The Death of Har-Mar

Martha took this shot of the Har-Mar movie theater (part of the Har-Mar mall) in Roseville one evening this week. It could be the last time we see this place. My feelings are mixed, but not 50/50 mixed, I'm leaning more towards displeasure. Yes, I got engaged there, in an old photo booth to be exact, and I'll miss the place but the building is far from beautiful. Ok, it may even be ugly but what will replace it I am sure will be simply disgusting and because of that I am obliged to mourn the loss of a place that actually stood out from the rest of the strip mall crap. The Har-Mar movie theater had class, not a ton of class but just enough class to get by.

Over the course of the last six months a dedicated team of workers have been methodically disassembling the Har-Mar movie theater. I know this because we go to the Har-Mar mall all the time, they have one of the best Barnes & Noble (LINK) book shops around, and with each visit we note the progress of the job. Now that I think about it I am confused as to why they are working so carefully. Most destruction jobs are brutal and quick. This one is a very special case, very clinical. First they stripped the light fixtures and all the seating out, then the bathroom fixtures, then the popcorn machines, then they rolled up the carpets, then they brought in a digger and broke up the concrete floors to get down to bare earth. Only when a hollow shell remained did they remove the massive (and incredibly tasteless) cheap glass chandelier.