Important to note that it's a "Chapter 11" bankruptcy, which loosely translates to "Our creditors and shareholders will take a big loss, but we'll keep operating and hopefully our customers won't notice a thing." As opposed to "Chapter 7", which means "we're shutting down and doing a fire sale of all our stuff so creditors can get a few cents on the dollar."<p>For instance, Hertz is going through Chapter 11, but you'd never know as a customer.
Despite the 20+ mile drive I prefer Alamo to any other theatre in no small part due to their - depending on your view
- strict but reasonable or utterly draconian [1] no using your phone rules. Having said that, when they got aggressive about expanding they shrunk their menu and removed local variations of both food and beer. Frankly, Alamo without a Honey I Shrimped The Pigs just ain't the same Alamo. I'd like them to let local managers add back a bit of flavor, maybe do pop ups in conjunction with local restaurants [2] and otherwise improve their food and drink offerings back to the quality they were when the chain started. Prior to the pandemic I still went to Alamo for my movies, but I ate beforehand.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L3eeC2lJZs</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.houstoniamag.com/eat-and-drink/southern-smoke-is-saving-the-food-industry-during-pandemic" rel="nofollow">https://www.houstoniamag.com/eat-and-drink/southern-smoke-is...</a><p>Chris Shepherd's Southern Smoke Foundation is doing pop ups in conjunction with other businesses and donating the profits to help food service workers impacted by the pandemic; both financial aid and mental health care. Laudable and his food is good.
Nothing better than sipping beer and munching truffle popcorn at the Alamo Drafthouse at the SF location in the Mission. It really makes other theaters look like highway robbery; for the same money you get a dramatically better experience.
Alamo Drafthouse is home to some of my favorite memories - from live riffs by Master Pancake (with a wide array of guest stars including Mary Jo Pehl, the Mads - Frank Conniff and Trace Beaulieu, Doug Benson, Sam "Jerry" Jones [Flash, AhAAAH], and many others) to Fantastic Fest to Sing Alongs to Movie Parties to Classic and Genre Movies.<p>I know they'll survive in some form, but this is tough, y'all.
This is mostly a restructuring to shed some debt before a big capital infusion.<p>Alamo's business model in a post-pandemic world is still a huge money maker.
RIP Alamo Ritz:<p><i>As part of this bankruptcy, Alamo Drafthouse will close down underperforming locations, including the flagship Alamo Drafthouse Ritz location in downtown Austin on Sixth Street.</i><p>I've been there for a lot of special Alamo shows, including Master Pancake shows. It will be sorely missed.
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The world at large and Austin in particular are going to take a huge cultural hit because of our failure to deal with COVID-19 properly. NFTs aren't going to solve the fact that people who create art and culture are so vital to our civilization and yet for the most part live on the edge of financial stability. Sad.
This makes me sad. I _really_ enjoy the drafthouse and I rarely see movies anywhere else because all other major theater chains prioritize squeezing dollars vs the experience.<p>I see that the founder(s) are still involved but I can't help think that it'll just be a slow decline until the drafthouse is indistinguishable from AMC or other chains and their infinite commercial pre-rolls and dirty theaters.<p>I hope I am proven wrong OR another theater that respects the art springs up to fill the potential void.
Damn, hopefully the SF location doesn’t change too much in response to this. There and the New Parkway in Oakland are the only theaters I really go to.
Glad to hear they're not planning on disappearing.<p>Spent many hours in Austin TX Alamo's during the SXSW festivals. A wonderful experience. A little like the UKs Everyman chain (but with stunningly entertaining kookie ads running).
>As part of this bankruptcy, Alamo Drafthouse will close down underperforming locations, including the flagship Alamo Drafthouse Ritz location in downtown Austin on Sixth Street.<p>Alamo getting priced out of Austin? Thanks Joe Rogan!
I wonder how much Chapter 11 actually makes sense as a response to something like Covid versus a swift and merciless Chapter 7 and then rebooting the business once theaters are viable again.<p>Assuming that a Chapter 7+then+future_reboot was possible -- who benefits the most from allowing the company to attempt to limp along until the pandemic ends intact? Are there a significant percentage of company employees who are currently getting paid with benefits during the pandemic -- or is this mainly about making it seem as likely as possible that the business will come back so that the current set of non-compensated employees will try to limp along on their own without pay in such as way that they will come back after the pandemic is over?
Our studio was looking to four wall our new film using their locations later this year to do our US screening tour. I hope most of them survive as without proper theatrical venues, appreciation for Cinema in the U.S. will wane.