Margaret Montano was flooded with memories as she approached the Federal Theatre on Friday night, stepping inside to see a show there for the first time in at least 45 years.
This was an important hangout for her in her teenage years, back when it was a dollar movie theater. She and her friends came from across the city to see “Mad Max” and “Car Wash.”
“We would usually sit towards the back, because we were probably up to no good, like smoking pot or whatever,” the 66-year-old chuckled.
The movie theater closed sometime after Max Max premiered in 1979, and sat mostly empty through the ensuing decades. Montano visited it a few times when it was used more recently as a church. But Friday night was special: the Federal Theatre had finally reopened as a venue on Denver’s Northside…