From K-QED. The Castro Theater in San Francisco's historic gay neighborhood isn't just a movie theater.

It's a movie palace, ornate, grand, and brimming with nostalgia.

Film lovers pass under its iconic sign,

the one that screams Castro in neon letters.

For Kristen Zerbach, a PhD student at UC Berkeley,

that's just the start of what's to love.

So you walk in and there's upper seating that's on a balcony

and you know red velvet chairs and then there's lower seating and there's an organ or a piano

Sometimes people play like live accompaniment to the movies so it definitely feels like a movie going experience that didn't really even exist my entire lifetime

is somehow still exist in this little window at the Castro Theater.

The Castro Theater is beloved within the film and LGBTQ communities.

Generations of San Franciscans have lined up at the little jewel box of a ticket booth and passed through

the building's wooden doors. Kristen has been going to the theater for years to watch classic

films like Vertigo or Madeia. She's even volunteered at the Arab Film Festival that's held there each year.

But last fall, she noticed there wasn't much coming up at the Castro.

I looked at their schedule and said, oh, we're only doing a few more movies and then things are kind

of shutting down for a while.

The theater changed management during the pandemic and the new managers want to renovate the space for a mixed use future.

So it wouldn't just be movies anymore but concerts, performances, and weddings too. These plans have not been received

warmly by all members of the community, to say the least, and Kristen wants help making sense

of it all.

What is going on right now with the Castro theater and new ownership and

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