was filing in a limo pulled up and Meatloaf and a few people got out and headed into the theater. I was stuck outside finishing tickets sales, then in the locked office counting up so I didn't get to see Meatloaf's performance, but I heard the highlights secondhand.

Meatloaf was up on the stage talking shit with the audience and it went well. The theater was full and crowded with a loud and enthusiastic crowd. They yelled when they realized Meatloaf was on stage with a microphone. He raised his arms for silence and got a decrease in the noise.

"How many of you have seen this movie before?" and the crowd start yelling and carrying on.
"How many have seen it five times?" and the yelling gets louder.
"How many have seen it 25 times?" and fewer people yell, but there are still plenty.
"How many people have seen it 50 times?" and many continue yelling.
"You assholes are full of shit!" he bellows at the crowd, smiling widely as they roar back, obviously enjoying himself and thriving on the attention.

I always wished I had seen that, or better yet had a recording. It's too bad we didn't have modern inexpensive video recording technology back then, all of those quirky live costume performances are gone forever, and one off appearances like that really don't leave much of a trail.

After the show was over and the crowd was filing out I went in to get Dave. He looked a little pale and overwhelmed, but in a good way. Not surprisingly he enjoyed the experience and ended up working at the theater shortly after that. Getting to bring your friends to the movies was one of the nice perks of working there.

Soft Core Sucks

The Neptune wasn't doing all that well most of the time. They couldn't get the good movies because they didn't have enough screens so we got the second rate movies and the occasional soft core porn. The ladies hated working when we had the sleazier films, and I can't say that I blamed them. I found the opportunity to watch soft core porn wasn't that thrilling; in fact the crowd made the whole thing kinds of repulsive.

During the intermissions the old guys would come out and stand around the lobby, but rarely if ever buy anything. If there were any women working behind the counter they'd get stared at by the men. If not then the most effeminate male would get stared at. It was definitely creepy.

Nothing ever came of it, other than making coworkers mildly queasy. The occasional issue with a creepy old guy and pedophilia would occur when we had a kids movie. That makes a certain sick sense - the pedophiles try to attend kids films - yuck. We actually caught one creep and got the cops on him before he could get away, but I'm sure there were other times when someone got away with something. We didn't get kids movies a whole lot so it wasn't a frequent issue.

I remember one time during the U District street fair they had a throwback day: .25 admission and a double feature plus animated shorts, a newsreel, a Zoro serial and a documentary - Empire of Light, about glass cutting. There were only 3 of us, so we opened the doors and got swamped. Crowds of kids came piling in, all yelling and having a good time, running up and down the ramps, buying pop and candy and popcorn and running in and out of the auditorium. No need to worry about pedophiles in that crowd, there were no adults at all. It was pretty loud and messy but not particularly violent or destructive. All in all it as pretty fun, except that the crowd was huge and once the movies started we only had 2 employees on concessions so it was intensely busy non-stop for hours.

Once they got the Rocky Horror Picture Show the soft core porn was a thing of the past. The additional resources allowed us to get slightly better films (see Cruising, for example) if we were lucky. It sure was nicer having the reliable business and concessions turnover. It also allowed us to include quite a few more people on staff, even if most of them only worked Friday and Saturday night.

Paul's Last Day at the Neptune

Paul was the projectionist a few weeks into the run of the Rocky Horror Picture Show on a Saturday night. For some reason the RHPS was left on 5 twenty minute rolls, requiring frequent changeovers and introducing sequence errors as a possibility.

Paul and a couple of friends headed up to the booth, and after a couple of minute Paul came back down and got 3 beers. I went out and started selling the house out and as the first reel started up Paul nipped back down stairs and grabbed another 3 beers, heading back up to the projectionist booth up the ramps and through the dark balcony.

As I came and finished counting up, maybe 20 minutes into the film, I heard the crowd going wild. The wrong scene had started: Paul put on reel 3, not reel 2, and instead of the opening notes of the time warp as Brad and Janet kick the tires and head over to the castle (castle?) we had Frank staring into the camera in full bustier mode, "what may be the rain..."

