La Paloma Theatre

Performing Arts & CinemaOwner Verified

About

La Paloma Theatre in Encinitas opened on February 11, 1928, making it San Diego's oldest continuously operating single-screen cinema, built in Spanish Colonial Revival style by architect Edward J. Baume at 471 South Coast Highway 101. The original 540-seat house featured an orchestra pit and pipe organ for silent-film accompaniment before transitioning to one of the region's first “talkie” installations — a technological pivot documented alongside other early Encinitas landmarks at San Dieguito Heritage Museum on Quail Gardens Drive. Handmade Claycraft Potteries floor tiles imported from Los Angeles during construction remain intact beneath the lobby, and original plaster detailing survives throughout the auditorium's arched ceiling and proscenium. Current programming mixes first-run independent and foreign films with surf-premiere screenings, live concert bookings, poetry slams, and the long-running Rocky Horror Picture Show series hosted by the Crazed Imaginations cast. That live-music calendar shares the South Coast Highway 101 performance corridor with Mr. Peabody's Bar & Grill Live Music, anchoring Encinitas's evening entertainment scene near Moonlight Beach. The theater's projection system pairs a Christie CP2230 4K DLP cinema projector with a Dolby 7.1 surround-sound array behind a 30-foot perforated screen, preserving the single-screen presentation format inside the 1928 shell.