This article originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 1st, 2015.
By Ryan Kost
When J Moses Ceaser set about reviving Oakland’s Parkway Theater, it was never about the theater — not really. It wasn’t about the building (he ended up having to find another one, anyway), or even the films themselves.
The theater, in a certain sense, was always a means to an end.
“It could just have easily been a roller-skating-rink-bowling-alley-diner,” Ceaser says, as he sits outside the New Parkway, a converted 1970s warehouse not far from Auto Row. “Far more important than it being a space for movies is it being a space for community.”
Two years in, the New Parkway — itself a collage of community donations, Kickstarter campaigns and volunteer efforts — has stuck to this idea.
The theater is open and airy; it has the sort of industrial design that lets the guts of the building show. A community bulletin board greets guests, and pieces by local artists hang on the walls. A laminated note, posted near the entrance, breaks it all down: Of the 42 jobs the theater created, 82 percent are held by Oakland residents. More than 50 percent of the theater’s investors are, too — and 75 percent are from the greater East Bay.
“Most of the people involved in the New Parkway are pretty committed to the community and making this a rich, culture-filled venue for Oakland residents,” says Freddie Francis, who is in charge of outreach.
That’s especially important as the city continues to gentrify and new businesses lose touch with older residents. “We have a lot of conversations about what we’re doing, and why we’re doing it and where our priorities are.”
Karma Cinema
Those sorts of conversations have led to programming like Karma Cinema. Every Wednesday, the theater lets moviegoers pay whatever they want and, at the end of the month, they donate 20 percent of those ticket sales to a local organization. They also have a deal where, each Sunday, the theater sets aside a two-hour time slot, free of charge, for independent filmmakers, nonprofits or community groups.
“For me, the Parkway was always one of these places that belonged to Oakland,” Ceaser says. “It was an Oakland institution and was very much about Oakland.”
Ashley Jackson, who handles communication for Youth Alive, an Oakland nonprofit that works to grow young leaders and reduce youth violence, says the efforts show. “I can totally tell they’re about the community. I have nothing but great things to say about them.”
Back in February, the group was the recipient of the Karma Cinema program. One Wednesday night, four teens from Castlemont High School in East Oakland stood in front of a movie screen at the New Parkway, looking out over the audience. One by one, they took a turn telling the audience how Youth Alive had helped them.
“One of the kids was kind of nervous and was drawing a blank,” Jackson says. “She just got a little caught up.”
Suddenly, the crowd just started cheering for her. It was a small moment, but it meant something. “Everybody there is very, very supportive.”
It’s hardly the only story like that.
In March, the Karma Cinema recipient organization was the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, another Oakland nonprofit. It handed out information, did a whole spiel, too, says Zaineb Mohammed, who does their communications. “I went on the first Wednesday in March and spoke to the crowd about one of our local campaigns.” Not long after, they got a note. Somebody who had seen them there wanted to volunteer.
From the very beginning, it was about these sorts of connections, Ceaser says. In part because that’s what drew him to the original Parkway. Well, at first it was the 2-for-1 Wednesdays.
Nonprofit network
“I was running a nonprofit at the time and that was basically all I could afford.” But the more he went, Ceaser started to notice something deeper happening.
“On Wednesdays, there would be so many nonprofit people,” he says. They’d chat and commiserate and just hang out. “The idea of a theater being a community space and being a place where people felt comfortable and where it was much more than the experience on the screen was really novel to me.”
Years later, when the Parkway said it was closing, an idea gripped him. “This is what I’m going to do next,” Ceaser told a friend the next morning. “I’m going to get this theater back open again.”
Like most things, though, that was easier said than done. He held back and watched for a year as others tried to get the theater up and running. “Part of me said, ‘I kinda hope they don’t do it.’ Even though I’d never run a movie theater or a restaurant or a bar, I had a sense that this was something I could do.”
When nothing panned out, he called the former owners. Their advice: “Don’t do it at the same location. And don’t do it at all.” That second one wasn’t much of an option.
“It took a while,” Ceaser says, “but I think that we’ve absolutely created the space that we wanted to create.”