Angus Burns

The Picturehouse

The day the Rektor Pure was installed a few people from town came in to watch. There had been a billboard put up a couple of months prior at the freeway exit, emblazoned with "Rektor Pure - Coming to Bay Street Cinema August 29th. The cooler way to watch" and a picture of a smiling couple cuddled up in a cinema love seat (though neither the couple nor the love seat would ever be found at Bay Street). The company that owned the cinema had diversified into air conditioning around two years prior and had already rolled them out to many locations across the country. After one of the first super scorchers killed a couple of geriatrics and forced schools to close around 8 years ago, John remembered overhearing an executive explain “It’s all in cooling now, doesn’t matter what’s on the screen, it’s the air-con that puts bums in seats” and this felt like something of a personal slight to John who loved movies. He watched it happen though, and in the following years, as soon as the first too hot day hit in late September the lines in the box office began to swell.