I don't often like to use the term eyesore, as the saying often comes off as a bit of a cliche, largely void of any actual meaning and more commonly used as a blanket statement to express a sense of ugliness, with little to no facts to back up such an opinion. However, if any such building were to truly disfigure a landscape and exist so grotesquely that it indeed infected the viewer of such a scene with a literal puss filled eye sore, than I'd be okay with honoring such a defacement of the land to Amboy Cinema.

Located within the actual armpit of New Jersey, moist with salty perspiration from the Raritan Bay, dripping from a thick hairy bush of phragmites, remains such an eyesore. Built upon a mosquito infested swamp paved over with craggy asphalt, smooshed between the towering Driscoll and Victory Bridges exists a narrow swath of land. A strip of earth so encompassed by freeways and highways that it seems nearly impossible to access, despite being driven past by thousands of motorists per day. To the west, vehicles suicidally speed past on the on the Garden State Parkway rubbernecking just before the Parkway divides near the Jon Bon Jovi Service Area. To the east, Route 35 carries vehicles across the Raritan River, linking together by road the cities of Perth Amboy and South Amboy.

Yet before any any would-be motorists make their way to the Shore points south, they must first pass through the town of Sayreville NJ, a small industrial / bay community full with power plants, PFAS contaminated soil, massive vacant brownfields sites, a steel mill, and a mega church. A town as rich with DuPont chemicals in the ground water as it is with sprawling overpriced apartment complexes built on such polluted land. This got me pondering the reason as to why the aforementioned eyesore may have been named Amboy Cinemas as opposed to Sayreville Cinemas, as the theater most certainly resides in the latter town.

Parking my vehicle on a Sayreville side street I quickly came to realize that accessing the old graffiti covered husk of a theater would be slightly more complicated than anticipated. Amboy Cinemas might as well exist on an island surrounded by a sea of asphalt full with crocodiles as cars. It would prove to be a bit of a real-life game of Frogger attempting to cross the bisecting highways leading up to a single lone sidewalk paralleling the east side of the movie theater. In time though and with some unexpectedly placed crosswalks I soon found myself walking through the pothole filled Amboy Cinemas parking lot. Lifeless brown weeds sprout up through cracks in the pavement and small pieces of windblown trash become ensnarled in the larger piles of other illegally dumped garbage strewn about the property.

As I reached down to remove a Black & Mild cigar wrapper that somehow affixed itself between my shoelaces, I noticed from the corner of my eye that in the distance a lone van had pulled into the parking lot and continued to drive up along the back side of the theater. It was a ragged looking white contractors van, beat to hell with an assortment of ladders tied haphazardly to the roof. Just another scumbag, looking to add to the litter, I assumed. With the van now out-of-sight, I made a quick dash across the asphalt sea toward the rear of the building where a door had been busted open; just my luck! Inside, the theater was a bit more of a curiosity than the eyesore of its exterior. Dark, seemingly endless hallways wreak of mold and mildew. Water logged ceiling tiles having since fallen from above, now caked the tile floors, making each step a swampy surprise.

The only windows in the building were in the lobby and although tightly boarded up, just enough sunlight managed to penetrate in through the gaps between the boards to illuminate the space. An early 2000's time capsule abound, with movie posters still lining the walls and a letter board boasting such mid-2000's films as "Monster In Law", "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith", and "Mindhunters". Through a busted out window I could see I was directly across from the old Amboy Cinemas sign outside, rising above the Parkway, looking now like it had been struck by a series of missiles. Such a deplorable advertisement, existing in stark contrast to the inviting beacon it once was to motorists just a few decades prior. The theater was truly a modern atrocity built in the style of a warehouse; windowless, soulless, dark. At least a dozen auditoriums lined the darkened interior and with the roof having begun to leak decades prior, some interesting decay was abound.

Snooping and poking around the various auditoriums I managed to capture a handful of photographs and was surprised to discover the rows of projectors that still lined the upper mezzanine section of the theater. Making my way down an exterior stairwell, I stopped dead in my tracks as the scent of cigarette smoke nearly smacked me across the face. I now knew I was not alone as the smoke hung heavy and fresh within the cool mildew infested air. Quietly I descended the stairwell to the ground floor which put me directly across from the busted door I had entered in from earlier. This time however, I could see a white contractor van was now parked just outside the door.

Hiding within the interior shadows of the theater, I watched as a lanky man leaned a large piece of plywood up against the broken glass door. The cigarette in his mouth bounced up and down as he fumbled with the comically large piece of wood, trying to place it within the general frame of the door. The damp and cool interior of the building inhaled the cigarette smoke directly into the stairwell I was hiding in. With each nail the man sunk into the plywood I watched as the sunlight around the broken door dimmed until the last ray of light became obscured by the wooden board, now snug and secure across the door. I guess I'll need to kill some time and watch Star Wars, I thought to myself.