A Movie Theater’s Obituary
David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
I tend to have a mini-existentialist crisis when a movie theater I love closes. In my hometown, there was one theater I saw some memorable movies in growing up, the Apollo Theater, that was sadly demolished and turned into a used car lot. Another theater, attached to the mall, closed while I was in college, but they didn’t tear it down. Just boarded it up and forgot it was ever there. Since then, I’ve periodically driven by that section of the mall and I always wonder whether anyone bothered to gut the theater’s interior before that happened? Because if they didn’t, there’s potentially a fully preserved 1990s movie multiplex with seats, screens, projectors, and an abandoned concession stand behind a nondescript façade. I guess I’ll never really know…
Fast forward to the 2020s and the pandemic immediately wiped out several theaters near me. It was very unfortunate. One was on the 4th or 5th floor of a mall that also went out of business, so the building doesn’t even exist anymore. Down the street from that, there’s an historic Art Deco theater that closed, but it continues to be the subject of speculation about whether it will reopen again in some form. Who knows if or when that will ever happen. More recently though, E Street Cinema closed in March 2025. I watched a lot of great old and new movies at E Street over the years including documentaries, artsy independent films, and a few blockbusters. It was the kind of theater that hosted midnight showings of The Room (2003) or The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). It had a bar and was underground, literally, so I’m not sure what else that space could really be used for, if anything. Its 20-year run as a downtown movie theater marked an important, but difficult chapter for filmmaking. When it opened, the rise of streaming and the financial pressures of the pandemic weren’t on anyone’s mind. People just wanted to see good movies and that’s what they got.
Before it shuttered, I managed to go to one more showing at E Street. I took a few pictures so that whatever it becomes next, I’ll be able to remember what it once meant to people.
