Wednesday, August 18, 2021

Goodnight, RKO Keith's Theater

 



Hello luxury tower.

 https://qns.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/135-35-Northern-Boulevard.jpg

47 comments:

Anonymous said...

Flushing really was the model for the rest of America. Import people from other countries with no ties to the historical past and traditions of the reviled white man. Elect liberal democrats who care only about money and power. Rinse and repeat. Third world America.

Anonymous said...

Is this good news or bad news?

Anonymous said...

More of China ready to move in...wonderful.

Anonymous said...

It has been GONE for years. Stop crying over a empty shell of a building. You should have gone to the movies more back in the 80's

Typical dumb NY lib said...

We actually need housing for Afghan refugees, so hopefully our elected leaders have their priorities straight.

Anonymous said...

@“ Flushing really was the model for the rest of America. Import people from other countries with no ties to the historical past and traditions of the reviled white man. Elect liberal democrats who care only about money and power. Rinse and repeat. Third world America.”

I believe this has been the history of America ever since Columbus discovered Haiti.
Want to reverse the process? Start by getting your fat ass back to Europe.

Anonymous said...

"It has been GONE for years. Stop crying" Go Fuck-off dope !

Anonymous said...

I left NYC 10 years ago. I never could understand all the crying over this ugly building. Time moves on. When the first Europeans landed in Flushing, Queens, did they ask the indigenous peoples if they could invade their land and disregard all of their customs? Learn to live with change or leave! Like I did.

Anonymous said...

"You should have gone to the movies more back in the 80's"

You should go to hell now. That's were you belong.

Anonymous said...

Hell ain't a bad place to be, I said HELL, -AC/DC
Good night Queens.
Don't like change.....Leave.

Anonymous said...

"Start by getting your fat ass back to Europe" Awesome advice, thanks.

Anonymous said...

I used to go to the Keiths in the 60s and 70s. It was a beautiful old time theater, but was in disrepair even then. New York City neighborhoods change every 20-30 years, and the new residents don't care about what was important to the old residents. That is just a fact of life. If people are so bent on saving things, they should pool their resources and purchase it themselves.

Anonymous said...

"That is just a fact of life"

No, it's not - the problem in NYC is that the elites take care of their communities but give two sh*ts for yours - except you pay taxes for city programs that protect their community while your 'leaders' get money from developers and intone when you come to up to the docket with a 'whattyagonnadoooo?'

It makes it easy to fill up a community with Democratic Voters fresh off the boat.

Abolish all public support for community preservation until a city-wide program is instituted. No reason for the poor to pay to make a rich community nicer.

Anonymous said...

The RKO was in bad shape like most of Main Street in the 1980’s. Just like the Bronx, lots of Jews, Irish and other Whites were moving out toward the suburbs, businesses closed, and the old buildings needed a lot of upkeep. Taiwanese, Chinese and Koreans came in, bought low, and redeveloped the area. You got to have this kind of major development somewhere in eastern Queens. If they can concentrate it in Downtown Flushing, all the better. People there want it, let them have it.

Other RKOs have been restored at enormous expense. They were decorated to look nice, but were badly built back in the day. Other old movie houses like the Elmwood only survive because they’re now churches.

Anonymous said...

Wait...Asian groups want to remove the center mall on Northern Blvd. that contains memorials to those who fought and gave their lives in our nation's wars. It doesn't jibe with their culture and history. They want it replaced with something that is more Asian-centric.

Anonymous said...

“ Anonymous said...
Wait...Asian groups want to remove the center mall on Northern Blvd.”

You mean, Asian Americans want to remove an “”European American” memorial for European Americans who died in an European American war…

Adriatic hillbilly said...

Last anonymous above - it is their country now, we're just supposed to die and get out of the way. Monuments we recall from our boyhood are about as irrelevant as Hellenic ruins in what's now Turkey.

Anonymous said...

Queens used to be a beautiful place once. Then Henry Hudson happened to come along. It went downhill fast from there.

georgetheatheist said...

Time to convert the Quaker Meeting House into a Buddhist temple?

Anonymous said...

@The RKO was in bad shape like most of Main Street in the 1980’s.

