Ragtag Cinema/Uprise Bakery/9th Street Video/Kelly Press Building, Hitt Street
Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
2011
Originally constructed as a Coca-Cola bottling facility, and later known as the Kelly Press Building, this building is now home to Uprise Bakery, Ragtag Cinema, and Hitt Records. Elsewhere on this website I have a night photograph of the Columbia Herald building located on the other side of Hitt Street. Both buildings, the Columbia Herald Building and the Kelly Press building, were veterans of Columbia’s once thriving publishing industry, and with the exception of these two structures, Hitt Street was a largely residential thoroughfare with some very prestigious residences. In fact, the reason that today’s Ragtag Cinema looks like a house is because it was built that way. When construction commenced in the 1930s, gables were added as an afterthought in order to keep the building looking more like a house, and less like a business. For me, this photograph is full of personal recollections and memories. In 2011, 9th Street Video was still here, renting videos, offering advice and recommendations, and calmly holding court. The bike racks out front are full of bikes, the patio has a few late evening patrons and is apparently about to gain another, and on the marquee, the films: Midnight in Paris, Cave of Dreams, Beginners. I remember seeing two of these three movies here at Ragtag during that summer…Midnight in Paris and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (shortened on the marquee presumably as a space-saving measure). I am certain I also rented a few movies here during the summer of 2011, I might have had a breakfast or lunch at Uprise during the summer of 2011, and I am quite certain I joined the patrons on the patio during this or any other hot summer evening in 2011, enjoying a libation and absorbing the activity of this microcosm of Columbia culture on the north end of Hitt Street.