Author Archives: mrdrivein

It’s Drive-In Reopening Season

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Skyview Drive-In marquee and screenWith the last weekend of March upon us, it’s time to welcome the return of several drive-ins to active duty.

The Belleville (IL) News-Democrat reports that the Skyview is scheduled to reopen today. The Essex-Middle River (MD) Patch reports that Bengies will open on or before April 12. And our old friend the Harvest Moon (Gibson City IL) will reopen today, according to WAND, central Illinois’s news leader.

Among Colorado drive-ins, the Mesa reopened last week, and the Holiday Twin joins it today. Isn’t spring wonderful?

AL.com is all about Alabama’s drive-ins

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Blue Moon drive-in screenThe site called AL.com, apparently covering all things Alabama, posted a wonderful round-up of the state of the drive-ins there, complete with big scoops of history and a few photos.

To hit the high points of Kelly Kazek’s fine article, the Hatfield was the probably the state’s first drive-in, opening in March 1949. The King Drive-In of Russellville opened a month later, and is Alabama’s oldest living drive-in. There’s a lot of great anecdotal history about others that came and went, and the article concludes with the list of the remaining active drive-ins in the state. They include the 411 (Centre), Argo (Trussville), Blue Moon (Gu-Win), Cinemagic (Athens), Continental (Wicksburg), Harpersville (Harpersville), Henagar (Henagar), King, Sand Mountain Twin (Mountainboro), and Starlite (Anniston). Now go read it!

Vineland hopes to make an expensive conversion

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Screen shot of drive-in videoMost drive-in video is good, though some videos are better than others, and this little snapshot of the Vineland Drive-In in City of Industry CA is one of the best I’ve seen lately. It comes to us from Annenberg TV News of the University of Southern California.

If you’ve never been to a drive-in (how sad!), this video is the best news report to capture the full experience – tickets, screen, concessions, projectors, and the closing credits, a really nice touch. Oh, and it’s about how the folks at the Vineland are optimistic that it will be able to convert to digital projection by the end of the year despite the $320,000 price tag for four screens. Thanks USC Annenberg, for this fine report, and for letting me share it here.

Update: I am sorry, but the embedded version that USC Annenberg provided insisted on autoplaying whenever the page loaded. That’s darned annoying, and the version on the Annenberg page doesn’t do that, but I can’t figure out how to make it quit, so I took it out and replaced it with a screen shot of that video, linking to the original article. If you know how to make it stop autoplaying, please let me know and I’ll embed it again.