Behind the curtain at the David Minor Theater.
Story by Kaitlin Flanigan
Photos by Emilee Booher
The pounding rain outside doesn’t dampen the spirits of the people waiting in line outside The David Minor Theater. It’s ten minutes until the first movies are due to start, and like almost every Sunday at the brewpub theater, the place is packed. As the clock ticks nearer to show time, potential customers are turned away and told to come back earlier next time in order to get a ticket.
“Now, this is why we need to expand,” says Josh Goldfarb, co-owner of the David Minor Theater, on turning away customers due to sold-out showings.
This seems to be happening often, though, as the popularity of this small theater grows within the Eugene community. People are drawn to the small venue because of good movies, a relaxed atmosphere, and comfy seating, Goldfarb says. It doesn’t hurt that along with the traditional movie staples of popcorn and candy, the theater offers beer and restaurant-catered food from nearby restaurants Café Lucky Noodle and Cornucopia, making it the first luxury brewpub theater in Eugene.
“We have a pretty good crowd that comes in here,” says employee Malcolm Jenkins, twenty-nine, who appreciates the “mom and pop” business compared to nearby Regal 16 Theaters at Valley River Center where he worked for years. “We have a ‘Cheers’ scenario over here.”
However, despite being the first movie theater of its kind in Eugene, the trend of small theaters serving beer and nontraditional food has been growing more popular in the past decade. With other luxury brewpub movie theaters like the David Minor spanning from Massachusetts to California, critics of this business idea believe that brewpub theaters make it easier for underage patrons to buy alcohol. The David Minor Theater has managed to thwart this problem by only allowing customers twenty-one and older into the theater.
Goldfarb, twenty-nine, had been planning to start a small “luxury brewpub” movie theater with his father, Ronny Goldfarb, at the family’s existing business, Ronny’s Audiovision, in 2008. Then, on June 2, 2008, Goldfarb found out that his best friend, University of Oregon graduate David Minor, had been killed in a bicycle accident. Weeks later, Goldfarb decided to dedicate and name his fledgling business in honor of his friend. The theater celebrated its grand opening in October of that year.
By day, the building that houses the David Minor Theater hosts another business, the Goldfarb’s previously existing Ronny’s Audiovision, which has been in operation for over twenty-five years.
“What used to be our showroom became the larger of the two theaters,” Goldfarb says. “The showroom on the east side of the building basically remains the same. We just added chairs, couches and did a couple of tweak jobs here and there.”
The bulk of the equipment used for Ronny’s Audiovision remains in the lounge of the David Minor Theater, which is also decorated with an art gallery that frequently participates with art events in Eugene. Recently, the David Minor was a stopping point for Lane County’s First Friday Art Walk.
“We’re not your normal kind of business,” says employee Chris Sloanes, also twenty-nine, who works at the theater four nights a week. “People just come in here to watch football games and basketball games with us. It’s pretty sweet. It’s just easy going around here.” Everything about the business is, in some way, dedicated to Minor, who was an avid microbrew lover. In fact, everyone who works at The David Minor actually knew Minor while he was alive, and they use this knowledge to personalize the venue. Some pieces, like the theater’s motto, incorporate humor Goldfarb says Minor would’ve found entertaining.
“We decided on the motto [‘Letting you stop sneaking beers into movies since 2008’] because most everyone knows someone who has snuck beer in, or has seen someone sneak beer so it’s kind of playing off of something that everyone is already familiar with,” Goldfarb says. “At the same time, since I knew this was going to be a small kind of joint where it’s independent and you gotta keep a tight ship, but you’re not corporate, so I came up with the quote as a joke, but also [to say] ‘Please don’t sneak beer into our theater, we sell beer here.’ It works both ways.”
As for the unicorn in the logo, Goldfarb just smiles. The theater needed an iconic logo, and since the venue also serves as a pub, a horse head seemed to fit nicely. Plus, unicorns had a special significance to Minor.
“It was kind of common knowledge that as an inside joke [Minor’s] favorite fantasy animal was the black unicorn,” Goldfarb says. “So it was an inside joke and a way to honor David Minor.”
With its multifaceted business model and strong local following, the theater continues to attract new patrons every week.
“I want to see this place succeed because it’s a rad idea,” Sloanes says. “I really appreciate the fact that I’m a part of this.”
The David Minor has showings every night starting from 5:15 p.m. to 10 p.m. On Sundays, tickets to the David Minor are $1, also available student discounts are.
David Minor was born on February 23, 1981. He was twenty-seven years old when he was killed in a bicycle accident on the corner of 13th Avenue and Willamette on June 2, 2008. As a student of environmental studies and sociology, Minor was keenly aware of the injustices of the world and strove to correct what he saw as wrong, his mother Susan Minor says.
Growing up, Minor, Goldfarb, Jenkins, and Sloanes all attended South Eugene High School and graduated in 1999, which is where they initially met and began their friendship.
“We all went to a lot of the same social functions,” Sloane says. “[Minor] and I definitely knew each other, we’d sit out on the porch at a party and talk about life or whatever else was going on at the time. He was definitely a very motivated and involved guy in the community.”
After high school, as other friends left Eugene, the four guys started to hang out more often and got to know one another better. “[Minor] was the clumsiest person I knew,” Jenkins says. “He would walk into a room, and say that there was a glass of water, and just like that [motioning with his hands] he would knock the water off the table and everyone would be like ‘What?!’”
Minor’s parents, Susan and John, said they have been incredibly receptive to the outpouring of support in light of the tragedy. For Minor’s memorial service, his parents set up a memorial fund at the Willamette Farm and Food Coalition at the suggestion of their minister.
Susan Minor maintains her son’s ghost bike memorial on 13th and Willamette that his friends made. While tending to the freshly potted flowers at the site, Susan Minors says members of the community always thank her, or come up to talk to her and tell her that the memorial serves as a reminder for them to drive slowly, or be a safe biker. “[The memorial] definitely has a place and a purpose,” she says. “It’s a very spiritual place for me to go to.”
Mrs. Minor says her family appreciates how the theater and ghost bike memorial have become a part of the community of Eugene.
“He loved to have fun, but was a very deep thinker,” she says. “He truly cared about people and the world. [His death] was such a huge loss, not just to us, but to the community and the whole world.”
