Reader, it was not to be. Right when I got into town a headline blared at me from a newspaper box on a street corner. “Alameda Labor Dispute Hinges on Skills of Projectionists,” read the front page of the East Bay Express, the area’s alt-weekly. The projectionists at the Alameda Theatre were on strike. The theater’s owner refused to hire union operators. Shows were starting late and breaking down, prints were scratched and dirty. Audiences were leaving with black clouds over their heads. Incompetents were manning the equipment and the owner didn’t care. He offered no excuses. Digital projection would replace film projection any day now, any second, he said, and “when I convert to digital there is no projectionist. There’s no projectionist anymore. I am trying to make them understand that.”

He was dreaming about a day when the machines would run themselves at the same time as he was talking out his ass. I walked by the theater to make sure the strike was on. It was, in a California way. Some guy was sitting in a folding chair with flyers in his lap. There was no blow-up rat, no pickets that night, nobody chanting slogans. Still, I couldn’t go in. I used to be a movie theater projectionist. I couldn’t cross the line.