If there’s one thing both your average New School cinema geek and lonely geezer on your third floor has craved during this wretched pandemic, it’s been the moving pictures…or opioids. But mainly moving pictures. Social life hasn’t felt complete without the ol' straining your neck to look up at white people on a screen. Movie theaters are where we spend casual time with loved ones, pass time peacefully, and feel connected to people of all walks of life. Alongside black or white, bourgeois or proletariat, we can experience the whole spectrum of emotions—especially if we’re watching Lynch or Almódovar. It’s a stunning, soul-enveloping, shared experience. But it’s the last descriptor that now seems problematic: shared. To think that danger lurks so close within the bounds of the once safe theater—how aghast. Or is it? In actuality, most millennials would feel safer at a packed Village pub on a Friday night than in a theater sitting six feet away from an unmasked stranger munching on Red Hots. Cue: illogic. Your buddy Jess is hosting a thing at her new (newest) six-figure boyfriend’s high-rise in Yorkville. It’s a Saturday night. You still need to eviscerate your muscles, so you head to the gym and puff out thousands of aerosol particles, like everyone else, while “running” on a treadmill. You exit the gym and pass scores of Jerseyans on the sidewalk who drank bottomless mimosas earlier and left all thoughts of distancing and masks—what are those?—in the sewer. You freshen up at your tenement then hop on the uptown 6, where you get pinned against the door as all the Harlemites head home. Once you arrive at Jess’s place, you see five familiars and ten “who’s-its?” You haven’t met most of these people, but hey—I’ll try a sip of your Negroni, you’ll try a sip of my marg, and la-goyim! Most of us have readapted to the regularities of social life while maintaining the peculiarities of COVID-19 safety…to a moderate degree. There are times when each of us falter. For some, it’s too often, and for any healthy apartment clingers under 40, perhaps too little. Life must return to normal. Although most venues can’t properly regulate safety, movie theaters are one of them. Seat reservations that keep strangers six feet away are a godsend. When was the last time you wanted someone next to you? You think you snagged a seat in the exact middle of the theater when Dirty Harold squats next to you and starts rifling his popcorn in your ear. Not anymore. Sitting six feet away from people eliminates all concern of saliva drops and goblins entering your bubble. You can remove your mask to eat and drink, but most folks stick to the guidelines and put them back on when they’re done—aside from the aforementioned goblin here and there. It’s an honor system. No one’s gonna tattle if you don’t, but just know that Overlord Fauci is judging. The movie theater’s gotten more considerate. People know these times call for caution. We’re all trying to play our part in this huge, vexing jigsaw puzzle that won’t end for yet some time. But movie theaters are a perennial experience that bring creative enthusiasts together unlike no other medium. Enjoy them. Heck, if you’re out and about already, they’re one of the last places you should worry about.