Is there such a thing as the Front Porch Republic curse?
If, like me, you are a devotee of an athletic team with a long-suffering fan base (in my case, the football program at my beloved alma mater Notre Dame), you are probably familiar with the concept of the “Sports Illustrated cover jinx.” For those fortunate enough not to have been subjected to its cruelties, the essential idea is as follows. A team or individual athlete begins to enjoy some degree of success. This results in an appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Not long thereafter the wheels come off, and the team or athlete experiences a series of unfortunate events the likes of which are rarely seen outside of Lemony Snicket novels.
My introduction to the jinx came in November 1993. In what is one of my earliest sports memories from childhood, the then-#2 Fighting Irish defeated the then-#1 Florida State Seminoles 31-24 in a clash that had been dubbed “The Game of the Century” in the days leading up to the contest. As an Irish Catholic growing up behind enemy lines in the Sunshine State, I found this triumph of good over evil especially meaningful. I remember the following Monday at school being glorious, the walkways packed with dejected students and teachers who had been confident of an FSU win. But alas, my exultation would prove short-lived. Notre Dame’s victory resulted in an iconic Sports Illustrated cover, and the very next week the team was upset by lowly Boston College on a last-second field goal. Despite an identical one-loss record and the head-to-head victory, Notre Dame finished second to Florida State in that year’s national championship balloting. This remains—and I say this confidently, without fear of contradiction—the greatest injustice in the history of athletic competition and possibly of all mankind. To this day, Notre Dame has not won another football national championship.
It was with this experience (and sadly, many others like it in the ensuing three decades of Notre Dame fandom) in mind that I found myself confronted with the possibility that I had perpetrated a similar bit of witchcraft. In June 2022, I reviewed the delightful documentary Hello, Bookstore for the Front Porch Republic. In describing the film’s depiction of a cherished local bookstore’s attempts to remain afloat amidst the COVID pandemic, I also wrote about another local institution near and dear to my own heart—Cine 4, the old school, cash-only, family-owned movie theater in which I had watched the movie. At the time of my review, both the titular bookstore and my local theater seemed to be regaining their footing. I concluded the piece by highlighting the need to ensure the survival of places like these. Less than two months later, the movie theater would be gone. What had I done?
As with most things supernatural, there have been attempts to account for the Sports Illustrated cover jinx through appeals to more rational explanations. People are typically featured on the cover of SI, this line of argument goes, because they have suddenly begun performing significantly above baseline expectations. It is therefore to be expected that they would revert to the mean and that subsequent performances would feel like a collapse from the lofty heights chronicled in the magazine.
To the extent that there is any kind of Front Porch Republic curse (and for the record, the bookstore featured in my review appears to be going strong), a similarly logical explanation seems likely. In staking out a position that is oppositional to dominant cultural trends of centralization and homogenization, FPR naturally tends to highlight institutions that are swimming against the tide. Inevitably, some of them will go under. And when they do, it is a loss much greater than any gridiron upset, no matter how painful.
Fortunately, this particular story has a happy ending. The shuttered movie theater was purchased by the Friends Center for Children, a local nonprofit affiliated with the New Haven Religious Society of Friends (more commonly known as the Quakers) and dedicated to providing affordable child-centered care and early education to kids from all backgrounds. The Friends Center transformed the site into its newest campus, which welcomed over 30 infants and toddlers when it opened in October 2024.
But it didn’t stop there. The Friends Center has long had a reputation for creative problem solving. In the face of appallingly low pay for early education teachers and childcare providers, the Friends Center had just prior to the pandemic introduced an innovative Teacher Housing Initiative to provide its workforce with a place to live rent-free. By using funds from donors and leveraging the pro bono efforts of students from the nearby Yale School of Architecture, the nonprofit has been able to offer this life-changing benefit to its employees without increasing costs to the families it serves.
With a similar spirit of imaginative thinking, the Friends Center was determined that local residents not entirely lose out on what Cine 4 had once offered them. In what I have to imagine is a first-of-its-kind arrangement, the organization recently opened a 120-seat movie theater on the grounds of its new campus. Every Saturday and Sunday, the Flint Street Theater (named for the road on which the campus is located) offers free movies and free popcorn to the public. Recent screenings have included Lilo & Stitch and Soul for kids and Do The Right Thing and Kill Bill Vol. 1 for adults. The goal, says manager Trey Moore, is for the theater “to be a hub for the community,” one that Friends Center Executive Director Allyx Schiavone notes will break down silos by encouraging even those without children to visit the campus.
The demise of Cine 4 in its original incarnation followed by its resurrection in spirit in the form of the Flint Street Theater is an important reminder to those of us who cherish local institutions. Curse or no curse, not every such institution is destined to survive unchanged. The preservation of local culture isn’t simply about looking to the past, but also about having a future-oriented vision for how to maintain what is essential even in the face of change.
Image via picryl
