Yukon Cinema 5 Demolished (The Goonies Lied to Me)

I was twelve years old and had just finished sixth grade in the summer of 1985 when I saw The Goonies in my town’s local movie theater, the Chisholm West 5. The theater has changed names a few times throughout its life. In the 1990s it became Dollar Movies 5, a discount theater, and in the 2000s it was purchased by Silver Cinemas and was rebranded Yukon Movies 5. Regardless of the name on the front of the theater, everyone in town just called it the Yukon theater.

The thing about The Goonies that made such an impression on me was the idea that if you got enough kids on bicycles together, anything was possible. The Goonies were able to both save their homes from being foreclosed on and avoid being murdered by a local gang of bank robbers by simply banding together and going on an adventure.

I can’t say my childhood wasn’t unlike one long Goonie adventure. My friends and I rode our bicycles all over my neighborhood — and later, our skateboards all over town. Maybe we never found an authentic treasure map or an abandoned pirate ship, but our adventures seemed just as exciting to us. Whether we were building forts using bricks “borrowed” from a local build site or removing nails from rotten wood to use on our next skateboard ramp, it really felt like anything was possible.

The Yukon theater was not the only theater we visited. We watched a lot of movies at the drive-in and at the dollar theater near I-240 and Shields. When I was old enough to drive I would meet my friends at Crossroads Mall or Penn Square Mall to watch movies there. But the Yukon theater, that was my teenage theater. That was the theater where I hung out with my friends when we were old enough to go to the movies on our own, but not old enough to drive. It’s the place where we learned how to buy one ticket and then slip in between theaters to watch multiple movies. It’s the theater where I would stand next to the Donkey Kong Jr and Satan’s Hollow arcade machines in hopes that whoever was playing would see their parents arrive and have to leave, at which point I might get to take over and finish their game for them. It was the theater where our friends’ older siblings (and eventually, our friends) worked and would give us free popcorn refills, even though they weren’t supposed to.

While there must have been adults there, there aren’t any in my memories. All I remember are kids working there and kids watching movies and kids hanging around outside. While waiting to be picked up we would play arcade games until we ran out of quarters and then migrate out front. A lucky few got to perch high on the sloped brick walls while the rest of us slummed it down on the steps, all of us watching intently for our moms or dads to pull up in front of the theater and honk their horns, the universal signal for “I’m not parking — run.”

If the Goonies had a local theater, I think it would have been a lot like this one — a place where kids rode their bikes, saw movies, and hung out. It felt like as long as you were there, you would never grow up.

But then you do, and you realize that the Goonies were wrong. Not everything is possible. The good guys don’t always win. Bad things happen to good people.

Not every story has a happy ending.

In 2007, a second theater opened in Yukon. The West End Pointe Theater had eight screens, fancy reclining seats, stadium seating, and state of the art equipment. Yukon Movies 5 went from being “the theater” to “the old theater”. West End Pointe became “the new theater”. A few years after it opened, West End Point was purchased by AMC.

Yukon Movies 5 — the old theater — closed in 2014. Someone locked the door, put a “FOR LEASE” sign in the window, and that was that. There were rumors that someone was going to buy the theater and reopen it. There were rumors that they were going to turn it into a dance club for teens. Then there were rumors that the building was filled with standing water and black mold, and that financially it wouldn’t be worth renovating.

In 2020 it was announced the building would be demolished. I visited the theater that weekend, took some pictures, and wrote a blog post about the experience. Placing my phone’s camera up against the tinted windows allowed me to see into the old lobby just as clearly as if I were standing inside. In those pictures you can see the old popcorn machine and some of the signage still hanging on the walls. While no official date had been set, it seemed as if the fate of the old theater had been sealed.

And then, they didn’t tear down the theater. Instead it remained there, untouched — at first for months followed by years, with that same “FOR LEASE” sign in the window. It seemed like maybe the theater being demolished had been just another rumor.

If life were an 80s movie like The Goonies, here’s where my friends and I would have hopped on our bicycles and done something to save the theater. This is the part where all the kids in town band together, put on a talent show, and raise enough money to save the theater. All the adults would shake their heads in disbelief as someone filled in a picture of a giant thermometer, showing we had raised enough cash to reopen the theater. Then we would give each other high fives while wearing cool sunglasses and fingerless gloves.

But life’s not an 80s movie, and last weekend a giant backhoe demolished the theater.

With the old seats, speakers, popcorn machine and that “FOR LEASE” sign still there, the backhoe repeatedly smashed against the building, knocking down the frail cinderblock walls and thick brick columns holding up the ceiling. I watched for several minutes as the machine picked up twisted metal support beams, chunks of drywall, and the remains of seats and dropped them into a large trash dumpster, smashing them down repeatedly as if to teach them a lesson.

I revisited the theater’s remains twice this past weekend, once Saturday and once Sunday. Perhaps from watching too much television, I expected to find security guards keeping people a safe distance away from the rubble. Instead, on Saturday I found myself alone in the parking lot, with a pencil-thin ribbon half-heartedly blocking access to one-half of one side of the building. After studying the carnage from afar I eventually made my way directly up to the remains, leaning on what remained of a wall. Little of what remained was recognizable — just bits of blue chair sticking out from underneath large piles of broken brick.

After circling the site a couple of times I built up the courage to grab a small chunk of concrete and scurry back to my car with it like Templeton the rat discovering a shiny bit of aluminum foil.

When I returned on Sunday, this time with Susan in tow, we discovered others wandering through the worksite. Toward the front of the building, a couple of men appeared to be pulling metal from the pile and loading it into the back of their pickup. Around back, we encountered a rough looking woman in her 20s who had dumped her bike next to a pile of wall and was checking things out.

“There’s probably like a million dollars worth of copper in there,” she said, nodding toward the two men wading through the pile.

“Maybe,” I responded, resting one hand on my wallet.

“I found all the speakers,” she said, pointing toward the center of the theater. “They’re probably worth like a million dollars. I’m going to come back tonight and get ’em out.”

I nodded while imagining someone riding their bicycle through Yukon with gigantic theater speakers tied to their back.

“I used to come here when I was sixteen,” she said. “I’m 24 now.”

“I used to come here when I was sixteen. I’m 49 now,” I responded.

After sharing a moment of silence, she hopped back on her bike. “If you guys go in there, be careful.”

There was zero chance of Susan or I “going in there,” but we thanked her anyway as she pedalled away.

It’s been a while since I’ve visited a theater. I miss the idea more than the reality. I have great memories of going to the movies with my friends. I also have memories of people being on their cellphones and talking and kicking my chair, which is why I eventually built my own movie room. And now the Goonies come over to my house once a month and we watch movies here.

Soon Susan asked if I was ready to go, and I wasn’t. I felt more sadness than I should have about the demise of an old dumb building and needed a minute. I told Susan staring at the mostly unrecognizable debris felt like being at an open casket funeral.

West of where I was standing is T-Mobile, which used to be Taco Mayo, which before that was Hardees. To the east used to be the Great Wall Chinese buffet and TCBY. A bit north in the same parking lot is where Walmart used to be.

And now, 1219 Garth Brooks Boulevard is where the old movie theater used to be.

For more pictures, CHECK OUT THIS GALLERY