Sunday, January 13, 2008

When I read the news in September about the Dupont 5 closing ["The Last Show in Dupont Circle," Business], I thought it was all a long time away, that having so much warning would somehow make it easier.

I was wrong.

For some happy years I worked just below Dupont Circle. On Fridays I would leave work at 4 p.m., and my husband and I would go to a movie. We were what the British call "spoiled for choice": We had so many small, art house movie theaters we could walk to. There were several in the Dupont Circle area and more in the West End. For the three years we went to Friday movies, only once did we have to go outside the Dupont-West End neighborhoods for a good film.

Now, I work at home and my husband works until 4 p.m. We go to movies on the weekends and holidays. All but one of those small theaters is gone, and the remaining one closes today. Now in Washington, we have more movie screens but fewer movie theaters.

That doesn't sound bad until you consider that fewer theaters means fewer neighborhoods with movie theaters (after tonight the Dupont Circle area will have none). There isn't much difference in the size of the screens, so soon there won't be as much variety in the type of movies. Also, the multiplexes often reduce the number of films they show by putting a film on more than one screen.

And when theaters close, we lose not only the theater but also the shape and feel and look of a neighborhood, usually for chain stores and restaurants that could be found anywhere in this country.

Big multiplexes are designed for the suburbs. They require a lot of space, and this is a city that no longer has much of that. One of the pleasures of living in a city is being able to walk or take public transit. What is the only way, other than walking or taking a cab, to get to the biggest multiplex in Washington? You must drive to Georgetown. You must act like a suburbanite.

I don't go above Dupont Circle much these days; I've read that it's changing from small shops owned by local people into a strip of chains. I like my chains local and independent. And the only reason I will have to go below Dupont Circle once the theater closes is Olsson's Books & Records.

Dupont Circle has been suffering in recent years (read: more chains, less character), and I don't think that the closing of its only remaining movie theater (for a retail store) is going to reverse that trend.

We need another art and independent movie theater near a Metro station showing movies that the theater on E Street NW -- all the more beloved to us now -- isn't showing. I love Netflix, but it's just not the same as watching a movie in the dark with strangers. (The Landmark people, who operate the E Street moviehouse, understand what city multiplexes need to be like.)

Every day, we lose another piece of this city, and it's not just movie theaters. We need to value our entire past, not just the government and places where "history" happened. Washington is a unique place. Isn't it time we treated it like one?

-- Joanne Collings

Washington