Parking Garages

In Beautiful Burbank there are 30 AMC cinema screens within a 3-block radius. No matter what you want to see it is available in a compact conglomerate of corporate chain cinemas. Please don’t misunderstand my intention in this phrase. I do love watching films at AMC cinemas. Mostly because I pay a nominal amount of money every month in order to be able to watch 3 films every week. There are fancier cinemas. I am not a fancier person. Give me a reclining chair and a steady supply of popcorn and I’ll be happy with any cinematic experience.

The differences between the 3 cinemas are negligible but tangible. One is contained within a mall so this is automatically the least preferred option due to the effort required to actually get there. My favorite is the smallest 6-screen offering. Standard cinematic presentations. No IMAX, Dolby, Prime branding. Each auditorium is bog-standard. But it takes the top spot in my heart due to the location and ease of the parking structure immediately adjacent to the cinema. Never full, always close by. The feeling of parking your car and walking 30 seconds to a cinema consistently leads to a movie-going experience that is optimal for me.

The biggest among all the offerings is the ‘16’. This cinema has it all. Bells, whistles, all aforementioned formats. Something for the whole family. The issue is that the parking building is terrible. Subterranean, it starts on street level and descends down 4 stories. Like many inner-city parking structures the architects were charged with efficient utilization of space and the solution they came up with is comparable to a submarine of garages. If two cars are turning the corner towards one another there is barely enough room to squeeze by. There are rarely any available spots on any floor but the lowest so this involves winding the corkscrew down into more and more claustrophobic territory. With great frequency you’ll be paused behind another driver who for reasons known only to the almighty is waiting for a family to load their car and leave. We all know that there are open spots merely a few turns around the corner but this driver has no tolerance for risk and no sense of civic goodwill to those stuck in an ever-forming line behind them waiting for a single car to leave.

It despairs me so much that I’ll park next door at the 6 or 8 and walk down the road to the 16. 5 minutes each way on the street in Burbank. Fresh summer air and a cool breeze blowing gently. I wouldn’t even describe this as an inconvenience. It’s simply part of the experience for me now.