Rebirth of the Rialto: A group of DIY dreamers gives beloved Raleigh theater a new life
On a Friday night in October, air thick with popcorn butter, Christie Ashley Canter stepped into the historic Rialto Theater and felt her wild youth rushing back — a tradition of underwear runs, toilet paper fights and costumes made from sequins and ripped stockings.
Almost 40 years ago, when she was a high school kid from Roxboro, she would pile in a car full of friends and drive 50 miles to Raleigh and see “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” every weekend, dressed as her favorite character, Columbia, in a tight black skirt.
And here it was again, her boisterous youth reborn inside the newly reopened Rialto, Raleigh’s beloved and charmingly outdated theater, which had somehow dodged the wrecking ball and flung its doors open to a new generation of eccentrics.
She thought she might cry.
“My mom would only let me come if somebody responsible drove,” she said, gushing at the memory. “It’s like stepping back 37 years ago.”
A do-it-yourself, sentimental crusade
The Rialto’s return to Glenwood Avenue pits a team of sentimental crusaders against Raleigh’s merciless business landscape — an underdog drama in which do-it-yourself dreamers strive to make live music, art house movies and assorted fun viable inside an 90-year-old theater with scant parking and no cup-holders in the seats.
With one exception, the Rialto’s investors come from a pair of ZIP codes within walking distance of the front door. Their managing partner, Hayes Permar, describes himself as “chief popcorn-popper,” resisting a fancy title.
To attract those investors, Permar figured up a respectable price tag — which he politely declined to disclose — and started courting business-savvy friends who lived nearby. Of the roughly 10 shares, he snagged seasoned investors as close as Harvey Street a few blocks away, but also sold one share to a group of college buddies who formed a limited partnership titled OK Buddy after a departed friend’s catch-phrase.
Permar didn’t have to launch a bidding war or fight off developers bent on five-story condos. He knew the building’s owner, its attorney and its property manager, and they struck him as being as hell-bent on saving the Rialto as he was. He credits them for choosing his vision over what might have been far more lucrative deals.
“I wanted them to see me as the right person,” he said. “I’m not trying to wear the hero’s cape. I don’t like the notion that I saved the Rialto. They were not going to let it turn into condos — at least not this time around.”
Not a shrine to the past, but something new
Throughout his colorful history, Permar has worked as the announcer for the Carolina Mudcats, anchor for the SportsChannel8 online network, co-host of Podcast Raleigh and a digital content creator for The Discovery Channel — notably writing copy for the Puppy Bowl. He once played Tiny Tim in Ira David Wood III’s “A Christmas Carol.”
He jokes that he learned how to write a business plan by watching a YouTube video, and on the night “Rocky Horror” returned to the Rialto, he cleaned up toilet paper afterward with a leaf-blower.
He employed his mother, Ann, as an usher.
“I volunteered,” she corrected. “You know what mothers do. They invest.”
At 45, Permar bets that Raleigh will embrace its roots and flock back to a theater that once saw Jane’s Addiction play to 450 people and Alison Krauss perform when she was only 19.
Still, he doesn’t want to build a shrine to Raleigh’s history, even when so much of that history is getting torn down and discarded.
Rather, he hopes Raleigh will choose the Rialto for what it can become — something new made from the bones of something old.
“At no point did I think, “Hmm, I’ll buy a theater,’” he said. “That doesn’t become a thing until it’s available. And then it is.”
From supermarket to entertainment venue
The Rialto’s storefront on Glenwood Avenue started out as an A&P grocery store in 1938, one of the largest supermarkets in the state, so impressive in The Great Depression that The News & Observer dedicated an entire paragraph to the “noiseless rubber-tired gliders,” now known as shopping carts.
Four years later, The Colony Theater opened in its place, presenting “Four Jacks and a Jill” starring Ray Bolger of “The Wizard of Oz” fame. That same year, with World War II raging, the Colony held a scrap drive and offered free admission to any Raleigh kid who collected five pounds of metal.
By the early 1980s, the Colony had closed and quickly reopened as the Rialto, playing “Rocky Horror” on Fridays at midnight and art house movies in most other slots.
And long before anyone else, the Rialto served beer.
Permar grew up nearby and remembers his parents dragging him to every Rialto film with a positive review.
“At 8 years old,” he recalled, “I’d be like, ‘It’s probably going to be in French, but I’ll probably see some boobies.’”
This era saw the Rialto branch off into live music, pulling in acts that would later fill arenas: Tori Amos, Widespread Panic, Ben Folds Five.
Scandalous Iggy Pop and more ‘Rocky Horror’
Iggy Pop roared through in 1990, belting out his old Stooges songs clad in a leopard-skin vest and tight jeans.
“He was illegal, man,” recalled Victor Parker, a Rialto regular now in his 70s. “He was stripping down out of those jeans right on stage. Well, he did have a G-string on.”
