Balboa Theater

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3630 Balboa St. San Francisco, CA 94121

415-221-2184

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Best Movie/Dumpling Combination
Award Winner 2012

Hours: Daily 12pm-11pm

Description

2012 | Best Movie/Dumpling Combination

Here's something purportedly fun: going to the movies. Here's something that's actually fun: skipping the exhausting, soul-sucking multiplex, and heading for the Balboa, an independent theater that's been around since 1926. At the Balboa, recent offerings have included the award-winning six-hour Italian family drama Best of Youth, a Bengali Film Festival, and the opening of The Hunger Games. They also put on special events, such as a screening of Romeo and Juliet from London's Royal Ballet,... More »
2005 | Best Movie House

This classic theater, designed by architects James and Merritt Reid (who also did the Fairmont Hotel and the original Cliff House), has been a San Francisco favorite since it opened in 1926. Transformed into a twin-screen venue in 1978, the Balboa is the quintessential second-run theater, offering an eclectic mix of Hollywood studio movies, independents, documentaries, and foreign films. Judging from the kudos it receives from adoring moviegoers who subscribe to its newsletter and post to... More »
2004 | Best Neighborhood Movie Theater

Back before the monolithic octoplex darkened the cinematic landscape, every proudly individual San Francisco neighborhood had its own movie theater. But like the fabled Market Street movie palaces of yore, most of these anchoring icons are either extinct or endangered (although the excellent Castro is an enduring genre unto itself). One happy exception is the Balboa, which has been hosting Outer Richmond moviegoers since 1926. Owner and movie stalwart Gary Meyer presents double features of... More »
2001 | Best Neighborhood Movie House

Like the afternoon newspaper, a neighborhood movie house is a money-losing venture and a dying breed. The few that remain in San Francisco are on the chopping block -- except one little theater tucked deep in the Richmond District, the Balboa. It looked like even this holdout might disappear this year when the widow of the longtime owner (who died in 1995) began making it known that she wasn't interested in carrying the torch much longer. She is in her 80s, after all. But Gary Meyer, a... More »

"4:44 Last Days on Earth": How We Lived at the End

By Karina Longworth | Wed, April 18, 2012

In writer/director Abel Ferrara's vision of the apocalypse, Chinese joints deliver right up until the end. The media's "live coverage" continues almost as long. Sorry, haters: "Al Gore was right," says NY1 anchor Pat Kiernan, playing himself. The ... More »
The Balboa Celebrates 86 Years Sunday as It Adapts to the 21st Century

By Chris Torres | Fri, March 2, 2012

The neighborhood movie theater has a lot in common with the neighborhood bookstore. Both are being edged out of business by technology. Those that stay in business need a unique draw -- something peop... More »
Documentary of a Downfall

By Chris Torres | Wed, February 08, 2012

Pamela Yates traveled to Guatemala in 1982 to document that country’s civil war. It had gone on for 22 years, and it was nowhere near its end. Military insurgents had just taken a foothold in the country’s government, and they continued the system... More »
Top 10 Stories in Bay Area Film 2011

By Michael Fox | Fri, December 30, 2011

Change is the only constant, and every movie marquee provides incontrovertible visual evidence: new movies, promising debuts and fresh succes de scandales, as well as vintage revivals and retrospectiv... More »
"Eames: The Architect and the Painter": Detailed Doc Leaves Artist's Personal Life Left Unexamined

By Melissa Anderson | Wed, November 30, 2011

"The best for the most for the least" was the utopian business credo of Charles Eames, who with his wife, Ray, revolutionized mid-20th-century industrial design and presaged the information age. Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey's glowing appraisal of th... More »
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