A petition has been launched to save the former Whiteladies Road ABC cinema. Read what the Evening Post has to say about it here.

Petitions do not tend to work, and even with Nick Park’s signature the cinema was not saved the first time round and has stood empty now for five years.

It is a huge regret of mine that I was not living in Bristol when the cinema looked like this:

Soon after I arrived in Redland, a sign went up outside the building saying that it would open as Jessica’s, “a new concept in entertainment”, in early 2008. It was then due to open as something called Vanity and has also got planning permission to be turned into a church, but nothing has happened and it still sits empty.

If I had deep pockets, I would reopen it as an old-fashioned cinema, bringing it back to glory days that I can only imagine.

But I don’t have limitless funds, so it will be left to someone else to resurrect the building who I suspect will not see a cinema as the quickest money-making opportunity.

When I was at university in Durham, a delightful old cinema there – the only one in the city – was closed and turned into a Walkabout bar. As I saw drunk students fall off the podium near to where the main screen used to be (yes, I was among them), I remembered many happy evenings there with friends, seeing films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

I don’t have those memories of the Whiteladies ABC, but it would be a tragedy if the building were to disappear. I have heard that its transformation is painfully slow because it has lots of listed features inside, but let’s use them in a faithful restoration, much like what has happened at the Lido around the corner.

I doubt whether it will be turned into a cinema, but the building itself needs to be saved.