Late in my college career we developed a numbering system for how to identify how old other students were.
There was one particular bar on one particular corner that changed names every year. For that reason people tended to refer to it as the name of the joint from when they were freshmen. I knew it as a place called The Ultravox. A friend who attended Auburn in the 1970s knew it as a very different business.
This is The Ultravox on Magnolia Avenue and Wright Street. Or what would much later become the Ultravox. There's nothing overwhelmingly distinguishing about the photograph to tip you off. The buildings have all changed, but the layout looks the same. There's a ghost to the framework and it refuses to give way. There's something comforting about the spirit of a place, even when the place itself is razed, redone, renovated, razed, renovated and renamed countless times over the decades.
Here's proof. And it is for sale again. If I had $10,000,000, steep though that is, I'd snatch this up in a second. Prime real estate, great memories, worlds of potential. Want to be a co-signer? We could make a lot of money.
Here's another view of the War Eagle Theater from 1970. The Tiger Theater, the town's other movie option, was literally around the corner. The Tiger Theater, disappeared before I arrived on campus, though the facade still hung in the air, soon to be replaced by, of all things, a Gap.
About the movie in the picture here: Sealed Cargo was about a mysterious schooner off the coast of Nova Scotia during the war. It gets mixed reviews.
When I started at Auburn there were two screens in town, though neither of the ones students of the 50s would recall, nor would today's students. There were also six screens in Opelika. Just as the first of the Star Wars prequels premiered a shiny new 14-screen theater opened. And it only took 55 years.
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