There’s nothing particularly memorable about getting your tires replaced. You drop off your car, ask for the Wi-Fi password and make the waiting area your office for the next hour or so. Or at least that’s what I found myself doing after I had the misfortune of ending up with not one, but two big screws in my tire last weekend.
The waiting area is close enough to the manager’s office that I couldn’t help but overhear all of his conversations. From what I gathered, one of the calls was a cold call from a roofing company hoping to make Gill’s Point S a new client. During that conversation, I heard the manager mention that they were one of the oldest Point S locations in the Boise area and that the building they use as their shop was originally a movie theater.
Almost instinctively, I popped “716 Vista Ave Boise Movie Theater” into a Google search and wouldn’t you know it? I WAS sitting in someone’s childhood memory. My tire shop was once the Vista Theater!
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According to an old Idaho Statesman article, the Matthews brothers broke ground for the theater in January 1946 and it welcomed moviegoers for the first time on July 4 of the same year. The line to get in the theater stretched down the block. Cinema Treasures explains that the theater was the first theater built away from downtown and featured a soundproof, air-conditioned cry room where parents could take fussy kids during a movie. It was able to seat 423 movie lovers.
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