Video: PA’s Point upgrading under new ownership

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After announcing that it might convert to a solar farm, then closing for all of 2024, the Point Drive-In near Northumberland PA is getting ready to reopen for the 2025 season, thanks to new ownership. That’s the good news from WNEP, Moosic? (yes, Moosic) PA’s News Leader.

Josh Brosious is the new owner of the Point, and the WNEP video documents the work he’s doing to get the drive-in’s facilities renovated for modern times. The kitchen and the toilets in the “Refreshment Pavilion” are getting replaced before he opens in a few weeks, and the easier touch-ups at the box office and fences are also underway.

(Side Note: You know I focus on odd details. Moosic’s population, per the 2020 census, is less than 6000. Are there any other TV broadcasters in the US that are based in smaller municipalities? Maybe there’s some postage-stamp-sized suburb out there that’s the official host for another station, but none come to mind at the moment. Let me know, okay? Now, back to the drive-ins.)

The Point was one of the last stops on my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey in 2017. I knew some of its history then, and I’ve learned more since. Harold Bell opened the single-screen Arrow Drive-In in June 1952. The Comerford Theatres chain took over before the 1957 season, changing the drive-in’s name to the Point. Somebody was showing X-rated movies there in the 1970s. Around 1980, new owner Joe Farruggio added two screens and switched to standard movies.

Dave Renn bought the Point around 1990. A couple of decades later, he held a Jackalope music festival to raise money to finance the successful conversion to digital projection. The main screen up front was damaged in 2019 and removed, leaving two working screens. Renn sold the Point late last year, which brings us up to the new Brosious era.

Brosius, who happens to be mayor of nearby Sunbury, had been talking with Renn as early as July 2022 about ways to keep the Point open. He said, “It’s safe to say everyone wants it to stay here so if we here in Sunbury can help, we will.” It’s great news that Brosius found a way to keep this drive-in alive for generations to come.

Video: Arizona’s only ozoner might be Drive-In Heaven

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I’m not sure why two local stations decided to run stories about their year-round drive-in theater less than a week apart. But it’s always nice to celebrate any open drive-in, especially the only one that’s left in the entire state of Arizona.

Anyway, that means you get to see plenty of Travis Brown, the general manager of the Glendale 9 Drive-In along with plenty of lovely twilight shots from ABC15, Phoenix’s News Leader. And if you want a parallel dose of Brown after dark, check out the video published five days later by Fox10, Phoenix’s News Leader.

I was especially drawn to this story because the Glendale 9 was the starting point of a too-short drive-in road trip that I took 12 years ago. Back then, I described it as Drive-In Heaven, and that title probably still applies. The folks there were so nice to me, and the facility is so perfect for watching movies from your car. Then again, I haven’t tried watching a movie there during the amazing (not in a good way) central Arizona summers, which might make the experience feel a bit less like heaven.

So check out the videos for a glimpse of what I saw. If you ever get to try a July or August night at the Glendale 9, please let me know how it went.

Carload curates hundreds of historic Boxoffice magazines

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a typical issue of Boxoffice, accessible through one of Carload’s Yumpu links

Reminder: Carload hosts a list of the Boxoffice magazines that are available through Yumpu.com. I just spent the last couple of days filling a lot of the holes in the collection and extending it a few years. As I type, you can find what’s available for 1948-1968.

As I wrote three years ago about this curated Yumpu list, Boxoffice used to host an amazing archive of its old issues, which were always the gold standard of theater industry news. In parallel, Yumpu also stored a lot of individual issues, but it was and is difficult to find any particular one, let along a chronological string of them. Alas, the Boxoffice vault abruptly disappeared about four years ago, so I went to work preparing this list of what’s available on Yumpu.

I keep figuring new ways to search for issues to fill the holes in the list. My latest: When I can find a copy of a given issue elsewhere, I’ll pick a headline phrase, then search for “yumpu boxoffice (that phrase)” to see whether Google has noticed it. That’s the source of most of the new issues that I added this week.

I’m surprised at the high percentage that’s available. Even counting the odd stretches (all of 1961, for example) where there are no Boxoffice issues on Yumpu, there are probably 75% of them over the 21 years I’ve listed. I compiled the whole thing mainly for myself, because it’s such a great tool for drive-in theater history research, and I’m happy to share it with you. Enjoy!