You are full of shit. Most people left, because the corrupt democratic machine started importing Asians in the late 70's since they deemed the blacks not desirable in the area. Now Falasheng has only Asians. Nothing wrong here. Except the luxury skyscrapers that belong to some CCP utopia. Cheaply made, insulation is a fire trap, but hey visit China once in your life time and see why Falasheng is desirable.
A lot of my friends went back to Taiwan, Hong Kong, now why is that?
When they destroyed the RKO, they destroyed a piece of history, a piece of identity.
Is not the Asians. IS the FUCKING CORRUPT POLITICAL HACKS that run the show.

Anonymous said...

"Wait...Asian groups want to remove the center mall on Northern Blvd that contains memorials to those who fought and gave their lives in our nation's wars."

What Asian groups? I've never heard of this.

Far left groups like Min Kwon Center or the John Choe shill organization "Greater Flushing Chamber of Commerce" have almost no following in Flushing. The media hypes their influence. But they import Socialists from other parts of the City for their protests. Like when held a rally against the Flushing Waterfront redevelopment, they imported Tiffany Caban, Aleda Gagarin, Hailie Kim...

The mainstream business groups like the Flushing Chinese Business Association care about issues like parking and street vendors. The civic groups like the Chinese-American Planning Council run senior centers. They're not involved in the woke agenda against war memorials and the Columbus statue.

If you run into Asian groups with Progressive in their name, they don't have many members. The Socialist groups bring out their few Asian members for the cameras, but they don't have much support in those immigrant communities. Half the time, the Asians they trot out are folks who grew up in Ohio or Texas or wealthy suburbs.

Anonymous said...

"You mean, Asian Americans want to remove an 'European American' memorial for European Americans who died in an European American war…"

You must be an ignorant Astoria or Ridgewood gentrification transplant from Rochester or Iowa. The Northern Boulevard memorials specifically commemorate those who died during the Civil War, Spanish American War, and World War I. Asian Americans are Americans and those wars are part of their nation's history.

The Civil War preserved the Union and ended Slavery. There were Black soldiers. There were even a handful of Asians, mostly as cooks and in support roles. You're against a memorial that commemorates people in Flushing who fought for the Union?

The Spanish American war involved Spanish colonies in the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam... so it was far from just a European American War. And World War I as the name suggests was a global event. For instance, hundreds of thousands of Indian soldiers in the British Empire served in World War I and tens of thousands died.

I'm kind of confused. Which Asians are against the Northern Boulevard memorials? Chinese American veterans even funded a World War II memorial in Manhattan's Chinatown, it's named after a Chinese American pilot killed in action.

Anonymous said...

@You are full of shit. Most people left, because the corrupt democratic machine started importing Asians in the late 70's since they deemed the blacks not desirable in the area...

The movie palaces were mass produced. Many thousands were built by the studios in cities across America. Then suburbanization and other factors doomed them. RKO Keith's was beautiful in its heyday, but it wasn't unique. RKO Hamilton in Harlem is in much better shape, but they're not restoring the interior. It's being torn down for an affordable housing development. It stopped showing movies more than 50 years ago and has been decaying.

There are Black people in Flushing. Have you ever been to NYCHA projects in the area. Bland Houses, Latimer Gardens, Leavitt... And import Asians? The Queens Democratic machine wasn't that powerful. It couldn't control large scale demographic change. During the 1970's, southeastern Queens was largely White working class with Irish, Italians, Jews. As Blacks from the South and West Indies moved to NYC, they expanded out to southeast Queens. Blockbusting and White Flight resulted in most Whites selling in the late 1970's and 1980's.

By contrast, Asians didn't become the majority group in Flushing until the late 1990's. And who knows how long that'll be. Many second generation have moved out to Bayside, Douglaston or suburbs like Great Neck, Syosset and Hicksville. The new luxury apartment buildings in Flushing are just like what's been going up in LIC, Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Hell's Kitchen, Jersey City over the past decades. People want new construction and modern design, developers are going to build what sells.

Anonymous said...

