I heard that there used to be an ice cream parlor on Water Street that had an adult movie theater in back. They thought it was where New York Pizza & Deli is now. Is this true?

Thanks for asking! It’s half true. There was such a combo on Water Street, but not at that spot.

The West End Ice Cream Parlor & Studio West Movie House stood at 220 Water, although not the same physical structure that is now the walk-in Associated Bank. So, across the parking lot from El Patio (which itself was a McDonald’s back in the day, the only McDonald’s I ever saw close).

The long, narrow “Studio West,” as it was most commonly called (no relation to either of our two former Studio West hair salons, which I don’t think had any relation to each other), was sincerely the weirdest place I’ve ever been in Eau Claire. And I’ve been in some pretty weird places.

It’s 1973. The ice cream parlor sits up front. Along a hallway leading back to the theater, family patrons can treat themselves to – I kid you not – a Nazi memorabilia display. In the back on Saturday mornings, kids like me (and adults I suppose, though I never noticed) can see classic comedies: Abbott and Costello, Three Stooges, Harold Lloyd. Nights, the place screens pornos, Deep Throat, Behind the Green Door. Even as a lad I remember thinking, Man, this place is messed up.

I’m sure you’re thinking there’s a pretty big creep factor here. But listen. It’s hard to remember or imagine now, but there was a time when porn was neither pandemic nor dull. And this was that time. That very year, the serious and glitterati journal Film Comment published an homage to porn by Brendon Gill, long-time staff writer at the New Yorker.

A few years earlier, people in urban America had flocked to the Swedish films I Am Curious(Yellow) and (...Blue). That particular porno-chic vibe is so totally gone: I mean, you know, Deep Throat was made as a comedy. And folks stood around in public – sporting cable turtlenecks, white-guy perms, and cop mustaches – talking about porn.

History buff, collector, and local character Dave Lynnes owned the parlor and theater. Later on, in the 90s, he operated the World’s Smallest Museum on Bellinger Street (a claim that Superior, AZ, would surely argue ...).

I think he’s nearing 90 now, but he still gives talks and hauls out artifacts from his impressive collection of local stuff, such as a “thunder sheet” from the old State Theater. He also occasionally screens rare films of old Eau Claire street scenes. Studio West hung until the mid-80s, perhaps done-in by the VCR and perhaps by Lynnes’ changing business interests. Now the VCR itself is done-in, and we all get porn in our spam folders.

The building sat empty a few years like an accusation against our boogie nights. Razed in the 1990s to make way for the current, more compact structure (Studio West ran all the way to the alley), which opened as a branch of First Federal. How First Federal got to be Associated escapes me, as do all banking complexities.

That “old” one razed, like so many Eau Claire structures, even though it only dated back to the 50s. Before that, the 200 block was pretty much westside neighborhood housing, back when the university, and its sphere of influence, hadn’t yet reached across the river.