Getting Back Out There

Here is the church

Here is the steeple

Open the doors

See all the people

I started reviewing movies for the Chronicle when I was 21 – a dream job. Whether I was elbow-to-elbow at a sold-out sneak screening or alone at a 10am press screening, the only body in the building, I never got over that worshipful feeling that came over me whenever I sat down in a movie theatre. The movies aren't just my happy place – they're my holy place.

To be without that ritual for over a year has been intensely destabilizing. No surprise then that two weeks and a day after I got my second Pfizer shot, I was back at the movies. My 43rd birthday, surrounded by a dozen dear friends, we rented a screen at the Violet Crown and watched Speed, a perfect movie. I got religion again.

This week, our (totally vaccinated!) editors write about their own experiences getting back out there, reconnecting with their beats, in the spaces that mark their beating hearts – the movie theatres and restaurants and music venues that spiritually fulfill us.