This newspaper runs a lot of headlines announcing this closure or that one, and sometimes that means “the last” of something. It’s natural for cities to change as their residents do.
But something about a recent headline seemed … more final than the others. “U District is losing its last movie theater,” it declared. That was the Varsity, which showed its first movie in 1940. (Movie tickets were about 25 cents then.) The Varsity joins the roll of the fallen: The Seven Gables, The Guild 45th, Grand Illusion and AMC 10. The Neptune stopped showing movies over a decade ago.
For a city that prides itself on its neighborhoods and their quirky features, it seems a little sad that the neighborhood around a big university would be without theaters at all. That’s a rite of passage for college students, going to see a film that wouldn’t or couldn’t be shown in their hometowns. Campus neighbors tend to appreciate the variety of movies that college audiences attract.
The pandemic’s disruption of our habits, the ease of streaming and the astronomical rise of admission and concessions drove nails into the collective coffin of moviegoing. It’s easy to get the appeal, especially if you’re not a big “going out” type. Why leave the house and pay high prices when you can stay home and watch Netflix, which you’ve already paid for? At home, you can freely shush the people on your couch and tell them to stop using their phones. You can’t show your own trailers, but you also get to skip the seemingly endless stream of pre-movie trivia questions and commercials that has invaded big theaters.
When the last of something goes away, whether it be a buttonhook or a movie theater, it seems a good time to note what it meant. Moviegoing led to an epic change in this country’s social life, its spending habits and even its identity. Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscopes — devices that required 25 cents for a solo viewer to operate — rolled out in the 1890s. Then came the “movie palaces” with velvet seats, and the multiplexes, and the rehabbed old theaters that lived again as second-run venues. Seattle Times film critics warmed seats in the U District theaters, opining on thousands of movies over the years. Not to mention all the friends who met up, or first dates, or 10th dates.
There’s something a building with wonky floors and creaky steps has that a multiplex doesn’t. Maybe it’s because patrons sit a little closer together, or have the common experience of tripping over that spot where the carpet is uneven, or having a sore coccyx from non-reclining seats. There’s the delightful feeling of seeing a long-lost or little-known movie with the other 50 people who are excited about it. Maybe it’s the feeling or the scents of a time gone by. Or the idea that you’re supporting a local operator, not a corporate behemoth. Memories of movies are made more vivid by recalling the place where we saw them. Quick, how many movies can you name that you saw in a megaplex? How about the ones you saw at The Seven Gables, or Harvard Exit or the Crest? The little idiosyncrasies of these theaters were as much a part of moviegoing as popcorn.
Here’s to the Varsity.
