The escalators outside the AMC Burbank 16 movie theater. (Hayes Davenport/L.A. Material)
NESTLED ALONGSIDE THE 5 FREEWAY that bisects the city of Burbank, the AMC Burbank 16 theater opened in 2003 as part of what was then called the AMC Entertainment Village. “This marks the new resurgence of downtown,” Doug Jaquay, the project’s developer, told the L.A. Times at the grand opening.
Twenty-three years later, the theater shares a box office with the AMC Town Centers 6 and 8 in the neighboring Burbank Town Center Mall that holds the title, by their powers combined, of the highest-grossing movie theater in the country.
But that’s not what the Burbank 16 is most famous for. For years now, the theater has been the subject of jokes, memes, and online gripes for a very specific reason:
The escalators are broken a lot.
“It's one of those things where one time you go and it's not working, it's like, oh no big deal. The second time you go and it's not working, you're like, huh, that's weird. And by a month and a half, you realize it's not working, you go, what is going on?” said Glenn Dale, the pseudonym of the person behind the beloved L.A. meme account Americana At Brand Memes, which has posted about the broken escalator many times over the years.
The up escalator is often the one on the fritz, but the down escalator has its off days too. Sometimes attendees are greeted by a large sign set up on whichever side has gone kaput: “Repairs in Progress. Please Use Stairs. Thank You.” Sometimes a metal barricade or two weathered traffic delineator posts conjoined by a bit of caution tape are made to suffice.
Between March 7 and April 21, I visited the Burbank 16 four times to document the escalator’s operations. I also called neighboring businesses on three occasions within that time period — SushiStop on April 6, Jam Jam Tea Lab on April 8, and Tigawok Mini Bowls on April 21 — to inquire about the status of the escalator. Across that sample of seven inquiries, the escalator was broken three times.
I also spoke to Ezgi Eren, who runs the film Substack 11am Saturday and posted a TikTok showing the escalator blocked off by delineator posts. She told me her video of the inoperative escalator was recorded on April 1.
@11amsaturday might pop in sometime for the dune trailer too
An April 12 post by X user @asexsia also shows both sides of the escalator cordoned off by safety cones and caution tape.
Searching the AMC Burbank 16 on Google Street View tells a similar story — the site’s most recent capture of the theater, from August 2024, shows three men with blurred faces in the midst of repairing the escalator.
“It’s broken more than it should be,” said Yennifer Perez, who was at the AMC Burbank 16 during one of my visits on a day that the escalator was working. “Every time I'm here, it’s always down. No matter what,” she said. “Maybe in a couple hours it will be non-functional again.”
“It’s a bit odd,” added Candice Weathers, who had joined Perez for a screening of the witchy horror/comedy Forbidden Fruits that — spoiler alert — features a death by escalator. “Maybe there’s a saboteur at the end of the night,” she posited. “Maybe it's haunted,” suggested Perez.
So why is the escalator at the AMC Burbank 16 broken so often?
One explanation was delivered to me in a darkened parking garage, where I was brought by an employee in maintenance and security, who would only speak to me under a pseudonym out of fear of professional retaliation.
“Honestly, I would say at least three times a week it's down,” “Charlie” told me in a hushed tone.
Every morning, when the escalators are turned on for the day, it’s a toss up to see if it works or not: “It’s like a guessing game.”
Charlie told me that when the escalator is broken, someone in maintenance or security calls CBRE, a global commercial real estate services firm that serves as the property management company for the building. CBRE then contacts Fujitec, the fifth-largest elevator company in the world according to its website, which handles repairs for the AMC Burbank 16 escalator. Fujitec then sends a repair person to make the fix.
According to Charlie, the person who performs the repairs told them that they don’t have the specific key or set of keys needed to access the escalator. The key unlocks a switch box, allowing a repair person to turn the machine on and off, control the direction it's moving, turn on safety mechanisms, and reset it after an emergency stop.
”They have to either jumpstart it like on a car or basically jailbreak it to have it work,” Charlie said. “I feel like that's probably the reason why [the escalator is often broken.] It only works for so long.”
CBRE declined to comment on the story and did not respond to questions. Fujitec did not respond to multiple messages.
