Joy-Lan shows you can’t be too old to go digital

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Joy-Lan Drive-In marquee

photo by Earl Leatherberry, used by permission

The Tampa (FL) Tribune gave us a piece of good news this week. The Joy-Lan Drive-In of Dade City has made the conversion to digital projection thanks to its owner, 83-year-old Harold Spears.

You really should read the article for its full collection of quotes and wisdom from Spears, who’s been in the drive-in industry for almost 60 years. For example, he recognizes that the appeal of the drive-in is its general relaxed atmosphere. He also notes that the Joy-Lan used to attract more teenagers than it does now.

Spears, who also owns the Silver Moon Drive-In (Lakeland), recognized that his only choices were converting to digital or closing. “The business that we do really didn’t justify the investment, but I like this business,” he said. “I enjoy this business. I would certainly hate to have to close it up.” Let’s offer our thanks to Spears for keeping his drive-ins alive and to the Tribune for writing about it.

Two of three California drive-ins doing well

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Neon Sunset signKSBY, San Luis Obispo’s news leader, aired a fairly lengthy report about the state of several of its nearby drive-in theaters. I would have loved to embed it here, but the pre-roll commercial auto-starts and then the player never loads the actual video, so it’s in turn annoying and useless. I had to dig around to find one page where the news report actually plays. At least once, while I was there. But I digress.

Oddly, the story leads with the former Lompoc Valley Drive-In, now the Drive-In Recycling Center, though the faded screen/sign is still there. On the other hand, the HiWay in Santa Maria and the Sunset in San Luis Obispo are still going strong. “Both will convert to digital before the year is out,” the report says.

Although the video never loaded for me on the report’s text page, you can read more about it there. For a local station, it’s a pretty comprehensive look at regional drive-ins. Just don’t click the video links there, unless you’re luckier than me.

Mahoning manager calls Shenanigans

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WNEP, Scranton PA’s news leader, ran a story last week about the Mahoning Drive-In in nearby Mahoning Township. There’s a dispute there between the Mahoning’s projectionist / manager and a Florida guy who said he wanted to lease-purchase the place. It turns out that a similar scene played out last year at the Tee Pee Drive-In of Sapulpa OK, where things didn’t work out so well.

According to WNEP, Mahoning manager Mike Danchak was contacted by Glen Brannon, who said he wanted to lease and eventually buy the drive-in so it would continue to operate. So this spring a bunch of volunteers helped spruce up the Mahoning. Then Brannan sold 250 season passes for $59 a carload, but Danchak said the drive-in “would go bankrupt” if they accepted those, so he had to buy them back, using up the money he was saving toward buying a digital projector.

The remarkable thing about this story is how closely it matches what happen to the Tee Pee. According to a summary at Route66News.com, the same Florida guy, then going by the name Russ Glen, lease-purchased the Tee Pee, which had closed in 1999. (Speaking of confusing names, you’ll see the name Tee Pee used with and without a space in various news stories. Based on photos of the original sign, I’m going with Tee Pee.)

Soon after Glen entered the picture, a group of volunteers repainted and cleaned up the Tee Pee. The summary says that Glen also set up the TeePee Drive-In Theater Association to accept donations of money and equipment for the theater’s restoration. A month later, one of the volunteers said “the association is suspending the acceptance of donations, and money from the bank account has been removed because of ‘issues with the legitimacy of the nonprofit.'” Glen insisted that everything was perfectly legitimate. And from all accounts, the Tee Pee never reopened.

And that’s about as far as I can go, given that I have no first-hand information about any of these stories. I recommend the Route66News summary, which also includes a lot of links and embedded videos of the Tee Pee saga. For the Mahoning, only time will tell.