What happened to local theatres?

I remember when there were local theatres everywhere. As a child, I frequented the theatre just off Ridge Road near Venture (now K-Mart) in Griffith. Of course, that wasn't the only small theatre to frequent - especially as I got older. I found another two-screen theatre a bit further down Ridge Road, just into Gary. That theatre closed more recently - it seems like one day I was driving past it and the next I saw it empty, a shell of the years of local showings with friends.

And how many of us found a place at the Crossroads Theatre in Merrillville on Saturday nights for weekly showings of the "Rocky Horror Picture Show?" As a teen in the '90s, I remember meeting friends from all over Northwest Ind. (and Illinois) on those nights, in a place where looking or acting "different" was completely acceptable. Some of the friends I still hold dear I would never have met if not for those wild nights. How many other students at PUC can help but say the same?

The Crossroads closed this October. A young entrepreneur purchased it in the late '90s, in hopes of keeping our Saturday night dreams alive. Unfortunately, even the best of intentions - and fundraising done at the weekly shows by crowds desperate to keep the theatre going - couldn't stop the theatre from closing eventually. The last Saturday night show sold out (and then some), and as I looked around the crowd that night I knew how much the Crossroads would be missed.

Though the Crossroads Theatre will be the one most significantly missed, the AMC 9 in Merrillville is the one whose closing most surprised me. As I started doing weekly movie reviews in 2004 and 2005, I discovered that I preferred the less populated and more relaxed atmosphere of the AMC 9 instead of the new Kerasotes Theatre chain. As Kerasotes has infected the whole of Northwest Indiana like a disease, killing off so many other theatres, the AMC 9 was destroyed in favor of building yet another Kerasotes Theatre in the Westfield (formerly Southlake) Mall complex.

I have yet to walk through the doors of the Hobart (Merrillville) Showplace 12, and I don't ever plan to. They took the smaller, more friendly theatre where I saw "Serenity" for the first time (along with other favorites), and I don't want to give them my business. Don't we deserve the chance to choose where to see new release films in the Region? If Kerasotes can destroy all the small theatres in an area, they can achieve a monopoly on movie showings and that's bad for the community as well as the area's economy.

Originally published in The Chronicle in December 2006 as Jade Lee Culberson.