Old Town Theatre - Alexandria, VA

May 22, 2008 was a day that I will remember for quite a while. My boyfriend and I went to the Washington DC area to visit my sister. We arrived early enough to catch a film at the independent movie house in Old Town, Alexandria, Va.

Being a fan of independent movie theatres, locally owned restaurants and unique privately owned stores, I was excited to be going to see a film at an old movie house. I had visions of the Vogue Theatre of Louisville, KY (which is no longer in existence), or the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington (truly one of the best independent movie theatres/performing arts centers in the country). My excitement was very quickly quashed as I approached the ticket sales counter. There was a sign glaring at me informing the patrons that each ticket holder must purchase one concession item. OK, I quickly forgave this rudeness thinking here is a guy trying to survive against the Cinemarks, National Amusements, and AMC's of the world. So we paid $4 per soda and another $4 for a bag of self served popcorn and we climbed the stairs to see our 7:30 movie - The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. Oh I forgot to tell you that the soda's were also self serve and if you wanted a refill it was an additional $2. After $47 on tickets and concessions, we proceeded to our theatre. I use the term theatre loosely!

Theatre #2, was a converted balcony of an old single screen theatre. My guess is it was once a vaudeville movie house, but I don't know for sure. Anyway, I digress, back to the description of the theatre: The screen was the kind you had in grade school that pulled down out of the ceiling, the speakers were Bose surround sound home theatre speakers. Yes, Bose has a great quality product (I personally own a Bose CD player), but these speakers were what one would have in their home not in a movie theatre. Because the high end home theatre sound was being driven much harder than they were designed for, the sound became very distorted and at times unintelligible. My cup holder (yes it did have that little luxury), was covered in chewing gum and as you walked down the stairs on the left hand side of the seats, the last stair was cracked and weak. Oh do not let me forget...there were no fire sprinklers in this theatre, nor was there a fire curtain near the screen and the aisle and stairs were certainly not lit in the dark. I hope you are getting the picture!

Lastly, the movie....Like I said we went to see Narnia at 7:30 p.m. I think our movie finally started about 8:10 p.m., and no there were no previews! However we did clearly hear, from the other theatre, downstairs, Indiana Jones. By they way, Have you read the Iron Man review? I said I saw it as a fluke....well the fluke was when Narnia started it was actually Iron Man - yes ladies and gentleman the first 15 mins of Iron Man I saw at no charge - oh but wait, yes I did pay for those 15 minutes, I was raped at the concession/ticket counter with their outrageous prices.

After a few four letter words (mostly the F word) uttered by the projectionist, concession stand soda jerk, and theatre manager and possibly owner, (all the same guy), Narnia started. As I said in the film it was a good movie. However the film would have great in a real authentic movie house and not this joke called a theatre.

Oh I cannot forget to mention all the crap lying around this place - the owner must be a pack rat, there is stuff stuffed in every corner of this place! Literally this theatre is a fire trap just waiting to ignight!

The two absolutely great bonuses of the evening is we met some very nice people from Virginia Tech who were seated in the row in front of us, and the second being that this goes down in the memoirs as another very memorable experience i have shared with my sister!