A new route to an old theatre

And I'm talking really old. The original Sun Theatre in Yarraville was built in 1938.

There are certain regular movie-going routines I have to give up, or at least adjust, by moving from North Melbourne to Altona. Thankfully, being a regular patron of The Sun is not one of them.

I just need to come from a different direction.

I tried this new route for the first time on Monday night with my 9:20 viewing of The Matrix Resurrections.

Now, I can still drive to the theatre, which is the way I have visited it most of the time. It'll just take probably five minutes longer to get there.

Or I can take my bike to the Altona train station, then take the train four stops on our new Werribee line, which disgorges me basically directly behind the building seen above.

I almost pushed it a little too much. Instead of allowing myself plenty of time by catching the 8:42 train, I caught the 9:02, which was scheduled to leave me off at 9:17. One of the Sun's other pleasures, beyond its large old-school auditoriums and art deco decor, is that it doesn't show many ads. But three minutes still should have been long enough to negotiate everything I needed to negotiate.

I didn't anticipate, of course, the train being two minutes late, then the platform being on the opposite side, meaning I had to run down and cross the tracks to get to the Sun. (I also entered the train carriage that was the furthest from this crossing point in Yarraville, realizing only belatedly that I could have done that part of the journey on the Altona platform.)

Once I actually got to the theater, there was of course a holiday week queue, a ticket clerk who had never seen my critics card before and didn't know how to enter it, and a guy in front of me who changed his seats right before paying, and then couldn't get his credit card to be recognized by the reader.

Just when I was starting to get totally exasperated, an usher called in everyone who had been waiting patiently in the lobby to be seated for The Matrix. Which now included me as well.

I'll save my first examination of the new car route for another day.

The bike-train combo, though more expensive than driving, is a lot of fun especially in the summertime. On my return home after midnight, I never even had to slow down as I whipped through the empty Altona streets.

If only the movie had been good meat in my commute sandwich, but I'll leave that discussion for another day as well.