Alamo Drafthouse, the fine people who made the brilliant connection of serving beers and real food with movies instead of crap popcorn and high-fructose-corn-syrup, are moving into their new digs at the Ritz in downtown Austin this week.

The Ritz was never a ‘nice’ theatre, per se. It was never very opulent; it was kind of a working-class theatre, never very high on design. But back in the Thirties, when Sixth Street was a crazy, wild place, it was known as the ‘Western’ theatre and actual cowboys would come in, a lot of whom had never seen a movie before. They’d get freaked out, liquored up and loving it, and end up pulling out their six-shooters and shooting at the screen! The Ritz screen was riddled with holes from drunk cowboys.”

More about the history and the future of this space over on The Chronicle.