Author Archives: mrdrivein

Video: El Rancho Keeps Rolling Near Reno

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This month, the Reno Gazette Journal ran a nice retrospective of the El Rancho Drive-In in neighboring Sparks NV. It was a clear step above the typical “Hey, did you notice that there’s a drive-in theater in town?” quickie, and it included a nice video to boot.

The El Rancho was founded by Tony Pecetti, “a bigger-than-life accordionist and entertainment entrepreneur in town,” on Aug. 19, 1950. It had a single screen and room for 580 cars. Pecetti would sometimes play his accordion between features. He passed away in 1969, and Syufy Enterprises bought the place in 1973. Syufy added two more screens that year and a fourth in 1974. The Gazette Journal wrote that those four screens have remained intact ever since.

In 1973, a complaint about The Last Tango In Paris led to the El Rancho dropping X-rated movies. In 1993, according to the Gazette Journal, the drive-in “was scheduled to be torn down and turned into a flea market and indoor theater complex.” The article didn’t provide any more details, including how the El Rancho dodged that fate.

The drive-in is currently run by General Manager Diego Maldonado, who lives on-site at with his family. He started 11 years ago working the churro cart as a summer job. “I’d never even seen a drive-in before I walked in here,” he said. “I thought that they were extinct.”

My favorite quote came from one of the patrons: “When I first came here, I thought I was being sneaky staying for the second feature, then I learned that’s part of it!” There’s much more to the article, including some nice photos, so you really should go read it!

Video: New Drive-In Sprouts In Buda TX

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We’ve had too much bad news lately, so it’s great to be able to share something good: A new two-screen drive-in held its grand opening last Friday in Buda TX, and there’s a great video of the place from KXAN, Austin’s News Leader.

The screens at Doc’s Drive In Theatre are small, made of stacked shipping containers. Each parallel viewing field holds 43 cars. Owners Chris and Sarah Denny had founded the company last year and had previously planned to open in February. Now that it’s up and running, Chris told KXAN that he plans to offer an underground speakeasy bar between the screens and movie-themed tiny homes on the property to rent overnight for patrons who hit the speakeasy hard enough to avoid driving home.

That’s pretty much the whole happy story here. You should drop by the Doc’s web site, which shows that the Dennys have a great attitude about their new offering. “Doc’s Drive-In does so much more than just show your favorite films – it’s a family-friendly, classic drive-in theater experience that expands the boundaries of imagination.”

Lewisville TX’s Coyote: Closed For How Long?

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Coyote Drive-In screen tower silhouetted at sunset

Photo from the Coyote Drive-In Facebook page

How can you tell when your phone stops ringing? It’s not when a ring ends; it’s when enough time passes that you know a new ring isn’t coming.

I say that as an excuse why last month’s closure of the Coyote Drive-In of Lewisville TX didn’t strike me as anything very unusual. Sure some drive-ins in Texas stay open later in the year, but an end-of-September announcement on its Facebook page that it was “closed for the season” didn’t raise an alarm with me even though the Coyote added “until further notice.”

Today I finally noticed a mention in the Denton Record-Chronicle that indirectly pointed back to an earlier R-C article about the possible end of the Coyote. That article quoted a statement from company officials saying, “The theater just simply wasn’t as busy as we had predicted. We are evaluating some strategic alternatives for the drive-in and the property.”

Although that sounds a lot like a permanent closure, I really wonder what might happen in the spring when blockbuster movies and warm weather return. This Coyote might never open again, but I’ll still wait awhile to hear whether that phone rings again.