The Nile Theatre stands empty in downtown Bakersfield. Its graceful Art Deco design recalls the era of the great movie houses built long before the advent of TV, DVDs, and cinematic multiplexes. Yet without the fragmented threads of fading jet contrail clouds floating in the sky overhead, this image would be merely descriptive, rather than expressive. To me, those fading contrails symbolize the old searchlights that used to sweep the night skies over those great movie palaces. The contrails are almost gone, as are the searchlights that once lured entire cities to the doors of its movie houses. These fading clouds, extended by my use of a camera with a 28mm wideangle lens, best tell the story of this shuttered theatre.