After eight years as a manager at
Baxter Avenue Theatres, I've pretty much seen and handled it all -
blackouts, tornado, flood, robbery, mutiny, pointless film festivals,
yaws...and I've even handled a small grade fire (a lobby HVAC unit
suddenly began to smolder one day). However, none of those "held a
flame" (oh, he made a funny) to the great Baxter fire of November 19.
So, to explain the photo above, we must go back in time. Lee do lee
do lee...flashback!
I arrived at a little before eleven
o'clock that fateful Sunday. It was about 11:20 when the phonoe in
teh manager's office rang. It was coming from box office.
Naturally, I picked it up and on the other line was Will Ragland. It was
rather early for him to be there, but that soon became inconsequential.
The conversation between the two of us wnet something like this:
Beau: "Hello?"
Will: "What the fuck are you still
doing up there?"
Beau: "I beg your pardon?"
Will: "Dude, the theatre is on fire."
I paused for a few seconds as I looked
about for any sign of a fire (there were none upstairs), before replying.
Beau: "Seriously, what do you want?"
Will: "I'm telling you the theatre is
on fire!"
Beau: "Where?"
Will: "Down here! The whole
goddamn lobby is on fire! I'm looking at it burning right now!"
Beau: "I think I'd be hearing the
alarm if it was. Are you fucking with me?"
Will: "I shit you not the building is
on fire. Get the fuck out now!"
Will hung the phone up and I chewed
over the conversation for a few moments. I still didn't believe him,
because the building fire alarm wasn't going off (and that bloody thing
goes off if we blow a breaker sometimes). I assumed that he just
wanted me to come outside so he and I could converse while he smoked.
So I grabbed my jacket and stolled downstairs.
When I go to the floor, I could see
that the entire hallway was filled with a thikc smoke. I realized
then that Will was not joking. I dashed to the lobby only to be
confronted by fifteen foot high flames. For about ten seconds, I
just stood motionless with my hands on my hips (it looks rather funny on
the security tape), as I thought to myself: "Well son of a bitch! So
it is!" I then began to debate: "Can I put this out? Should I
try to put this out?"
Meanwhile, the janitor for the
theatre, a middle-aged black woman always seen with a handkerchief about
her head was freaking out (I shan't put her name here for two reasons.
One: she turns out to be the party guilty for the fire as you would have
learned later had I not spoiled it for you here. Two: I never
leanred her name even though she'd been there a year. Oh, how
stereotypical of a boss, I know). She kept running back and forth in a
ten-foot span screaming at the top of her lungs, "Get outta here!
You're all gonna die! What are ya doing? Don't just stand
there! You're gonna die! Aw hell, the place is burning down!"
Quite the scene.
I finally asked myself the most
important question employees can ask themselves when confronted with a
daunting decision - do they pay me enough to deal with this?
The answer was no, so I went outside and called 911. Within moments,
the fire department was on the scene, hoses and all, battling the blaze.
As one point, they even hauled out the Eragon standee while sections were
still on fire and stomped the flames into submission.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Will Ragland calls me as the blaze starts.
I love the inherent irony that he's wearing a shirt that says:
"Please Kill Me" on the back. |
The blaze gets really out of control here. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The lobby fills with smoke as the fire
continues and we make a run for the exits. |
The firemen show up and the Eragon
standee is kicked out. |
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
An interior shot of the destruction while the
sprinkler system is still going off. |
You have no idea how fun it was to do this for
four hours. |
|
|
As this point I
realized that I needed to call my boss, Bryan. So I give him a ring
and the conversation was pretty much identical to the one I had with Will.
Bryan: "Hello?"
Beau: "Hey Bryan, it's Beau"
Bryan: "What do you want?"
Beau: "The theatre caught on fire.
The fire is out now and the fire department is still here."
(silence)
Beau: "Are you still there?"
Bryan: "Yeah. Well, what do you
want?"
Beau: "Ummm...the theatre lobby caught
fire. Somehow the Eragon standee burst into flames. The
firemen put it out. I just thought you'd like to know."
Bryan: "Okay, if you're done screwing
with me, what did you need?"
Beau: "No, Bryan, the theatre was on
fire. I am not shitting you. The lobby almost burned down."
Bryan: "Are you serious?"
Beau: "YES!"