Actually it was Myra Baird Herce....former Manes girl and CB7 Board member ....who wanted the Northern mall turned into more parking back in the early 80s!
You don’t know your fucking history’

Anonymous said...

Both Manes and Shulman sandbagged the RKO Keith’s. Don’t blame anyone else. Then there was CB7....always feigning to care but did minimal. Guess a lot of Taiwanese money found its way into some pockets there. Uh....why did Reggie and crew wind up
Going on a junket to Taipei at Tommy Huang’s behest?
YOUR OWN EUROPEAN “WHITES” sold the town to prevent people of color taking it.
“Thank God for the Asians. We didn’t want Flushing to become another south Bronx”! Former NYS Assemblyman has said!

Committee to Save the RKO Keith’s Theatre of Flushing Inc. said...

We did our job since 1982!!!!
Don’t blame us for the shameful ness!!!

The PROTECTED landmarked ticket lobby and grand foyer shall be restored.

This is required by law.

In 1986 we asked then borough president Claire Shulman , to support the restoring of the full landmark status of the Keith’s. SHE DID NOT!

Thus...she’s passed and so did the rest of the Keith’s.

Anonymous said...

Oh you poor people. I'll start a Go FUND ME for all of you. It's not your fault , you have been failed by poor education options and have not achived financial success.
You complain about the small unimportant things in Queens and in life. I can't imagaine any of you actually having to deal with something important.

Let it go , It was just a building. I did see moveies there, Aliens was one. But its just a building and none of you did crap to save it.
So move on.

Anonymous said...

Black lives never mattered in Flushing. The Asians....more specifically Taiwanese/Chinese were given carte blanche to “develop” Flushing in order to keep Latino Americans (from Corona) and Blacks (from Jamaica) from “taking over” the town.
The Keith’s was one casualty in the process of this SINISTER urban plotting.
As long as Whitestone Beechurst Malba was kept low density....the Chinese could have the downtown hub. It was a policy of Asian containment and political campaign contributions from);Taiwan?) going into the pockets of sludge like Gary Ackerman. Is this too strong to be published on QC?
Let’s see if the webmaster puts it up. Then we’ll know!πŸ‘πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈπŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈGod bless ALL hyphenated AMERICANS....black while pink yellow green...even extraterrestrials!!!

Anonymous said...

The theater isn’t really gone. If you want some real theater , just attend a CB7 meeting.
The absurd awaits you 🀣a vaudeville comeback. A little song. A little dance. A little seltzer down the pants! Not to mention some green backs stuffed into the land use committees waist bandsπŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

Anonymous said...

How long has Chuck Apelian served as land use chair?
Too damn fuckin’ long!
TERM LIMITS....even on a toy government community board whose votes don’t count!
So why serve, Chuck?
$$$$$$$$$ in an offshore account?
Hmmmm!!!!!!!
John Liu lives in the same cul de sac as Chuck Apelian!
Cozy cousinsπŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

Anonymous said...

“Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown”.
From the film with the same name...,”Chinatown”!

Anonymous said...

Soon no one will be alive that remembers the Keith’s. A lesson in existential philosophy.
Times change. At least northeast Queens property values haven’t gone down.

Anonymous said...

So.....and CB 7 wants to dump (outspoken????) John Choe , but it’s Chuck Apelian that should be dumped....PRONTO!
Did Choe tell some truths about that bored board and he had to be removed?
That gangster board has used these tactics many times before.
CB 7 decorates its board with a swath of “ethnic variety” to show “inclusion”.πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚As long as that variety remain obedient bobble heads, Chuck and Gene are happy. The minute one bobble head steps out of step.....OUT!
This IS NOT representative government. Is this a form of ....not so covert....RACISM?
CB7 is a sham!
That board needs a good enema!
Give these crooked players the old vaudeville hook!πŸ˜‚

Anonymous said...

Thanks for Queens Crap....where truths get aired.
The FBI should follow some leads offered here.

Anonymous said...

Now that the Flushing racism issue has been raised....let’s open it up further. Are you feds watching?.........

Anonymous said...

The NYCHA Bland housing project was supposed to be built where the old Municipal parking lot #1 (now Flushing Commons) now stands.

