According to Sean Means of the Salt Lake Tribune, the old Avalon Theater in South Salt Lake is being converted into a live-music venue. I haven’t been to the Avalon in years — I think the last film I saw there was a documentary called Microcosmos about a decade back — and I didn’t even realize it had closed, which, apparently, it did some time ago. Still, I mourn its passing. If I’m not mistaken, the Avalon’s repurposing leaves the Tower as the only single-screen theater still operating in the Salt Lake Valley. And I find that terribly sad.

The age of the small neighborhood “moviehouse” was already waning by the time I came along. Not counting my experiences seeing various blockbusters at the Centre and the Villa, which were Salt Lake’s remaining movie palaces at the time, most of my childhood cinematic memories revolve around the U.A. fourplex that used to be at Fashion Place Mall, or the Sandy Starships, another defunct fourplex. But I did go to the single-screens once in a while, and my first paying job was running projectors in one. I’ll admit it, I have a soft spot for them. I’ve always liked relics of The Way Things Used to Be, and I find it easy to imagine what it must’ve been like in my parents’ or grandparents’ day, when the pace of the world was slower and you could just walk down the street to go to the store or to catch a flick. But those days are long gone, and the neighborhood moviehouse has vanished with them.

The Avalon hung on longer than most of the local single-screens. It served as a revival house in the late 80s and early 90s, running whatever old films the owner could find a print of. I saw Gone with the Wind there, for example, while I was in college. Later, the owner tried to diversify by adding a small video-rental store in the front of the building, specializing in the same classic fare that ran on the big screen. Later still, the Av dropped the classics in favor of more recent family movies and live performances by hypnotists and improv comedy groups. But the writing was the wall as far back as the night I watched Clark Gable tell off Vivien Leigh. The small single-screens just can’t compete with the multiplexes these days; the economy of scale is against them. The Av was run down even in the 80s, with too many broken seats and a scent of mildew in the air. In addition, the surrounding neighborhood deteriorated into a bleak industrial zone, the kind of area where average citizens don’t want to be after dark. It was only a matter of time.

I can’t honestly say that I’ll miss the Avalon. Obviously, I won’t, because I didn’t even know it was gone. But I do miss what it represented, an age that I was lucky enough to have the smallest taste of. Yeah, the old moviehouses that I knew as a kid were dumps, by and large, but they had their charms. Like the neighborhood cafe, another extinct animal in these parts, they were cozy and familiar despite their limited menus and occasionally dodgy cooking. Their modern descendents, by contrast, resemble nothing so much as chain buffet restaurants; the multiplexes may have reliable service and plentiful offerings, but they’ve got no personality, no authenticity, and no history. They’re essentially the same experience no matter where you go.

And as I said, I think that’s terribly sad…