The neuroscience of abandonment can function in transformative ways, especially at The Pruneyard.
Thanks to last-minute negotiations, the Pruneyard Cinemas and its connected lounge, the Cedar Room, will not shut its doors this weekend, as initially announced.
Like any wandering scholar familiar with Campbell, I ventured over last week, still assuming the place was closing. The memories spiraled out from the ether, as usual.
When the current incarnation of the bar and the theater first opened in 2018, Metro’s legendary film scribe Richard von Busack wrote of the theater’s “satisfying new-car smell.” At the time, Pruneyard was approaching the half-century mark and the shuttered Camera 7 was long gone. Pruneyard Cinemas arrived with “with half the seats and twice the appeal,” wrote von Busack.
Pruneyard Cinemas then became one of the first theaters in Silicon Valley allowing moviegoers to order cocktails directly from their seats in the theater. It became a trend.
“Even an Akiva Goldsman script would sound plausible after an Elijah Craig Small Batch chased with a Berryessa Double Tap IPA,” wrote von Busack, waxing even more poetic about the top-shelf mezcals, vodkas and whiskeys, plus the wine list and 22 taps, about 10 of them rotating for local brews.
Of course, before Camera 7, the theater was just a regular old theater. It wasn’t special, but it worked. Generations of bored suburban youth went there just to loiter amid the rustic trimmings of the mall.
With these memories in mind, I slithered into the Cedar Room last week in order to soften the abandonment trauma. The place was jammed with people celebrating the final few weeks of a fantastic establishment. It was hopping.
As usual, the history would not leave me alone. I hazily recalled the years when the same space was Boswell’s, a silly fern bar with stained glass and featuring a dozen indistinguishable cover bands butchering Mustang Sally and Sweet Caroline for years on end. The drunks that couldn’t score usually stumbled over to Taco Bravo come 2am. For many of those folks, there simply was no such thing as Campbell without Boswell’s and Taco Bravo. It remained a popular place. I guess.
Before Boswell’s, it was Perrone’s. One only has to consult Dawn Beck’s 1982 publication, “Where to Go Dancing in Silicon Valley,” a small 92-page white booklet that one can still find floating around the PAC*SJ garage sales.
In the “Ballroom/Contemporary” section, the entry for Perrone’s sits right between the Nite Kap at Stevens Creek & Blaney and the Bacchus Inn at El Camino & Bowers. Each venue listed in the book includes pertinent data, which was probably useful in the pre-Internet era. The cover at Perrone’s was $2 on Fridays and Saturdays. The age range was 25-60. There were “two medium floors” and a “2:1 sitting-to-dancing ratio.” Man, the research it took to compile that little book. Sheesh.
Luckily, I feel grateful to retain a little more outré flavor of Pruneyard memories—in particular, the presently empty space formerly housing Rock Bottom Brewery. In the days of my disenfranchised youth, the same space was Upstart Crow, the greatest bookstore and coffeehouse combo in South Bay history, the place where all marginalized kids went to find each other.
If you really want to know just how much Upstart Crow touched people, then post anything on social media. Former customers, employees, bookworms, punks, PhDs and world travelers will all chime in. Some junior high school kids found their first goth crushes at this place. I was the same way. If she had purple hair, black clothes and flipped through occult books, my 13-year-old eyes bugged out wide. Upstart Crow was like everyone’s living room. You’d go there with your parents and just sit around and read while they went somewhere else in the mall. I love hearing people reminisce about Upstart Crow.
By comparison, if you post anything on social media about Boswell’s, the comments are barely even literate. I guess nothing’s changed.
In any case, the neuroscience here is not complicated. My brain stores the emotional experiences of abandoned places. Whenever another one disappears, my internal fire alarm goes off and I must write until my fingers bleed.
Long live the Cedar Room!
Loved the Upstart Crow, but I’m not remembering it having a goth vibe. But I imagine I’m somewhat older than you. I used to go in high school (Westmont) and college (SCU) to “study,” which meant setting out my stuff and then watching people (OK, girls) and imagining what it would be like to be brave enough to talk to one of them. Then my friends and I would pack up and go home, having had coffee, dessert, and maybe browsed or even bought a book. No homework ever got done there.