Bryan: "Fuck!"
And with that, he hung up. I
knew that he'd be there in about twenty minutes, despite having just woke
up and living thiry minutes away. He was there in thirteen.
We'd hoped that he would drive his motorcycle and just take it straight up
into the lobby, but regrettably he drove his truck.
As all of this was going on, customers
kept walking up and asking questions like, "Are you still going to show
'Happy Feet' at one o'clock?" or "Can I just sneak in and grab a synopsis
sheet?" Some were even so callous as not to ask, and they stormed
into the lobby, despite employees telling them not to, despite the fire
truck and debris in front of the theatre and despite the sprinklers still
emitting water, only to be ushered out by less-than-friendly firemen (at
which point the customers wished to complain about how poorly they'd been
treated). Now, I'm usually not one for griping about the public
because it's so overdone by so many, but this really was one of those
times when I could help but think: "People can be really, fucking stupid."
Along this time, the media began to
show up, including the Courier Journal. The paper printed a story
that captured a great deal of the utter chaos of the day.
Fire briefly closes Baxter Avenue Theatres
The Baxter Avenue Theatres complex was closed part of
yesterday after a sign for the movie "Eragon" caught fire and triggered
the building's sprinkler system. The theater, at 1250 Bardstown Road,
reopened about 6:45 p.m. Louisville Fire & Rescue Capt. Matthew Boucher
said the sprinklers put out the fire about 11:30a.m. The damage was minor
and was contained to the theater's lobby, he said About a dozen onlookers
were peering into the theater's windows as firefighters worked about noon.
Beau Kaelin the theater's manager, said he and two other workers were in
the building. The theater had been expecting a busy day with "Casino
Royale" and "Happy Feet" playing on their opening weekend, he said.
The investigation will look at whether heat from a light ignited the "Eragon"
poster, Boucher said. The theater will review its security cameras. Kaelin
said the sign had been up for three weeks.
Yes, it had been up for three weeks.
Yes, I did review the security cameras. Yes, it was ignited by the
heat of a light. The cameras also revealed that while cleaning, the
janitor pushed the standee up against the light. Check and mate, I
suppose.
The biggest bitch of the whole day was
the cleanup. It took five hours to get all the watre up (involving a
lot of mopping and vacuuming with a shop vac). Oddly enough, the staff had
an entertaining time doing it. The jokes started with the obvious, such as
the irony of a standee with a giant cardboard dragon catching fire.
Then, while vacuuming under the entry mats, I found letters scrawled into
the foundation, leading to "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" references
(if you can't follow that logic, then get the hell out of here).
"The standee's on fire, see. And the wall!"
Now, back to Gornath. Once we
were reopened, we had a giant hole in the wall, as yo can see. The
staff and I decided to create a time capsule of sorts to be entombed into
the wall forever once it was pathed up. We taped a rolled Eragon
poster into the cavity, as well as a poster bearing numerous photos from
the fire and a copy of the Courier's article. The poster also was
inscribed with the following prayer:
"Oh Gornath,
Lord of the Technicolor Fire, we, thine Apex disciples, do humbly beseech
thine forgiveness. Our pridefulness hath made us forsake thine upselling
dogma and in return, we felt thy mighty wrath. November 19, 2006 shall
forth be remembered as The Day of the Angry Burnings. On each forthcoming
anniversary of ye destructive event, all Baxter employees shall erect a
great memorial pyre of old standees and posters in honor of thee and all
of our other heathen gods. May these memorials appease ye Gornath,
Begetter of Lucretia, Goddess of Butter Revelry, so that thou will spare
all current promotions a fiery demise. Furthermore, within the Wall of
Thine Holy Touch, we do commit an Eragon poster. May thou bless us with
the Box Office Revenues of the Gods in the upcoming year."
Signed,
Beau Kaelin, Lucy
Pike, Jay Burke, Sara Lattis, Bob Markwell, Hannah Lardner, Jeff Holman,
Will Ragland, Marat Gray, Christine Puryear, Christine Bell, Adam
Greenwood
The next day, the hole was sealed
over. Will future generations of theatre workers come to worship the
fictitious deity we created for a laugh? Will they come back in time
and take up to a utopian society where we shall be treated like gods? I
hope so, but they'd better hurry. I'm about to clock out.
Back
