American Graffiti | McNear's Mystic Theatre — The Marquee and the Chain

The theatre in the film is called the State, and the marquee is advertising Dementia 13 — Francis Ford Coppola's first feature, a private joke, since it was Coppola's name on the contract that got American Graffiti made at all. The building is real and it is still standing: 23 Petaluma Boulevard North, the 1911 half of the McNear Building, adjoining an 1886 block raised by the Petaluma merchant John Augustus McNear. It opened for vaudeville, spent the 1920s onward showing pictures as the State, the Plaza and the Palace, and reopened as the Mystic Theatre on 19 July 1992. It books music now. The marquee still lights.

The scene people travel for happened next door. In the empty lot beside number 23, Curt lets the Pharaohs talk him into hooking a cable around the rear axle of a police cruiser. The car pulls away and the axle comes with it. Visit Petaluma's own historic-sites guide marks the spot, notes it was once the Cosmopolitan Hotel, and calls it the "tie the chain to the cop's axle" location — a rare case of a tourism board memorialising a stunt rather than a building.

The lot is still a gap in the streetwall. Stand in it with your back to the theatre and you are standing roughly where the camera was. Look up at the parapet, then down at the asphalt. The distance between the two is about six feet of movie history that nobody bothered to pave over.

Both buildings sit inside the Petaluma Historic Commercial District, on the National Register since 31 March 1995. Photograph is contemporary downtown Petaluma street photography via Pexels, used illustratively.