Eminent domain proceedings were enacted in the early 1950s to clear a BLACK neighborhood around Macedonia AME church.

The location for building Bland was then moved to its present location.

In other words “urban renewal....Black removal”.
Good Olde Flushing....with its supposed history of πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚inclusive tolerance.

That phony mantra espoused by CB7 and its real estate partners....that Flushing was “blighted” in the 1970s.....was to bring in Asians to quell the possibilities of dark people of color taking over the town. Xenophobia and greed ....prompted by the real estate owning families were at the bottom of it all.

Anonymous said...

Now that these posters have opened up this thread....let ME ADD:
Who were the old real estate moguls on Main Street back then? Gerson, Schwartz, Mehran etc. ?
What was their position here regarding the issue?


a Queens historical said...

Hmmmm!
And those staunch Flushing Quakers. After the Civil War....the Flushing Female Association was set up ...,to aid Blacks? Or to keep the meeting house complexion WHITE?
The Olde Towne has a lot of dirty little secrets.

Anonymous said...

WIW!
I thought this was just about the Keith’s demise.
What a can of worms!
πŸ’©is really coming out!
Keep on dumping. More transparency!!!!

Anonymous said...

Then we have Grace Meng....whose dad and former assemblyman ,Jimmy, was arrested for carrying an $80,000 bribe intended for a judge in a fruit basket at the behest of a friend.Congressmember Grace. Does she represent who and what? Daughter of a convicted felonπŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚Oops! Forgot John Liu! Daddy Joseph Liu....convicted of federal bank fraud RE Great Eastern Bank on Main Street.
Sterling examples of Democrat party corruption!
Drain the Flushing swamp!
FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Anonymous said...

Wasn’t the Great Eastern Bank tied to Tommy Huang ?

Anonymous said...

Did the classic stereotype Chinese laundry business evolve into money laundering?
Continental Fruit market was firebombed then replaced by the Great Eastern Bank.

Anonymous said...

Nobody cares much anymore what happened decades ago. Flushing was “saved” from the dreaded darker people of color...,so all is fore given and thus forgotten.

Former board member Queens Historical Society said...

Perhaps anger and confusion has been overly expressed here. Let’s briefly review some history:

1-
Early 1980s “Flushing Mall “ was proposed to be built on Keith’s site.

2.
Lawrence Gresser Jr...,Donald Manes’ deputy Borough President (who had resigned earlier) was its promoter.

3. Committee to Save The RKO Keith’s Theatre of Flushing Inc. proceeded to get the entire interior of the theater landmarked.

4. The New York City Landmark Preservation Commission deemed it worthy and granted the Keith’s full interior landmark protection designation.

5.
That designation had to be approved by the then Board of Estimate.

6.
Then borough president Donald Manes was against landmarking the Keith’s.

7.
His protege Claire Shulman lobbied against the Keith’s landmark designation at the Board of Estimate on behalf of her boss, Manes.

8.
Hence, the Keiths full interior designation was cut down to include only the ticket lobby and grand foyer. No auditorium etc.

9.
The disgraced corrupt Manes committed suicide amid great scandal.

10.
Committee to Save Keith’s...resubmits full interior designation of the theater.

11.
New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission agrees to reopen the original full interior space designation if ,then borough president Claire Shulman, agreed to support that measure.

.12.
Shulman did not support it!

So....,here we are today,

Contrast Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz’s support of the Loews Kings Theater which has been beautifully restored.

Who is to blame?

You decide!

Historical facts do not lie.

The ticket lobby and grand foyer of the Keith’s remains an official NYC landmark and will be included in the new building. It is required by law under strict penalties!

Anonymous said...

An afterthought...

LONG HORN BEETLE....LANTERN FLY....MURDER HORNETS.....TOMMY HUANG (Keith’s destroyer)....COVID -Wuhan Plague.
A few unwelcome Chinese exports!

Anonymous said...

Don’t beat up on defenseless elderly Chinese if you’re angry. Beat up the Chinese developers!πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

Anonymous said...

Put ur actions where ur mouth is - get rid of the vile white black n Latino whores who romance eastern culture men and/or get pregnant n milk off the government.