The AMC Burbank 16 escalator, as seen from a nearby Batman statue. (Hayes Davenport/L.A. Material)
In 1892, the world’s first working escalator, then called an “endless conveyor or elevator,” was built by Jesse Wilford Reno. Though several patents had already existed, it was Reno who famously brought the invention to life, showcasing his contraption in 1896 at the Old Iron Pier in Coney Island. It was another inventor, Charles Seeberger, who coined the term “escalator” a few years later in 1900. The invention was a technological marvel that changed the landscape of commercial buildings and ensured people who didn’t really feel like walking got to where they needed to be a bit faster. But like many turn-of-the-century inventions, the escalator has its perils.
“They call them meat grinders,” said Kenneth Slocum, owner of Valley Elevator Inc., an elevator and escalator repair company based out of Fresno. Older models are especially dangerous. “I got half a foot out of an escalator one time up in San Jose,” he said.
Slocum, who has been repairing escalators for more than 20 years, is incredulous about the key theory. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he told me.
“Any elevator company can just buy those keys. I’ve got keys to escalators that are 50, 60 years old. I don’t do a lot of escalators anymore, just because they're dangerous, but I've never had a problem getting keys to any escalator.”
I spoke to various people familiar with the AMC Burbank 16 escalator and was offered a variety of reasons for its operational history. Randy, the manager of the AMC Burbank 16, who declined to provide his last name, told me rain is a regular culprit. He also said that the escalator was recently shut down so maintenance could deal with broken glass on the machine’s side panels.
Ryan Noonan, senior vice president of public relations for AMC Theaters, told me that another recent outage was caused by a medical emergency that resulted in damage to the escalator, making it “unsafe to operate.”
“That said, we know it’s important to our guests and we stay in close contact with the property team when issues come up,” he continued. “Repairs required more than a standard service visit, but the escalator has been back in operation since late March.”
When I informed Noonan via email that the escalator has actually been broken several times since late March, he did not respond.
EPR Properties, a Kansas City-based real estate investment trust that’s one of the largest owners of theaters in the U.S., owns the building that houses the AMC Burbank 16. Along with CBRE, EPR Properties is responsible for any issues within the escalator.
Brian Moriarty, senior vice president of corporate communications for EPR Properties, echoed Randy the manager — he explained that the biggest challenge with the escalator is that “it’s exposed to the elements,” and as a result is “not going to perform at optimal levels.”
Moriarty was unsure of what else could be affecting the escalator, but was apologetic for its finicky nature. “The job of an escalator is to move people, and when it's not working, it's not doing its job. It's not something anybody's happy about ultimately. It needs to be remedied.”
“This is the greatest level of detail about any specific property that I've ever been down,” he added.
Moriarty assured me that EPR is focusing on improving processes and response time for repairs, and is also considering accelerating the modernization of the escalator, upgrading its parts for newer components, as they recently did with the elevators in the building.
Replacing the escalator completely isn’t off the table either, Moriarty told me, even though it would be costly. A new escalator and installation could cost upwards of $100,000. “Ultimately, if you can't find a better solution, you'd come to that conclusion,” he said.
Despite the escalator’s sporadic functionality, the AMC Burbank 16 is one of the more beloved theaters in L.A. “I feel like the 16 is the perfect mix of theatrical experiences in LA,” said Dale of Americana At Brand Memes. “But the most important thing, it has lots of free parking options, which makes it an unbeatable theater. You have to put up with the broken escalator to get that. It's a fair trade off.”
Eren of the 11am Saturday newsletter agreed that the AMC Burbank 16 is, “within the AMC hierarchy, where the expert AMC users go.” She appreciates the respectful “film crowd” and said that rarely, if ever, do people talk or use their phone during a movie. Even during a catastrophe like when the fire alarm was pulled during Barbenheimer weekend, she still found community.
“I would say all those things, including the escalator, kind of gives it a little certain something that makes it special.”
In L.A. Mystery, we dig into some of Los Angeles’s most unsolvable enigmas — and solve them. Got a mystery you want us to look at? Email [email protected]. And read some previously solved mysteries about a mosaic of Jim Jones in Silver Lake and a 16-year-old census billboard in Virgil Village.
Alex Zaragoza is a journalist and TV writer based in Los Angeles.
