Yukon 5 Cinema, my hometown movie theater, is set to be demolished “as soon as possible,” according to local news reports. (Update: KFOR was quoted a date of later this year.)
According to Cinema Treasures, the Yukon 5 Cinema “opened in 1982, was renovated in 2007, and closed in 2014.” That particular site refers to the theater as “Silver Cinemas – Movies 5,” although my friends and I usually just referred to it as “the Yukon theater” or “the dollar movies.”
The Yukon Theater was not the only theater my family visited. When I was younger we went to the drive-in quite a bit, and when really good movies came out, we usually saw them at one of the nicer theaters in town, like Almonte 6. The Yukon theater rarely got first run movies but it was cheap, which meant it was always filled with kids — which was great when you were one of those kids, and not always great when you were an adult.
One of my earliest memories of the Yukon 5 was the time my friend Andy Smith’s grandpa took the two of us there to see Megaforce in 1982, when I was nine years old. Shortly after the movie started, I left the theater to go to the bathroom. When I returned, I couldn’t find Andy or his grandpa, so I just picked a random seat and sat down by myself. About twenty minutes later, someone with a flashlight tapped me on the shoulder — somehow I had re-entered the wrong theater, and had been watching Blade Runner by mistake. I do vaguely remember wondering what Han Solo was doing in Megaforce all of a sudden!
One evening in fifth grade, I went to the movies with four or five kids from my neighborhood. Someone else’s mom dropped us off, and my dad had agreed to pick us up. The minute my friend’s mom drove away, everyone I was with turned and left the theater. Their plan all along had been to pretend like they were going to the movies, and then run around town instead. Of course nobody told me the plan in advance, probably because I would have chickened out! Our little group spent the next hour and a half walking around Yukon, keeping close tabs on the time so that we could get back the theater before my dad arrived. Of course my dad arrived early, and asked us a bunch of questions about the movie during the ride home. I made up a few answers, but my guts were turning inside out the whole time. After everyone else had been dropped off, I confessed everything to my parents. I think that was the last time I was allowed to go to the movies by myself for a while!
One of the places we visited that night was Hardee’s, which was located directly west of the theater. When Hardee’s moved out, it became a Taco Mayo. When Taco Mayo moved out, it became a T-Mobile store. Another place we visited that night was TCBY, which originally stood for “This Can’t Be Yogurt,” but was later sued and changed their name to “The Country’s Best Yogurt.” It was located on the other side of the theater’s parking lot. I think that night was the only time I ever went there.
I stopped by the old theater last weekend to take a few pictures before it’s demolished. As far as I can tell, not much has changed out front in the past thirty years. One of the things that brought back memories were those white bricked dividers that ran down the stairs. Those were a popular place for kids to sit while waiting for their parents to pick them up. I always wondered what it would be like to skateboard down one of them, although I never had the courage to try it.
In 1986, I went to see The Boy Who Could Fly at the dollar movie theater with Jeff Martin and Andy Green. It was the first (and one of the very few) times the group I was with was the only one in the theater. The movie was terrible, and at some point one of us (Andy?) announced he was also a boy who could fly, and proceeded to run around the theater with his arms stretched out like airplane wings. Jeff and I joined in, and soon the three of us were running laps up and down the aisles while making airplane noises. At some point during the film, we decided to play hide-and-seek inside the theater instead. None of our mothers would have condoned any of this behavior, mind you, and none us would have done it had there been anyone else in the theater.
While the Yukon theater didn’t get very many new movies, it got at least one I can remember — 1989’s Batman. Advertisements for that film were everywhere — I remember Jeff, Andy Willrath and I visiting Taco Bell multiple times leading up to the movie to collect all the limited edition drinking cups. You couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing Prince’s “Bat Dance” at least once per hour. Also, everyone began wearing Batman shirts. I bought a white t-shirt from the flea market with a knock-off Batman logo on the front, and washed it along with a pair of red shorts, which turned the shirt light pink. The night of the premiere, it seems like everyone else around me was wearing black t-shirts with the Batman logo on the front. I was there only one there in a pink one.
When I asked Susan if she had any memories from the Yukon theater, she said she had lots. One was the time she and her family went to see 9 to 5 on New Year’s Eve. She said they went to the late show, and when the movie was over and they exited the theater, it was the next year!
As far as I can remember, the 2007 “update” consisted of adding a slope to some of the theaters, turning them in to (literally) “theater seating.” But the theater’s death knell wasn’t due to the old seats, scratched screens, or sticky floors — it came from AMC West End Pointe 8, a brand new theater that opened that same year, one mile away from the Yukon 5. For a few years the two theaters coexisted by showing different films, but a city the size of Yukon couldn’t support two theaters, and one of them — the old mare — was put out to pasture.
By wiping layers of dust off of the front windows and pressing my phone’s camera directly against the glass, I was able to get some pretty clear shots of the interior. Despite claims that the theater was updated in 2007, as you can see, the interior, with its blue and orange color scheme, looks more like an 80s skating rink than a modern theater. Across the top you can see the neon lights still in place. The old popcorn machine is still there, but not much else.
The longer a building like this sits empty, the quicker it begins to deteriorate. Although I haven’t been inside, there are rumors of water damage, mold, and possibly asbestos inside. The building has stood empty for six years, and I suspect the price of the building plus cost of repairing any damage and getting everything up to code doesn’t make financial sense. You would think the building could be turned into a theater, or an arcade, or an antique mall, or… something. Sadly I’m not a numbers guy; I’m a dreamer guy.