Author Archives: mrdrivein

If you build it, someone may shut you down

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IronCity_FacebookWe’ll get back to Project Drive-In stories soon, but now here’s something completely different. According to an Associated Press story in the Omaha World-Herald, a farmer near Schuyler NE built his own little drive-in for fun. Think Field of Dreams, except ozoner. Although it sounds like it might have belonged in the things that are not drive-ins category, this was Seth Mares’ third season running the Iron City Drive-In, which included a lighted marquee and a Facebook page, so it might have made the cut.

As you can tell by the past-tense verbs, Mares has shut down the Iron City, making it a moot question whether it was a real drive-in by our standards. According to a post this morning on that Facebook page, “Iron City drive-in will step back into obscurity. … (I)t and my family has gotten too much attention.”

Why shut down? I don’t know, and I don’t see any good way to contact Mares, but the AP story provides some clues. Mares caught the drive-in bug a few years ago after visiting the what was then the Starlite, now the TK Drive-In, in neighboring Neligh. Mares bought a projector from an eBay seller and started with a canvas screen. He no doubt invited his friends to join him whenever he wanted to show a movie.

From those humble beginnings, the Iron City grew. Mares used original drive-in speakers, a full outdoor sound system, and even an FM transmitter. He added a lighted sign board with movable letters, and as you can see from the Facebook photo above, he painted the side of his barn to enlarge the screen. Through it all, Mares never charged admission, never sold concessions, and never had a bathroom. (I hate when that happens.) But this one sentence from the AP story suggests the seeds of his downfall. “The original projector has been upgraded, and a wireless Internet connection allows Mares to play films using a laptop computer, smartphone or DVDs.”

If you ever read the fine print somewhere on that DVD case, you might read something about that it’s only for private use. If you watch it at home or with a few friends, no problem. Otherwise, as the Motion Picture Association of America puts it, suppose you took that DVD “and showed it to patrons at a club or bar that you happen to manage. In that case, you have infringed the copyright in the video work. Simply put, movies or TV shows obtained through a brick-and-mortar or online store are licensed for your private use; they are not licensed for exhibition to the public.”

Since the Omaha World-Herald ran this AP story today, it’s likely that another paper ran it over the past weekend. (Update: Aha! The original story appeared Aug. 14 in the Columbus Telegram.) When someone at a studio, or at the MPAA itself, read that the Iron City was going to have a Star Wars night and a later American Graffiti weekend, that might have prompted some pointed questions. Even when you don’t charge admission, you just can’t show movies that way without renting the public performance rights.

So Nebraska is back down to two active drive-ins; the other is the Sandhills in Alliance. The Iron City might have been a third, but now we’ll never know.

Kansas Star Vu hopes Honda will bring it back to life

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Here’s a slightly different angle on Honda’s Project Drive-In promotion. Of the drive-in theaters on its ballot to receive a new digital projector, almost all of them are still operating. Here’s a story about the Star Vu (El Dorado KS), which pretty much closed last year but hopes to reopen if it can be one of Honda’s winners.

The report from KAKE, Wichita’s News Leader, says it all. The Star Vu folks report that fundraising has been slow, with only about $2000 contributed toward the conversion effort. The theater shows films once in a while on special benefit nights; I think they’d be smart to book more classic films to bring in more cash at the box office and concession stand, and to remind patrons what they’ll be missing if the Star Vu can’t turn the corner.

Of course, we love the opportunity to get more video of drive-ins are they are today, even when they’re sort of closed. KAKE’s article that accompanies the video report isn’t just a transcription, so you might want to go read it!

BusinessWeek features Mesa Drive-In

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Exit sign from the Mesa Drive-In

Exit sign from the Mesa Drive-In. Photo by mrdrivein, from the Carload Flickr pool.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek picked up Honda’s Project Drive-In renovation story, and its article this week focused mainly on one of my favorites. The Mesa (Pueblo CO) serves hamburgers that could be the featured dish at any restaurant, and they keep a good selection of movies showing at a pretty good location on the east side of town.

The article is great, but it isn’t perfect. It implies that Chuck and Marianne James added a couple of new screens right after they bought the Mesa in 1993, but that didn’t happen until 2000, when they recycled the screens from two closed Colorado drive-ins – the Pines near Loveland and the Estes in Estes Park.

Under the James’ careful stewardship, the place has done really well. The article describes a scene from 1994 when “3,427 people showed up for a double feature of Jurassic Park and The Flintstones, hanging out car windows and climbing trees to get a good view. A traffic jam stretched two miles down Highway 50.” After the Pueblo police intervened, the Mesa restricted the number of cars to 750, for an attendance of about 1800.

As with so many other drive-ins, the Mesa is scrambling to pay for new digital projectors. Although they’ve been saving up for the purchase, the Jameses don’t yet have the $210,000 necessary to convert three screens. Chuck said he’s really hoping that winning a free projector from Honda will put a big dent in that figure, but even if he loses, he hopes to stay open next year. “We’ll take our good credit and equity to the bank and start begging for money,” he said. “Please give me a loan for a projector! I promise I’ll pay!”

For a broader background on the national plight of drive-ins and more about the Mesa, go read the article! (Update: The Apache in Globe AZ was added to the Project Drive-In list after this post.) By the way, I was a little surprised that the Mesa is the only one of only two contest entrants in the Carload coverage area of 16 or 17 drive-ins (depending on whether we can still count the burnt Sunset in Vernal UT). If you’re a Colorado drive-in fan, you might want to set yourself a daily reminder to vote for the Mesa. I want to eat those hamburgers for years to come.