Nick Gerlich
Google
The Cactus Theatre is a delightful performance venue located in Lubbock’s depot District. The theatre dates to 1939, when it showed movies and had 720 seats. It survived until 1958, when competition from numerous other theatres in town, not to mention drive-in theatres that leveraged the nascent car culture, proved to be too much for the Cactus.
According to their website, the theatre featured a “washed-air cooling system,” which we would call air conditioning today. The marque had 750 feet of neon on it. After its closing, the building was stripped inside and out, leaving behind a shell of it former glory. It thus sat empty for many years, until a local businessman and investors bought it in 1993 with plans to bring it back to life. It reopened in 1995 as a concert venue, which it is to this day.
The renovation included installing more modern seats (code for wider and more comfortable), reducing seating capacity to 400. I had the pleasure of seeing Jimmie Dale Gilmore (of Flatlanders fame) and West Texas Exiles there on 29th March 2024. It was a great show. The acoustics were spot-on perfect; there’s not a bad seat in the house. It is a great venue for smaller crowds who seek an intimate experience in the performing arts. I’ll be back.