Bryan TX hosts drive-in event Saturday

Posted on Feb 14, 2025 by mrdrivein

photo from the City of Bryan TX web site

Bryan TX is hosting a Valentine’s Day weekend drive-in showing of “Top Gun: Maverick” at the soccer lot of the Bryan Regional Athletic Complex on Saturday, Feb. 15. You’ve got to be a grown-up (18+), and you have to bring cash ($10 per vehicle). The City of Bryan web site has more details, including the promise of a family-friendly “Lilo & Stitch” drive-in double feature on May 16.

That’s all good news, though it has stirred my old existential question – what is a drive-in theater? Should this qualify? Bryan has been doing this since at least 2022, apparently always in the same place. The photo from its announcement appears to be an inflatable screen, which isn’t a surprise given the multipurpose uses of its location. It’s running multiple drive-in nights per year, though less often than once a month.

That’s a pretty good argument in favor of including what I’d call the Bryan Drive-In as part of my list of active drive-in theaters. For example, the Blue Starlite in Austin just two hours down the road uses inflatable screens…

(Oh dear. When I went to get a link, I found that the Blue Starlite, which had shown movies as recently as January 2025, is on “extended hiatus from public showings so the creators can focus on their family during a difficult time.” Good luck and hurry back.)

Anyway, if inflatable screens aren’t disqualifying, how often does a location have to show movies to be on the list? The Highway 2 in Manistique MI scheduled only four nights last year. Heck, the Roadium in Torrance CA is mostly a flea market that shows movies once or twice a season to satisfy its zoning or something.

To include as many drive-ins as possible while omitting the once-a-year pop-ups, I’ll try to define it this way: If you’ve got a permanent screen like the Roadium or the Highway 2, any regularly scheduled showings are sufficient to remain an active drive-in theater. If it’s a temporary screen, then maybe four nights a year should be the minimum? I’ll need to consider where to draw the line. What do you think?

Carload is back for 2025

Posted on Jan 30, 2025 by mrdrivein

Master of Science diploma from the University of Colorado — How I spent my summers (and springs and autumns and winters) the past two years.

Hello again! How are you doing? I want to apologize for being gone so long here. The last two years, I’ve been spending most of my time working toward a master’s degree in data science. The virtual certificate arrived last week, and the paper diploma is supposed to show up in February.

After decades of working with computers using self-taught skills, I wanted to get some validation of what I can do. Data science sounded like the perfect field. It combines computer programming, which I used to do for a living; clear communication, which I also used to do for a living (and still trying to do here); and statistics. No problem, I thought. I can whip up an earned run average or a shooting percentage with the best of them.

They weren’t that kind of statistics.

What I had to learn involved stuff such as how to plot regression, how to compute confidence levels, and what the heck are random variables, which are neither random nor variables. Thank goodness for the Khan Academy, whose free online classes brought me up to a base level so I could start learning more. Long story short, the statistics component was the source of the missing 0.1 in my 3.9 grade point average.

During my longest semester break, I finished Drive-Ins of New Mexico. (Find out more including the free epub download here.) I chose that state because of all the helpful, friendly people I ran into while doing research there for Drive-Ins of Route 66. They were so friendly in Farmington that they repeatedly requested that I come give a talk there. That finally happened last August. I had a great time; my only disappointment was having to cut my visit short because of a change in one of my school assignments.

Anyway, that’s all behind me now. My goal is to get Carload back to regular updates. While I also research California drive-ins for a future book (got any photos for me?), I’ll be catching up on some of the general drive-in news that I missed. At least I’ve still got plenty to work with. Stick around, won’t you?