I’m going to be perfectly honest. My generalization is holding. Over 35? Things are great, nothing is wrong, we just want a movie theatre and a pool and a pavilion and an amphitheatre and we have a tattoo parlor. 35 and Under? Uh, we need to fix some things.
I’ve been having a ‘tete a tete’ with the Mayor’s Wife, one Mrs. Becky Hontz, a lovely woman who adores her town and is proud of it. And I applaud her for that. In her emails to me (and comments in the previous post) she alluded to the fact that there are very nice houses and a couple of restaurants and a nice grocery store and a new pavilion going in on the river out in Watsontown. And I replied that yes, I believe you are right, that this is a very pretty place to live and there are nice things there.
I also replied that over the course of eight years (2000-2008) there was a 6.8% decrease in the population of Watsontown. A decrease. An ebb and flow is certainly healthy for communities, jsut like being flexible is good for humans. But a steady decrease of almost 7% of the population indicates two things to me: 1 – the population (the average age of which is 41) is aging and dying and no one is replacing the population with a younger crowd. 2 – no one is doing anything to entice younger, child rearing people to this town.
Now, I’ve looked at the statistics. I’ve seen the job stats and the population stats and you know what? These things happen. But it would be a mistake to say that everything is fine because there are a few houses that look nice and a tattoo parlor in the downtown area.
I was also told that making the movie theatre a Community Center was not going to fly and to hold film festivals was probably a bad idea because “(t)his is Watsontown, not Sundance.” That floored me, to be honest. I was literally flabbergasted and had no words.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Like a lot a lot. I saw this article in the New York Times about movie theatres in small towns helping to boost the economy. And I thought to myself, “Self, this isn’t the wrong thing to do. It’s just the wrong way to go about it.” So, with that, I’m going to announce this:
I’m putting my efforts to buy the movie theatre on hiatus. I’m going to be finishing my wedding invitation, then a short film about a time traveler. Then I’m going to spend a lot of time writing. Then I’m going to get married. And after that, then I will revisit this mission of ours.
Do not mis-read. I am not giving up. I am not stopping. I am simply taking an extended hiatus to figure out what’s going on in my life. I have a lot of things going on personally and at this moment, I have to take care of me.
So, it’s up to you now. In the months that I am gone, I want to see some traffic on the Facebook page, not just bellyaching and sadpuppy. I want more followers on the Twitter. And for those of you with a video camera, I want you to post a YouTube video on the Facebook page telling me why we should do any of this.
And I’ll compile all of them so the world can see that this is important.
And if anyone is going to tonight’s borough council meeting, tell them I said hi. I might want to chat with them in the future.
Trivia: The first motion picture to be filmed in Hollywood was shot on October 26, 1911. The Gem Movie Theatre, build on the spot of the current Watson Theatre was opened in 1912. There has been a theatre on that spot, since Hollywood was invented.
The Watson Theatre is literally a part of film history