The Madison Theater

Day Three in Peoria.

Actually, the more I see of downtown Peoria, the more I’m impressed with it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a town as clean and tidy as this. All the crosswalks have the squeaky-chirpy sounds to alert those with sight impairments when to cross and when not to. Toronto is the only other city I’ve seen (heard) those in.

Here is a pic of an old (abandoned?) theater called The Madison Theater in downtown Peoria. I miss these old theaters like the Madison. Nowadays, we have the huge, sterile mega-plex with lots of parking.

I can only imagine the type of things The Madison Theater has seen in its heyday.

There were probably lots of young guys making their first tentative “moves” on young ladies here back in the day when that involved just putting one’s arm across the girls’ shoulders.

I should imagine that there might have been some controversy back in 1960 when The Madison decided to show Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho when movies like that were rated "M" for mature audiences. Perhaps it even showed The Exorcist back in ’73.

I grew up with theaters like this one.

But now it stands forlorn and forgotten; a remnant of days gone by.