Name: Celebration! Cinema/Loeks Theatres
Age: 73
Occupation: movie theater chain
Last Seen: Grand Rapids
Bee-otched For: making me pay good money to hear a loudmouth
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Today's BOTD is brought to you by the word "monopoly".
Once upon a time, Grand Rapids used to have a TON of movie theater chains serving the area. Here in my neck of the woods, there used to be United Artists, Goodrich, Butterfield and Showcase Cinemas running cinemas at one time or another.
Then as time passed, only Showcase was left and it was demolished to make way for Costco. A few years passed and Cinemark came to town, building a new 14-plex in the parking lot of Woodland Mall in 2005.
However, the Loeks family purchased that theater and Cinemark's other mall cinema at Rivertown three years later, converting them to Celebration! Cinemas. The move practically gave Loeks a virtual stranglehold on the cinema market here in Grand Rapids, with only the AMC on Alpine its only real competition in Grand Rapids.
(And oddly enough, the AMC was once Star Theatre, which was founded by Jack Loeks' son Barrie. Therefore, every operating cineplex in GR has had the Loeks name attached to it at one time or another.)
In all fairness, their Woodland locale was converted to a hybrid indie/second run house while Rivertown remained first run like other Loeks houses. The last two movies I saw were both at Woodland.
True, I like Loeks for being a local chain as opposed to AMC, which is now owned by the Chinese. Sadly, one fact about Loeks that irks me is their relationship with a certain moronic loudmouth that has everything in the world except ratings.
Last Saturday, I saw "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" at Woodland. The movie itself was awesome with Moore talking about how he now appreciates Hillary Clinton. However, before the show, they showed a bunch of advertisements during the First Look pre-show with Maria Menounos and guess what we the paying customers had to see? An ad for The Huge Show on WBBL 107.3 voiced by good 'ol Bill Simonson himself. When the ad was showing, I screamed "OH, SHUT UP!" while a young woman seated a few rows back screamed "THE CGI IS TERRIBLE!" It was, since it was computer animated images of a football, basketball and a few other balls being thrown onto a radio studio mixing board. The ad looked like a shitty 1990s screen saver.
One reason to hate the Loeks family for me is their love affair with Huge. His ratings suck and even though he lured Eric Zane from the unemployment line, his show has done little to improve his own ratings. From what I've heard, ESPN 96.1's luring of Gregg Henson has helped a lot. Simply put, nobody likes Huge. That is, except his advertisers. Isn't the point of advertising is to get your message out to potential customers? Considering how low Billy's ratings are, it makes me wonder which brand of crack they're smoking so I can avoid it.
Sounds like I'll be supporting the Chinese from now on.
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Got a Bee-otch to nominate? E-mail us @ chuck69dotcom@gmail.com. All suggestions (except for me) are welcome!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com!
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
Age: 73
Occupation: movie theater chain
Last Seen: Grand Rapids
Bee-otched For: making me pay good money to hear a loudmouth
Today's BOTD is brought to you by the word "monopoly".
Once upon a time, Grand Rapids used to have a TON of movie theater chains serving the area. Here in my neck of the woods, there used to be United Artists, Goodrich, Butterfield and Showcase Cinemas running cinemas at one time or another.
Then as time passed, only Showcase was left and it was demolished to make way for Costco. A few years passed and Cinemark came to town, building a new 14-plex in the parking lot of Woodland Mall in 2005.
However, the Loeks family purchased that theater and Cinemark's other mall cinema at Rivertown three years later, converting them to Celebration! Cinemas. The move practically gave Loeks a virtual stranglehold on the cinema market here in Grand Rapids, with only the AMC on Alpine its only real competition in Grand Rapids.
(And oddly enough, the AMC was once Star Theatre, which was founded by Jack Loeks' son Barrie. Therefore, every operating cineplex in GR has had the Loeks name attached to it at one time or another.)
In all fairness, their Woodland locale was converted to a hybrid indie/second run house while Rivertown remained first run like other Loeks houses. The last two movies I saw were both at Woodland.
True, I like Loeks for being a local chain as opposed to AMC, which is now owned by the Chinese. Sadly, one fact about Loeks that irks me is their relationship with a certain moronic loudmouth that has everything in the world except ratings.
Last Saturday, I saw "Michael Moore in TrumpLand" at Woodland. The movie itself was awesome with Moore talking about how he now appreciates Hillary Clinton. However, before the show, they showed a bunch of advertisements during the First Look pre-show with Maria Menounos and guess what we the paying customers had to see? An ad for The Huge Show on WBBL 107.3 voiced by good 'ol Bill Simonson himself. When the ad was showing, I screamed "OH, SHUT UP!" while a young woman seated a few rows back screamed "THE CGI IS TERRIBLE!" It was, since it was computer animated images of a football, basketball and a few other balls being thrown onto a radio studio mixing board. The ad looked like a shitty 1990s screen saver.
One reason to hate the Loeks family for me is their love affair with Huge. His ratings suck and even though he lured Eric Zane from the unemployment line, his show has done little to improve his own ratings. From what I've heard, ESPN 96.1's luring of Gregg Henson has helped a lot. Simply put, nobody likes Huge. That is, except his advertisers. Isn't the point of advertising is to get your message out to potential customers? Considering how low Billy's ratings are, it makes me wonder which brand of crack they're smoking so I can avoid it.
Sounds like I'll be supporting the Chinese from now on.
---
Got a Bee-otch to nominate? E-mail us @ chuck69dotcom@gmail.com. All suggestions (except for me) are welcome!
Bee-otch of the Day Archives can be seen on http://beeotchoftheday.blogspot.com!
Bee-otch of the Day is a production of Chuck69.com, Grand Rapids' site for Stern, politics and more!
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