Remembering Venue Cinemas

I wasn't surprised to learn that Venue Cinemas in Lynchburg, VA, will be closing at the end of the month. It was, after all, one of the city's last bastions of no-frills entertainment, replete with an "outdated" business model. There wasn't an app or a rewards program. There weren't high-fidelity speakers or faux-leather recliners. It was unabashedly a movie theater: a distraction-free environment with cheap seats, good popcorn, and friendly staff.

While not surprised, I will miss Venue all the same.

Please forgive the crooked picture.

I will miss taking the time to ferret out the few seats that didn't creak. I will miss the erratic emergency light in theater six, and the hand-sized stain on the screen in theater eight. I will miss the stringent, ACTUALLY ENFORCED cell phone policy.

And perhaps most of all, I will miss the paper towels. They were of a rare and dying breed—you could dry your hands with a single sheet(!)—, and they always struck me as an expensive outlier in an otherwise (seemingly) low-overhead operation.

I saw 30 movies there across four semesters, the first being 2022's Vengeance and the last being 2025's Drop. Again, the theater's shuttering is not shocking—I had the place to myself for 14 of those screenings.

This is your reminder to watch Marcel the Shell with Shoes On.

As a transient college student, I never really plugged into the Lynchburg community. I never learned my way around town ("Going off campus means spending money"), curated a list of must-try restaurants ("I'm already paying for a meal plan"), or even meaningfully engaged with a local ("They probably resent college students, anyways"). I was selfish, stingy, and a little depressed. Maybe Venue—which for three dollars gave me two-ish hours alone in a dark room—enabled that behavior. I don't know. But I *do* know that those two-ish hours off campus often felt like coming up for air after a suffocating week at school (the foremost of first world problems, I'm aware).

So thank you to the friends who, at one point or another, accompanied me and tolerated my effusive paper towel praise. And thank you, of course, to both the people and the place that comprise(d) Venue Cinemas. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. Thank you for not muddying the moviegoing experience with recliners or booze, and instead for letting the movies speak for themselves. Your theater's existence was a noble one.

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MaYBe nOw mY T-sHirt wIll bECoMe a coLlEcTor's ItEm!!!