last updated May 31, 2026Comments? Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net
Episode #1055: It Feels Broken
First Broadcast: 6/1/26
If anyone who had any influence with the Alamo Drafthouse movie theaters is paying attention to this program, we here at Free New York have a simple request for you: Go back to the pen and paper. In late 2025, the Alamo chain decided to switch from its pen-and-paper ordering system--where an audience member would look at a physical menu, or a menu in the Alamo's phone app, and write down on a physical order card what kinds of snacks and drinks they wanted, after which a server would physically take the card, read it, and then deliver the order to the audience member's seat and drop off a check at the same seat near the end of the movie, which the audience member would pay with either a card or cash--to a new system centered entirely around using a mobile phone to order snacks and drinks, requiring an audience member to log on to Alamo's wifi network, enter the seats that are covered by the order, enter the order, enter the info for the credit card being used to pay for this order, and close out the check for the order, all by using a mobile phone for the entire process from start to finish. As you might have guessed, there are a myriad number of problems with this new setup, not the least of which is requiring people to take out their phones in a movie theater to order snacks, instead of keeping phone use verboten in the theater. It also requires people to keep their phones connected to the internet at a time when phones should not be receiving alerts from the internet; it sends texts to phones at a time when no one should be receiving texts on their phones; it takes the user outside of the Alamo app to view the menu and place a food order, even though the Alamo app contains food & drinks menus; entering credit card information is cumbersome to do in the moment in the theater and seems to defeat the purpose of entering credit card info into the Alamo app; the option to use cash instead of a card is not intuitively clear, assuming it exists; and the option to adjust the tip was equally unclear, as I personally didn't see a way to change from the default amount of 20%, which I only saw after the check was closed out. I know I've mentioned that order cards and pens are still available to use in the Manhattan and Brooklyn theaters, thanks to union requests there, but it seems like the theater is going out of its way to make it impossible--if not extremely difficult--to use the cards and pens and bypass the phone ordering system in the first place. Granted, the experience as a whole wasn't as horrible as I had expected, but it was a giant step down overall from all the previous times I had seen movies at the Alamo under the old system, and I know I'm not alone in thinking it would be much better for everyone if Alamo just went back to old way of doing things--you know, the way that made all its fans enamored with the Alamo Drafthouse in the first place! As someone once said: "It's never too late to do the right thing." P.S.: Shout-out to Stephen Colbert, who might have lost his unfairly maligned late night show way too soon, but he may have found a very promising career in public access. Hey, take it from someone who's been here a while: it's not a bad place to be!
So, what is Free New York anyway? The simple answer is that it's a
this neat little
public access TV show on
Manhattan Neighborhood Network which I co-produce with the
tremendous help of my camerawoman/editor/everything else,
Kim. The complicated answer
is that it's a project of mine to broadcast opinions and events which
don't always appear within "the mainstream media" (like The New York Times,
the major networks, local radio, etc.), and so far I think it's been working.
If you think I'm doing a good job--or not--and you feel
like sending me snail mail, the address is:
Free New York
P.O. Box 20945
Tompkins Square Station
New York, NY 10009
You can also email me at fny@freenewyork.net, which should get to me a lot faster than the snail mail.
last updated May 31, 2026
Comments?
Send email to: fny@freenewyork.net