R and I have decided to buy an abandoned church. Yes, that abandoned church you see above, or better yet, this abandoned church you can read all about.

I thought about keeping the identity of our church a secret, but I decided the chances of you also wanting this abandoned church are slim to none, plus if you do decide to sneakily buy it out from under us, you’re welcome to the world’s worst karma – church stealing karma. 

R and I first saw our church when we were visiting our wedding venue (a property we do not aspire to own, at this time), which is in Hudson, New York. Our church was sitting right next to the NoLiTa coffee shop and across from the gas station-turned vintage furniture store – a gorgeous stone building against a perfect blue sky.

• “This church is for sale,” I said. 
• “Can churches be for sale?” R asked. 
• “Guess so,” I said, and then we marveled at the wildly gorgeous architecture for a minute. I’m sure R tried to open the front door while I stood to the side getting super nervous because I have a fear of going inside places you’re not supposed to go.
• “You could do something incredible with this space,” R said. Then we took one last look before walking away. 

And that was that…until we visited Hudson again, and the church was still for sale.

• “Why doesn’t anyone want to buy this church?” I said. 
• “I don’t know, but someone should buy it and turn it into a movie theater,” R said, “This town could really use that.”

And with that, the idea was born. Well, that and a few months of off-handed, “that church really would make an amazing movie theater. That’s the best idea I’ve ever had,” comments from R and one super simple Google search by moi.

• “I found our church on the Internet, and it’s only $499,500.00,” I said on Monday afternoon.
• “Let’s buy it,” R said. 
• “Okay,” I said.
• “I’m not kidding,” he said. 
• “Neither am I,” I replied. 

So we’re going to buy this church and turn it into a movie theater/performance space/community center, and we’re going to call it St. Catherine’s Cinema because St. Catherine is the patron saint of the arts, and because it feels like good joo-joo to keep it in the faith. I think it’s also worth mentioning that St. Catherine is from Bologna, Italy (which is excellent because it’s in Italy and also because it’s the birthplace of Bolognese sauce), and she’s also the patron saint “against temptations,” (which has got to be the weirdest thing to be a saint of, and also feels hysterically counter to the artist’s life slash this insane endeavor of ours). So, long story short, it’s the perfect name.

• “We’ll use one of those old church marquees as the movie marquee.” R said, and then, “But you know the pews are gone inside.”
• “Well, I bet you can get church pews from anywhere,” I said. “But would they be comfortable to sit in for a whole movie?”
• “We’ll have pillows,” R said.

So now that we’ve figured out signage and seating, we’re 1/1,000,000,000th of the way there. 

No, we can’t currently afford this church (even if it does cost less than a 1 bedroom condo in West Hollywood), we have even less money to refurbish it (and far less know-how), and we don’t know how we’d manage it if we did (because we live 3K miles away), but we’re not concerned with that.

We’re concerned with how awesome it will be to own a movie theater/performance space with an eventual restaurant in the heart of a blossoming upstate town. It’s exactly the kind of older, bi-coastal, small-town life situation we aspire to because we’re really mom-and-pop-shop people at heart. Mom-and-pop-shop people with a house in Venice Beach and a church movie theater in the Hudson Valley.

Now we just need to figure out how to make it happen. I’ve tasked R with calling the local judge/town lawyer (who conveniently also happens to be marrying us) to inquire about the property, and I plan to do the same with these Trulia.com people. Then once we know more about the property history and…I don’t know?…zoning? That sounds like an official word… we’ll figure out how to get the business owners of Hudson and Claire Danes involved. The business owners of Hudson are who you’d imagine – butchers, bakers, candle stick makers and gay men who own bed and breakfasts. Claire Danes is Claire Danes, but she’s relevant to this because she owns a house in the general area of our church, and a movie theater inside a church seems like just the project she’d love to support (based on nothing other than the fact that she is in movies, one of which had a pretty major scene in a church).

• “I’m going to write about our church,” I told R this morning.
• “Why?” R said.
• “Because I think if I write about it, it will happen.”
• “Like The Secret?” R asked.
• “No,” I said, “More like a shame slash guilt combo. Like if we’re accountable to it on my blog, we’ll actually look into it.”

Stranger things have happened, right? 

Plus, at the heart of it for me is this: there are two kinds of people in this world – people who want to buy an abandoned church but do nothing about it because it’s a totally ridiculous idea and people who want to buy an abandoned church and actually try to make it happen because nothing is totally ridiculous, and even if it is, it’s definitely worth the totally ridiculous journey. R and I are the latter – or at least we are from this post forward.

To be continued…