Great news for the Ruskin Family Drive-In Theatre this week. According to WFLA, Tampa’s News Leader, the Ruskin is about to reopen for another season. It had sustained damage from three (?!) hurricanes in its off-season and needed help to get back on its feet. The community rallied to support the Ruskin; I was the most impressed by TECO (née Tampa Energy Company), which donated poles for the refurbished screen.

The WFLA video embedded above is unusually nice for this sort of report. It’s longer than usual, and it ends with a personal appeal to patronize the civic treasure that is the drive-in. We get to see a lot of views of the Ruskin, along with some shots of the devastation. And we get a lot of commentary from owner Karen Freiwald, who stressed the inclusive nature of the Ruskin’s early days. (There were whites-only drive-ins in the Tampa area in the 1950s, as well as some catering to African-Americans.) I’ve seen a lot of drive-in news videos, and this is one of the best.

One thing that I rarely see mentioned is that the Ruskin was called the Rustic Drive-In for at least a while in the 1950s. My guess is that it opened as the Rustic, though I’ve never seen a grand opening ad. A 1957 movie flyer, posted at Cinema Treasures, used that name. When the Tampa Tribune widened its movie coverage in 1959 to include Ruskin’s drive-in, it was the Rustic. When Carl Floyd bought the place from Harry Jones in 1960, he changed the name (back?) to Ruskin after a bit of remodeling, probably to touch up a couple of letters.

Speaking of letters, I looked back to my virtual visit to the Ruskin during 2017’s Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and that post was mostly interested in the animated double feature that night: Moana and Sing. At nine characters, that was close to the shortest drive-in twin bill that I’ve ever encountered: Epic and 42. Sure, there are theoretically shorter pairs of movie titles, but has there ever been another double feature at an actual drive-in with six characters or fewer? (Thank you, I already know that some of the things I care about are extremely trivial.)

Back to the present. Freiwald told WFLA that the drive-in had one its best years in 2020, when the pandemic made it the only entertainment spot in town. More recently, when the hurricanes knocked down the screen, long-time fans donated time, labor, and money to get it fixed. The Ruskin sure seems like a nice place, and it’s great that it’s so well-loved.