Fox Cinema

By Cameron Reed

Saturday April 1, 2006

The Fox Theatre is one of the only remaining monuments of Main Street’s seedy past. The neighborhood has been transformed into a pool of irony where porno has no place. Once the last remaining 35mm porn theatre in North America, now a Jill Kelly DVD is changed by a modest 40-something Asian lady named Lisa. Sitting at the front desk with her legs under a thick blanket, Lisa muffles the sexy moans seeping through the theatre doors, with the soothing sounds of Oldies 650, CISL.

Only: How long has the cinema been here?
Lisa: 1983.
O: Are you the owner?
L: I’ve owned it for only 7 years.
O: Do you have regular customers?
L: Yes!
O: Is Moka Only one of them?
L: Who’s Moka Only?
O: Nobody. Do customers come in all day? Is there a rush or happy hour?
L: Morning and evening is ok. Not late. 7-9pm.
O: You do pretty well?
L: So-so. It’s hard to do business.
O: Do you have a clean up crew?
L: We clean up ourselves.
O: Do you know much about porno?
L: I don’t watch the movies. All these movies go through the censorship board. Actually, we bought them from someone in Montreal. They select, we don’t know which ones we get. We bought them from that distributor. They know which ones are good (currently showing at Fox Cinema are Snatchers, Sexual Healing, and Sexpose). It’s just a business.
O: Catering to people?
L: Someone has to do it. The customers are nice. It’s a safe place.
O: How many people are in the theatre at once?
L: 6-7, 10-15, sometimes 2 or 3.
O: Do you ever show anything other than porn?
L: No. They have done that before. It didn’t work. It’s hard, you know, to run a cinema these days. But this place is ok. It’s a nice place, very safe. I used to have a grocery store. There were robberies three times in three months.