Chinatown Ghost Story

But by the following decade, theater owners had technology to compete with as well. Chinese television programs had appeared in the '70s, and videos followed shortly afterward. The kung fu movies of the 1970s and the rebirth of Hong Kong films in the early 1980s brought brief periods of renaissance to the Chinese theaters, but not enough of a rebirth to sustain business. The theaters, first the Sun Sing, then the Grandview, started closing their doors in the mid-1980s.

The Pagoda Palace followed suit in 1994. It has since been gutted and boarded up, and awaits its transformation to a shopping mall. Chinese entertainment promoter Wade Lai's family ran the Pagoda through the 1970s, and then from the mid-'80s until 1994. When the Lais' lease ran out six years ago, they decided not to renew. "Towards the end we weren't doing that well," says Lai. "We were doing only 50 to 60 percent of the business we used to."

Travel agent Russell Chinn has witnessed the gradual disappearance of the neighborhood's theaters. Walking along Grant Avenue, past the storefront clutter of souvenir T-shirts, vinyl luggage, and bamboo back-scratchers, Chinn just shakes his head as he talks about Chinatown's transformation over the years, and the decline of its movie houses.

He points to a three-story, red, pagoda-roofed building across the street, that once housed the Sun Sing Theater. "This was the premier theater in Chinatown," says Chinn, who has lived in the neighborhood most of his 66 years. "It's a shame what they've done with it."

A shame indeed. T-shirts and decaled fanny packs dangle from the tiled roof of the former opera palace, now a shopping mall that sells souvenirs by the shelfload. Inside, beyond the racks of shiny polyester kimonos, wind-up cable cars, and fake cloisonne vases, the faded green, gold, and red border of the stage stands as testimony to the theater's once-grand past. Four feet tall and painted gold, a plastic "good luck Happy Buddha" (yours for a mere $2,400) smiles benevolently from what was once front-row center.

Owners of the Sun Sing toyed with restoring the theater in the early 1970s, hoping a redesign would increase attendance at their movies. Architects drafted plans to redo everything from the lobby to the seats. But the owners ultimately decided against it, opting instead to rent out the theater as commercial space. Leasing to retailers offered a more stable solution -- one with better financial returns -- than continuing to operate the movie theater.

"No one cares about the buildings anymore," says Chinn. "They just want to rent out the space." Commercial rents in Chinatown are high -- a well-located store costs as much as $5,000 a month -- so it's little wonder that commerce has taken precedence over culture.

But management at the remaining Chinatown theaters, the World and the Great Star, believes the two ideas are still compatible. Tai Seng's Helen Soo says making the Chinese theaters more accessible to non-Chinese moviegoers is the key. "We're hoping to make going to see Chinese movies a cultural event, so that people will come to Chinatown to have dinner and then take in a show afterwards," Soo says. "We hope to attract the hip younger crowd."

The current clientele at the World and the Great Star is mostly second-generation Chinese-Americans in their late teens and early 20s, who come for the midnight shows, she says. Tai Seng hopes to broaden the theaters' appeal beyond new immigrants and Chinese audiences. Soo points to the UC Theater's hugely popular Wednesday night "Festival Hong Kong" in Berkeley, which draws hundreds of Hong Kong movie fans of all ages and ethnicities.

But whether names like John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Chow Yun Fat are enough to sustain business seven days a week remains to be seen. If attendance at the World and the Great Star has not improved markedly by next September, Tai Seng has said they may disengage from the San Francisco theaters.

Videos and laserdiscs present the Chinese theaters with even fiercer competition, compared to only a few years ago. Hong Kong movies make the transition to video and laserdisc far more rapidly than North American films, because the Asian movie industry is much less restrictive than its North American counterpart. Video piracy is another major competitor.

Nevertheless, entertainment promoter Wade Lai remains optimistic about the future of Chinese movies in San Francisco. Lai has been negotiating with his previous landlord, the owners of the former Pagoda Palace, to include two "minitheaters" and an adjoining cafe in the new complex, which is scheduled to reopen sometime in 1998. He envisions a venue that would show mostly English-dubbed Chinese movies from Hong Kong and Taiwan, with some American movies as well.

Lai says he's waiting for the movie business to revive. "It's cyclical. The Chinese movie business will come back," he says confidently.

He may be in for a long wait.