To me, the Curzon Soho was the absolute heart of London, the calm at the centre of the storm. There was outrage, wasn't there, a few years ago when they said they were going to demolish it for Crossrail? Quite right too. It's just one of those real good London places.
It looks quite forbidding from the outside, like it's a private members club, full of cool folk, which you won't be allowed to enter.
There's not much upfront, but I guess that's true of most cinemas. There's a ticket office to the right and a bar to the left (forgive me if any of this is wrong or has changed - I haven't been for a decade or so).
Then you go downstairs and there's another, larger, bar, and, what, three screens? On a couple of floors?
For a while it was a go-to place for meeting in London, even if not for a film. Just a cool place to start.
I can't even remember what I saw there ... bloody foreign films, most likely. Sneaky with its foreign films. Eating your wasabi peas while watching a film in, I don't know, Peruvian.
It's actually bugging me now. I'd like to remember the title of one film I saw there. Without being an absolute film fiend, I watched at a decent trot for a couple of decades. Darkened the door of most of the cinemas from Park Royal to Bethnal Green. I'm not a superfun person to go to the cinema with, to be honest. Not only do I hate talking before and during the film, I don't want to talk about the film afterwards either, not for at least half an hour. I want my own experience. I will growl and scowl at a hasty opinion.
I did enjoy the experience of going to the cinema with friends, don't get me wrong, but it's the experience of being in your own head, together, that is part of what's good. There can be something great about that.
Because J is not a big fan of going to the cinema, I've mainly gone on my own since I've been in Ashford. When I say on my own, that can mean, if you're watching a somewhat leftfield film in Ashford in the middle of the day, you might well be entirely on your own. Which is rather marvellous.
Since Covid, I've only been to the cinema twice, to see The Paw Patrol Movie and Peter Rabbit 2. For those I was not on my own.
Me and You and Everyone We Know. There we go, that's one I saw at Curzon Soho. That was good. That was my kind of film. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Midlake and watching Thumbsucker. Early 2000s, when I was listening to Bright Eyes and watching The Squid and the Whale.
Oh yeah, that was me, a moment-in-time hipster, ignoring the extremely famous people at the Curzon Soho.
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