I’m down in Virginia Beach right now, having spoken at the Naro Movie theater in Norfolk and at WHRV about my new book. Neat to be back in my hometown.

The Naro movie theater, nestled on Colley Avenue in the heart of the neighborhood of Ghent, is such a lovely institution. The two guys who run it, Tom and Tench, have created something that for 35 years has functioned and grown into a community center and community builder of sorts. When you go to see a movie there, or go to talk there, you’re going to a place that functions as watering hole for people interested in the arts, in ideas, in politics. Not just the neighborhood but the city and region would be poorer without it. I know that this pair, Tom and Tench, have had to be endlessly creative in keeping this enterprise alive as a business in the face of various larger forces that want to wipe them out.

Seeing this institution, relatively healthy and prosperous, I was struck again by how so many important things in a city’s or community’s life are created partly by chance or happenstance. There are much larger cities that lack this kind of institution. It was created in Norfolk by the lucky combination of a pair of guys back in the mid 1970s who had a vision, a theater that was available, this theater being right on what was or would become the central walking and strolling street of the district if not the city, and some other factors I’m not aware of. These are factors that are hard to plan, or to put in a formula, yet at the same time must be encouraged somehow.

Here’s a link to my now past-tense appearance a few days ago, http://narocinema.com/calendar/view.php?id=1781&show=13007

And here’s a link to my talk on the radio on WHRV in Norfolk, on the Hearsay show by Cathy Lewis. http://www.whro.org/home/html/podcasts/hearsay/09172013.mp3