Posted by mookster
The biggest disappointment
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This theater would have to be my biggest exploration disappointment to date. It is located about 3 hours north of Chicago, in my small WI hometown and opened for entertainment on Christmas day, 1925. While not as large as the big city theaters of that roaring era, it was designed with the same grandeur and featured craftsmanship from some of the same artisans from the big city. Vaudeville acts and other various forms of entertainment were presented over the years. Originally, they even offered rooftop dancing for you and your date if, of course, you could afford the 15 cent admission.
It also operated as a movie theater for many years. Some of my earliest memories of the place included sneaking in during the 90s for movies like "Beavis and Butthead Do America". Ultimately it met its demise and sat unused for at least 7 years. It got purchased by this real estate/construction guy. Demolition had long been his intent but the community had a strong love for the theater and did everything they could to delay the demo as long as possible. But ultimately they were losing the battle.
So my brother and I thought we'd give it a try. We had made it onto the roof when we noticed a couple bicycle cops looking straight in our direction. No way they could have seen us but we got spooked and decided to head down. We would later find out that somebody had seen us when we entered the alley and called it in as suspicious. Therefore, they were waiting for us at the end of the alley when we tried to leave. We got lectured and yelled at for quite a long time. We were totally cooperative and let them search us completely. But still these guys were a couple of total fuckin assholes. They didn't actually CATCH us doing anything and they knew it. However, they knew exactly what we were TRYING to do. So, they gave us some bullshit line about how, even though we weren't caught committing crime, we were in a situation that lent us the opportunity to likely commit a crime. They defined it as prowling and cost us each a couple hundred bucks. Glad it was just a citation though.
3 weeks later it looked like this.
A couple weeks later I found a page from one of the preservation efforts where they had included a ton of pictures to document its current condition. So at least I was able to see a bunch of pictures of it in its decayed state. I stole this one and put it here for comparison.
How about your biggest satisfaction?