Music largely gave way to movies-only as the theater screened titles largely unavailable anywhere else — “Kedi,” a 2017 documentary based on the street cat population in Istanbul.
And longtime owner Bill Peebles kept “Rocky Horror” screenings alive with a simple motto:
“I can’t save the world,” he would say, “but we can keep 125 kids off the streets at night.”
Then in 2022, as Raleigh limped out of COVID-19, Peebles announced he would retire and sell the theater after three decades, citing age and a dearth of available titles post-pandemic.
Enter the Permar era.
Getting the old Rialto gang back together
Permar swears he isn’t a preservationist. He gets irritated when people want to save every corner of Raleigh as a museum. He knows new people are coming by the busload.
Still, the vanishing Raleigh of Permar’s generation and even further back in the rear-view mirror makes a powerful motivator to save what little remains.
The staples of youth and hipster culture knocked down and replaced along Hillsborough Street — Sadlack’s, Jackpot, The Brewery, East Village — leave a vacuum for any business that values Raleigh’s colorful past, that remembers its era as a gritty college town where people started bands in garages and shunned anything vaguely corporate.
In the Rialto’s case, Permar went out of his way to bring back the old crew: the same projectionist, the same popcorn popper, even the same boiler room mechanic.
“I begged,” said Jacob Downey, who mans the popcorn machine. “This is something Raleigh needs to work.”
Concert promoter Zack Johnson went to Underwood Elementary School next door, and as a fifth-grader he played tambourine and maracas in music classes that met in the Rialto’s back room. He knew Permar from middle school.
“I reached out to ask what his plan was and he said, ‘I don’t have one,’ “ Johnson said. “I told him I’ll do the concerts if you want to do the movies. Raleigh is changing so much. Condos and apartments are everywhere. To have a staple like the Rialto survive the pandemic and what must have been crazy offers on the land, is pretty special.”
But for his partner — the experienced, detail-oriented half of his Rialto equation — Permar lucked into a call from Jade Enns, who brought both an MBA from Harvard University and a resume that included Lincoln Center in Manhattan, where she kept the arts alive during the pandemic.
Over drinks at Crafty Beer Shop across the street, Enns and Permar gushed out their shared vision for accessible artspace.
In July, as a shaky trial run with a still-broken air-conditioner, they opened their doors for a screening of the Women’s World Cup final.
“So many people care about this place,” said Enns, “even if the air-conditioner isn’t working and you only have two beers on tap.”
The labors in a labor of love
For Permar and Enns, the labor part in labor of love came with a thousand little chores, from painting the exterior bright blue with cursive script to hanging the letters on the famous marquee.
On the small-chore list, they had to scrub bathrooms, fix wobbly seats and figure out what size to print the posters so they fit in the display cases outside.
On the big-chore list, they needed an agent to help procure films because, it turns out, an independent theater with a single screen can’t just call up a studio the size of Disney and order whatever title it wants.
On “Rocky Horror” night, Permar stood outside on Glenwood as the line snaked down the block, scanning e-tickets and checking IDs — rarely the province of a theater owner.
A week later, for the first big night of live entertainment, Permar went to the ABC store to buy his first batch of liquor for customers’ gin and tonics and whiskey on the rocks. But he mistakenly got to the store an hour early and had to wait out his rookie mistake.
At some point, he’ll have to change the bulbs in the Rialto’s recessed ceiling lights, a chore that will involve scaffolding he hasn’t yet mastered.
“What’s the biggest challenge?” he asked. “Getting butts in seats? I haven’t even thought about that yet. It’s what size posters to print so they fit in the display cases.”
‘This is The Rialto!’
Most longtime Rialto fans don’t even know the theater has a full-sized stage that appears when the movie screen gets pushed back, or that there’s about 15 feet of space between the stage and the front row. Permar figures he’ll be able to draw the older concert-goers who don’t want to stand for a two-hour show, or who want to arrive late, skip the opening act and pay extra for a good seat up-front.
On the first live music night, with Will Hoge as the headliner and The One Eighties as opener, Permar proved himself right as the lobby filled up with the nostalgic devotees.
“We saw ‘World Party’ and we danced our butts off,” said Cynthia Parker, recalling a night in the early ‘90s. “We’re excited about all this. We live in the neighborhood. Plus, our kids are grown up now.”
Fans — young ones, too — filled about half the theater as Permar took the stage and grabbed the microphone.
“How are y’all doing tonight?” he yelled, frowning at the tepid applause. “That may be OK at the last place you saw live music. But this is The Rialto! How are y’all doing tonight?’’
Permar’s mother put plugs in her ears just as the crowd called back, much louder this time.
And the show roared on.
How to go to the Rialto
The Rialto is at 1620 Glenwood Ave., in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood northwest of downtown. Find schedule at therialto.com.
Live music returns to Raleigh’s reopened Rialto Theater this weekend. What to know.
