Night-life and small town movie theaters - viewing the outside world

before the Internet, rich audio-visual experiences were formed here

The theater building on main street in Lowell, Michigan 49331 appears on the Wiki-Shoot-Me (photographing your hometown) project. The interactive map can be searched by postal code or place name to view red dots that lack a photo and invite an upload. The green dots indicate the buildings, parks, monuments and so on that already have a photo to represent them. An example of the dots from city center in Grand Rapids, MI 49503 is online at tinyurl.com/wikishootme49503

A certain number of the buildings identified for photo uploads to document the cultural landscape consist of former movie theaters, where people would spend their money before home entertainment of televisions became affordable and the programming attracted buyers of the appliances in the 1960s. Even with a small black and white TV, later color, many people in the 1970s and less so the 1980s still found it worth congregating in front of the big screen for bigger than life adventures, love stories, and historical or fantasy worlds brought to life. Later the proliferation of video cassettes (1980s) and DVDs (1990s), as well as premium programs delivered by cable providers to the privacy of one's home would greatly diminish the movie going habits that reigned supreme from 1920 to 1980.

These days some of the old theaters live on as live stages or have been repurposed for retail sales. Other buildings are vacant or have been razed. But still within living memory of people in their 40s and older, there is the sight of dusk on a summer evening as the marquee lights shine with the title of the feature film, along with its mmpa age-rating (G for general audiences including children, PG-13 for parental guidance or kids 13 and older, R for restricted to age 18 and above, X and XX and XXX for "adult" entertainment). As a subset of those mass entertainment heydays of movie theaters, there was also a time when outdoor screens of drive-in theaters attracted many drivers and their passengers during the warmer weather, perhaps from the 1940s until the middle of the 1970s. Collectively it is hard to gauge the influence of and the importance on viewing culture and the worldviews cultivated in young minds by these big scenes on the silvery screens.