Vanishing Chicago: The Norridge

When I was a child--and I assure you that, at some point in the distant past, I was, in fact, a child--I grew up in a neighborhood that did not have a movie theater within short walking distance.

Had I grown up a couple of decades earlier--say, in the 1940s or 1950s--that would not have been the case, as most Chicago neighborhoods had at least one movie house nearby, and many had several scatter through their respective business districts. By the time I was of moviegoing age, though--in the mid-1970s--most neighborhood theaters had either closed, having been starved to death by their larger, shinier suburban cousins, or substantially deteriorated, like nearly all of the downtown venues. The neighborhood movie houses that remained were neither convenient nor desirable unless you happened to be near one anyway--like the Congress or the Logan, both a stone's throw from Grandma's house, but neither in great shape.

So if a group of kids from the neighborhood wanted to go see the latest summer blockbuster (back when summer blockbusters were a brand-new thing), we had a choice: submit ourselves to the decay and vermin in the Loop, or hop a bus in the opposite direction and visit a clean, fresh megaplex in one of the near-in suburbs.

More often than not, we headed away from downtown--riding the Grand Avenue bus to the end of the line and switching to the northbound Harlem Avenue route--and toward the Norridge.

The Norridge, named for the particular suburb in which it was situated, started out as a two-screen theater and later expanded to as many as 11 screens. It's where I saw Young Frankenstein in 1974 with Todd and his mom, where I also caught Jaws, Star Wars and other great, popular movies of the day--and other, not-so-great movies like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Howard the Duck.

I once went there for a midnight showing of Heavy Metal and nearly started a riot. It was bitterly cold that night, with air temperatures well below zero and a stiff breeze slicing through all the kids shivering in the parking lot because the theater had yet to open its doors. "LET US IN, " I shouted, "IT'S FUCKING FREEZING OUT HERE!" Others in the sizable crowd took up the cry, and soon we weren't feeling particularly cold anymore--we had our rising rage to keep us warm. Wisely, the theater staff caught on very quickly and opened the doors

It wasn't just the theater itself that was the attraction, though. It was the trip to the suburbs, which, for a bunch of kids from the West Side, was like traveling to a foreign country without any need for a passport. It was truly a different world--cleaner, brighter, less menacing, more fun. A day out in Norridge was a vacation from what we knew (or what we didn't want to know).

As I got older, I went out to the Norridge less and less, especially after I moved close to Lincoln Square and had the Davis within short walking distance. I still head out to Norridge fairly regularly, though, if only to stop by Harlem Irving Plaza (HIP to you, sir) or the awesome Rolling Stones Records. One one of these trips a couple of years ago, I wandered up Harlem Avenue and took in a flicker at the Norridge (don't ask me which one, for I do not remember).

The Norridge looked more or less like I remembered--for better and worse. The carpeting, posters on the walls from the '80s and '90s and gentle slope of the screening rooms all kicked off warm fuzzies of nostalgia, but they all looked a bit worn and tired. It didn't look like AMC, the chain operating the theater in recent years, cared one way or the other about the place, doing little to keep it up or advertise that it even existed.

When I did see movies out there--from Drag Me to Hell to Green Lantern to Jonah Hex--the "crowds" were usually sparse. When I saw Post-Grad out there (what, I had a crush on Alexis Bledel), I was one of two people in a screening room that seated 400. The last movie I saw out there, Prometheus (misspelled on the marquee above), drew the largest crowd I'd seen there recently, and even that was only a few dozen.

It came as no surprise, then, when I found out this week that last Sunday, July 15, the Norridge closed its doors--apparently for good.

It's always possible that another, more dedicated theater chain could take over the Norridge and make something of it, but it's more likely that what's been rumored for years will finally come to pass--some big-box store will buy the land and knock the Norridge down--and more than a few of my fondest memories with it.