Thanks to a nice article in the Abilene (TX) Reporter-News, we now know that the Tower Drive-In of nearby Rule has begun a Kickstarter fundraiser to pay for its digital conversion. Be sure to watch the nice little video they made to support the project. It really makes you feel like you’ve visited the Tower, and it’s embedded just to the right of these words.

What makes this conversion fundraiser a little different is that Tower owner Deon Gordon says she has a quote on a used digital projector for less than $39,000. That makes it about half the price of most drive-in digital conversion projects.

It’s a good long article with a long conversation with Gordon. I learned, for example, why drive-ins seem to be staying away from 3D. “There is a requirement from the studios for you to charge a premium and they get the premium,” Gordon said. “I charge six dollars for both movies and if I had to put a $3 premium on it, then any week or two-week period where I’ve got a 3D movie I’d price a lot of my customers out of being able to come.”

According to the article, Gordon already advertises on nearby radio stations to pull in patrons from a wide area, since the Tower is the only movie theater for 50 miles. I hope that means that a lot of civic-minded, forward-thinking north Texas residents will realize that they all need to chip in to keep their nearby source of entertainment alive. We’ll see!

Click here for the full story and a 24-picture slideshow

As reported by KENS, San Antonio’s news leader, the restored mural at the abandoned Mission Drive-In Theatre recently passed its lighting test. The city expects to officially switch on the lights at the end of February.

As discussed earlier, San Antonio is restoring the old drive-in site to include a community library with space for more facilities, and it’s restoring the original solidly built theater screen/mural. Gary Edenburn, special projects manager for the San Antonio Development Office, said he expects to see outdoor movies there this summer.

Not only did the old drive-in have this beautiful mural, the mural’s figures were outlined in neon. For the 21st century, San Antonio officials chose to use LED lighting instead as a faux-neon for the same outlines. I’d be curious to see how that compares.

According to the story, “Locals are already flocking to the Mission Public Library that sits on the same property. (The adjacent) Mission San Jose is poised as a historic backdrop for those who gather in the library’s cozy sunlit reading nooks.” Ah, I love new libraries almost as much as new drive-ins.

I really wish KENS had included a piece of video to go with the story so I could have embedded it here, but their 24-picture slideshow of the mural and library are the next best thing. (There’s a year-old video that includes helicopter shots of the site, but that story is about local artists complaining that the old mural contained stereotypical images. The city agreed not to include those parts of the mural in the restoration, but KENS’s story continues with more complaining.) And if you want to read about Carload’s special relationship with the Mission, go read this earlier post.