A view from the cheap seats
We start this periodic report on the movie-going experience in Lake County with bad news -- very bad, very sad news -- from Lake-Cook Road and Route 83: The Buffalo Grove Theatre is no longer a Cheap Show.
Fans of the experience -- don't try to deny it -- are mourning this development along with me. For at least the last 15 years, the little strip mall operation at 120 Old McHenry Road was the place to go and pay a buck or two and see something you missed or boycotted at the first-run theaters.
I took my toddlers and preschoolers and pre-teens there to see things like "Tarzan" and "Shark Tale" and "Jurassic Park III." I saw "Borat" there with some old high school friends, and can still hear the screams from the contemporary high school girls behind us during the wrestling scene.
But something started to change over the summer of '09. First-run movies started to slip onto the roster -- only charging around five bucks, but still. The writing was on the wall, and this month, the $2 admission and second-run films had gone the way of the Belvidere Mall Cinema and the Mundelein Cinema, to name only two defunct Cheap Shows.
I might return to Buffalo Grove, but the days of driving down there for Super Tuesday -- with my entire family seeing "Seabiscuit" for $5 total -- have officially become a memory.
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The age of the Cheap Show might have passed, but Lake County isn't completely without an old-school treasure. Last Saturday night, I renewed acquaintances with the great Catlow Theatre in downtown Barrington, still showing almost-first-run movies for five bucks.
I love everything about the Catlow, probably because it reminds me of my old Patio Theatre on Irving Park Road -- one big, giant auditorium with seats old enough to buy you a drink.
You bet the wife and I got ham sandwiches at the neighboring Baloney's (delivered to us right in the lobby). We sat and chowed down while watching "The Time Traveler's Wife," your basic Chick Flick, though one with elements of science-fiction that were not explored nearly enough for the guys in the audience.
I discover something new every time I visit this 1920s-era movie palace, and this time I noticed an autographed photo of Leslie Nielsen from his "Forbidden Planet" days -- addressed "To Catlow." He corrected it to "The Catlow Theatre," but you like to think he was pulling a fast one.
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Video, it was said, killed the radio star. And now the grinding march of technology has taken another victim: The Blockbuster Video store on Route 120 in Grayslake is going out of business.
Not a surprise, considering the rise of everything from Netflix to pay-per-view to checking out new releases for free at the local library. But those of us with long, nostalgic memories will recall that this particular Blockbuster was seen as a wave of the future when it set up shop about 10 years ago ... on land that, for a generation, had housed the Grayslake Outdoor Theatre.
The great postwar drive-in experience in Grayslake was sacked by many things, not the least of which was the year-round value of real estate. But it is bittersweet indeed to see one of the businesses that overwhelmed it get overwhelmed itself by progress.
Not that I wish anything bad on Blockbuster (or, more accurately, its local employees). I rented many, many a movie from that corner over the years, and I find myself wondering what will replace the small thrill of heading out with the crew on a weekend night to "get a movie."
But something will replace it. Something always does.
