Fading to black

Once settled in Redwood City, my wife and I found plenty of theaters from which to choose, some in Redwood City and some in nearby communities. We primarily patronized the Century Park 12 theaters that, from 1990 until 2008, was located along East Bayshore Road where today a large apartment building and VillaSport athletic club are under construction. I particularly remember taking our kids there to see the original Star Wars trilogy when those three were rereleased just prior, I believe, to the first of the newer Star Wars films getting its theatrical first release. But I also remember going there on many a “date night” while our kids stayed home with a babysitter.

The Century Park 12 theaters were built on the site of the Redwood Drive-In, which had been built in 1961 with just a single screen. By the mid-1970s, the Redwood Drive-In had been expanded to four screens, but my wife and I never made it to that particular theater (in 1987, when it was torn down, we were living across the Bay). However, I do recall seeing a couple of movies at the appropriately named Burlingame 4, a four-screen drive-in that was just east of Highway 101 and north of Peninsula Avenue in Burlingame.

Redwood City’s first theater was the Alhambra, but it didn’t show movies; it opened in 1896 as a place for live performances. One of the first Redwood City theaters to show movies was known as the Sequoia; it opened in 1916 and although equipped with a small stage, it apparently was designed to also show films. The Sequoia’s original building is now long gone, but if you’ve been into Philz Coffee on Broadway, you’ve stood where that particular theater once operated.

The Sequoia operated for about 10 years, after which its proprietor built the larger, more ornate “New Sequoia” just down the street. That theater’s building still stands, although it now presents live entertainment under a new name: The Fox.

Redwood City had other movie houses over the years, but by the late 1980s, when my wife and I moved to the city, only one other movie theater operated within the city limits: the UA Redwood 6. That small six-screen theater was located where Walnut Street dead-ends into Highway 101. Unfortunately, the UA Redwood 6 didn’t last very long after we became Redwood City residents. It was replaced by modern a five-story office building that, for a time, was home to tech company Evernote. The theater may be gone, but its two-level parking garage remains to this day.

As Redwood City residents, my wife and I didn’t limit our moviegoing to the city’s theaters. San Carlos had no theaters by then (over the years it had at least three), but I can recall seeing movies in the Belmont theater on El Camino Real (that today is a climbing gym), in one or two of the theaters that used to operate in Menlo Park, and in theaters in Palo Alto.

Practically from the day television was first invented, people have been predicting the death of movie theaters. The age of movie theaters likely peaked well after the advent of television, hitting bottom amid the pandemic after a many-years slide. Moviegoing activity has rebounded somewhat since 2020, but even so Redwood City is down to just a single movie house (with 20 screens): Cinemark’s downtown theater complex. And beyond that, you have to go to Palo Alto or San Mateo to find the next closest theaters.

I must plead guilty to being part of the problem; I haven’t set foot in any movie theater in at least a year or two. But that’s about to change. Next week, March 9-15, on select days and at select times, Redwood City’s downtown theater will be showing all 10 of this year’s Oscar-nominated best picture candidates, plus the nominated short films.

For at least some of them, my wife and I will be there. Hopefully, the experience will serve as a reminder of the joys of seeing a film on the really big screen, and, just maybe, cause us to once again get off the couch and see the occasional movie in a Redwood City theater.