Best of 2003: Best Vintage Theatre

La Paloma Theatre
471 South Coast Highway 101, Encinitas
www.lapalomatheatre.com
760-436-5774

One of the last single-screen movie houses in the county, La Paloma Theatre has a long tradition of embracing Southern California culture. Built in 1928 in the popular Spanish Revival style, this ornate performance stage and movie theatre has hosted vaudeville acts, rock stars (think Jerry Garcia and Eddie Vedder), surf movies, poetry slams, plays (most recently Eric Bogosian's SubUrbia), as well as its current mainstay of second-run art films. La Paloma has become the county's final resting place for The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This classic-trash midnight movie includes a floorshow of toast-throwing, Bic-lighting cast members, most of whom weren't born when the film first opened. Under the stewardship of owner Allen Largent, a member of Encinitas's preservation-minded MainStreet program, the nostalgic La Paloma Theatre is destined to survive multiplex madness.