A Glimpse into The Bay Theater’s Past and Future

Located right in the center of downtown Morro Bay, with its eye-catching neon red and blue sign, resides The Bay Theater: the last single-screen theater left on the Central Coast. With its retro feel full of charm, The Bay Theater has long served as a business filled with a wide variety of movie showings as well as fundraisers for the community of Morro Bay. In January, the theater will mark its 50th anniversary as The Bay Theater, bringing the community together for one goal: enjoying the art of film.

From the exterior, it’s hard to tell how truly expansive the theater is, as you walk into a quaint lobby, later walking through the doors of the single-screen and being met with over 315 seats waiting to be sat in. Originally built in 1942 as an entertainment hub for locals and military personnel, the theater hosted various bands and variety acts during World War 2. The Jannopoulos family later bought the theater in 1975, which they then passed down for generations til 2021, when the property went up for sale. 

Current owner of The Bay Theater, Cameron Wilson, ended up purchasing the theater in 2023, moving across the country from New York City, where he was making sets for photoshoots with his partner, Rachael Louie, to restore the beauty of film to Morro Bay.  Before purchasing the theater, Wilson made a point to visit the theater without a relator, rather than going to experience it first-hand in all its beauty. “Oppenheimer was playing, and it was packed in here; it was such a special moment,” said Wilson. Soon enough, Wilson bought the theater on a whim, as the community was aching for a permanent owner, experiencing a sort of Joni Mitchell-like, “you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” moment, said Wilson.

Throughout the years that the Jannopoulos owned the theater, it hosted the community of Morro Bay with whatever was the newest movies out– whether it be Blockbuster films, Disney, or Paramount, the theater simply played whatever was popular. Wilson, a UCSD graduate, and Louie, an NYU graduate who both majored in film, aimed to do more of a special events and fundraisers take on the theater, while still playing those pinnacle new films. 

Though it can be tough on the theater as they can only provide a single screen, limiting their ability to play different films, both Wilson and Louie found a way around this: Monday specials. The Monday specials that the theater began offering when they opened in 2023 stemmed from not having to play their typical newest movies, a day when they often play older movies, adding a bit of variation to their usual schedule. “With the single screen, it’s hard for everyone to be on board with our choices, but definitely a handful of people trust us and our pickings for those Monday slots,” said Louie. 

As the theater is required to fill the classic time slots of its screen with the same movie for weeks on end, the Monday special is a wonderful way for locals to enjoy something casually once a week. The theater has a multitude of regulars, or people who show up for their Monday special without even knowing what the movie is, just wanting to support them in whatever way they can. “They’ll come in and be like, ‘What’s the movie? What am I fundraising for?’ They don’t even know. We answer that question a lot,” said Wilson. Being able to host an environment where anyone walking down the street can be susceptible to a classic theater experience, but is offered in one large space where everyone in the building is there to celebrate the movie that is offered that day, is immensely engaging and brings in a feeling of belonging. 

“Coming to this town and finding out that some choices in programming will, like, people will show up in mass for some of this stuff by the hundreds that like a line will go up the block like, it’s like reframed my kind of my taste and my vision and like what I consume now has kind of been reframed to be more like to do this dance between what is the mass appeal with heart and intelligence and conversation pieces.” – Wilson

Aside from Monday specials, the theater has hosted a variety of different fundraisers to give back to the community of Morro Bay, with a major one for MBHS being the Film Festival. Each year, the theater is filled to the brim with MBHS students and their parents, a tradition that has been held since 2023. The film festival, hosted by MBHS Broadcast, “The Spyglass,” and journalism students, projects different categories of films made by the students, along with a competition with judges and a panel. “It’s like the excitement before each short film is like the best feeling,” said Wilson, describing that “blink and you’ll miss it” moment of being able to bring together the next generation of filmmakers.  

Over nearly two years, both Wilson and Louie have restored the community’s love for filmmaking, older movies being shown on the big screen, and continuing on with the love for traditions held by the Jannopoulos family. With Wilson purchasing the theater purely built on his love for film, it came with various older features– such as the ancient projector, lack of social media presence, and overall advertising, as well as less exposure to the films they are playing.

Once purchasing, Wilson and Louie kept the vintage theater with character- engraved in its walls, while bringing nuance in putting movie posters outside the theater, creating a social media presence, and purchasing a new projector that could run simply through the foggy weather Morro Bay is known for. “I feel like what people search for is nostalgia; they want to come to the theater, even if they’re walking past and they see it. 
They’re like, ‘I’ve been here before,’” said Wilson.  

From a variety show and event center for military personnel and locals, a standard Blockbuster film joint for over 40 years, and now a hub for community events and films, the theater has kept its charm, remaining one of Morro Bay’s historic sites across the Central Coast. “The curb appeal of it, like, people are constantly surprised by, like, how it feels to walk into the auditorium,” said Wilson, admiring the simple pleasures of owning the theater. Both Wilson and Louie have brought a love of watching films on the big screen back to Morro Bay, offering something for everyone. Whether the film is new or old, the event is big or small, supporting local businesses such as The Bay Theater keeps the community strong across the central coast.