Paul later told me he couldn't figure out the ruckus for a moment - focus was tight, frame was good, sound is OK - then Rosie came running in and said "you put on the wrong reel, you skipped the time warp!"

Oops. Rule number 1: take care of yourself. Paul turned off the motor on the projector that had the wrong reel and headed over to lock the door so that the freaks didn't break in. As luck would have it, the reel was on the projector that didn't have a working fire shutter. As the motor slowed down and Paul forgot to switch away from the projector the frame rate dropped then stopped as the sound did a similar "so I'lllll brrrbrbrbrbrb" and there's Frank, in hus bustier, motionless, and the sound stops except that it doesn't, the crowd takes over, screaming and yelling. That's not nearly enough - see that haze forming?

Now Frank's chest is turning dark and the smoke is flowing down - that's how you know it's really happening to the film since it's upside down and backwards, then it actually catches fire a little, with flickers and ash and the frame breaks, leaving a little star shaped flaw right in the middle of the frame, in the middle of Frank. It keeps getting louder, past reasonable levels and into the walls shaking and things falling off of tables mode.


Paul finally notices, or maybe he just gets lucky when he realizes he needs to take the film off the projector and put the correct reel on. He switches it off and after another 5 minutes or so gets the film going again.

I also found out later that the couple up in the booth with Paul weren't drinking. Ah, that explained some of the difficulties. When the show was finally over and the crowd had mostly trickled out Paul came down, not just unapologetic but actively hostile, upset and yelling at the manager before he could even open his mouth. I'm pretty sure it effectively counted as his resignation.

I couldn't help noticing that 1 frame flaw each and every time I saw Frank's big pay-off - working as a projectionist trains you to see 1/24 second frames. I'd try to point it out to everyone, it and the story behind it were a wonderful bit of Neptune color.

We eventually got a new print after 3+ years, which was pretty cool, but losing the perforated frame was kind of sad, like losing track of an old friend.

First Time at the Neptune

When Paul and I ere just barely teenagers - 13 or so, so this would've been 1974 or maybe 1973 - we caught the bus from Edmonds to Northgate and transferred to a U district bus.We wandered over to Cellophane Squares, checked out the albums and posters and played video games and pinball machines in the back room.

We wandered over to the used book store on 43rd East of the Ave, or maybe it was on 41st. They had good stuff, cookbooks of advanced illegal chemistry, radical political stuff, science fiction and fantasy, and interesting odds and ends. We wandered up and down the Ave until the Neptune opened, then we headed up to 45th on the Ave, around the corner and West on the South side of 45th up to the Neptune's marquee. We walked under the marquee past the ticket booth to the rightmost door which was open.

Paul led us in, saying "Hello Steve" to the cashier inside who was selling tickets. They chatted for a bit. As owner's family Paul could get in with a friend when ever he wanted. I thought that was pretty cool. One of Paul's older brothers was working there that night and he drove us home later, after the movies were over.

I don't even remember what the movie was. I saw plenty of good ones and an awful lot of mediocre films over the years, and the Neptune had a pretty tremendous role in my adolescence. I liked it from the first time I got to go - not having to pay, and going into the big dark room and watching the film flickering on the screen whenever you wanted - that seemed so cool to me.

I was always up for a trip to the Neptune when we were kids, so I got to know the metro bus system a little bit. The relief when the bus shows up, stepping up and on and paying, shuffling back to find a seat as the engine winds up and the bus lurches into motion. The bus winding around through the neighborhoods out in Edmonds, making stops all along the way. By the time we wind up and go a little faster on our way up to Westgate the bus was often mildly crowded. I learned to play the "staring at others without getting caught" game as you check out the people around you who aren't looking in your direction.

Once we turned 16 and got our licenses we rarely rode the bus. Now I'm much older and have a job in downtown Seattle and ride the bus in and out of Seattle 5 times a week but I rarely think about being a kid going to the Neptune - too tired early in the morning for nostalgia, or looking forward to getting home, either way I rarely think about it.