Category Archives: California

Feb. 2: Smith’s Ranch Drive-In Theater, Twentynine Palms CA

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Smith's Ranch marquee eerily lit at night

photo by v snow from the Carload Flickr pool

It’s Day 33 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey, and I finally made it to California. It took a four hour ride from the Phoenix area to reach the Smith’s Ranch Drive-In Theater of Twentynine Palms, in the shadow of Joshua Tree National Park.

This is your basic ancient, small-town, single screen drive-in. The Smith’s Ranch opened in 1954, and thanks in part to traffic from park visitors and a marine base, it’s still going strong.

Smith’s Ranch wins the low cost competition so far – admission for the double feature was just $5. The concession stand was basic, with hot dogs and popcorn, but the prices were good.

My timing worked out great tonight. I arrived in Twentynine Palms on a Thursday, and the Smith’s Ranch is one of the few drive-ins with a Thursday to Sunday schedule. The early movie was one I’d already seen, but that beats the heck out of a dark screen.

Miles Today / Total:  275 / 4484 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: Split / 23

Nearby Restaurant: Not only does it have great atmosphere, looking out over Joshua Tree National Park, the 29 Palms Inn has some great food. Butternut squash hummus, other vegetarian dishes, or steak and lobster if that’s what I wanted for dinner. Add some live music and those great views, and I’ll try not to feel guilty about how much I paid.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The restaurant experience was so nice that I wanted to stay all night, so I also got a room at the 29 Palms Inn. After the cookie-cutter efficiency of the nice chain hotels, I was glad to have another night where the rooms don’t all look the same. I slept in an adobe bungalow with a fireplace, then enjoyed homemade sourdough bread in the morning. There aren’t any chains that can give me an experience like that.

Tiny World Famous Crochet Museum

photo by Kathy Drasky

Only in Twentynine Palms: Just up the Twentynine Palms Highway in the town of Joshua Tree, you’ll find the World Famous Crochet Museum. Artist Shari Elf took an old one-hour photo booth, painted it lime green, filled it with little crochet pieces, and gave it this name. According to its web site, HSBC is using a photo of the museum in a “favours the unorthodox” ad campaign in airports around the world. Which matches that whole World Famous part, of course.

Next Stop: Rubidoux Drive-In Theatre, Riverside CA.

Porterville screen resists demolition

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There’s an odd little story in the Porterville CA Recorder about one of the screens at the Porterville Drive-In. It’s amusing, and a testament to 1950-era engineering, how difficult it was for a demolition company to knock it down.

According to Cinema Treasures, the Porterville opened in May 1950, added a second screen some time later, and closed after the 2004 season. The Burton School District purchased the site earlier this year and “agreed to clean up the area, including removing the two screens.” Since the school district hasn’t mentioned its plans for the property, I’m not sure those screens needed removing. Especially considering the oldest definitely wasn’t in danger of collapse.

That article in the Recorder contains a great play-by-play of Housley Demolition’s diligent work at taking down what was apparently the original screen. Housley workers cut six of the seven steel beams that held up the screen, believing that its weight would make it bend down on the seventh. After the sixth cut, nothing. As the Recorder eloquently put it, “Even the pigeons did not move.”

Then workers spent over two hours cutting the seventh beam, but the screen remained stubborn. The next day, Housley brought a large excavator, which finally pushed the screen down. I guess they really knew how to build eight-story-high screens 66 years ago.

There are some great photos of the demolition process and a lot more details in the Recorder article, so you know you really should go read it!

Drive-in author tells USA Today his top ten

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Mesa Drive-In marquee with photo creditAt one level, I look at USA Today’s story, posted late last night, as pure link bait. Any top ten list is designed to pull in visitors from all over just because its title is intriguing and its slide show is eye candy. On the other hand, they used my photo! So now I can change that line on my resume to “Award-winning photographer featured in USA Today.”

Where was I? Oh yes, the article. Well-known drive-in historian Don Sanders gave USA Today’s Larry Bleiberg his top ten favorite drive-in theaters. I don’t know if they were the top ten active drive-ins, or whether it just happens that Sanders’ favorites all happen to still be alive. There are notes and photos for each, so you really should go read it! But here is a quick summary: