Video: Transit Drive-In sold

This sounds scary, but maybe it’ll work out. Longtime friend of this web site, Rick Cohen, announced this week that he’s selling the Transit Drive-In of Lockport NY to Dipson Theatres, which owns some of nearby Buffalo’s indoor theaters. As you can see in the video above, Cohan chose Dipson because it had the best chance of keeping the Transit operating because of their local presence.

Thanks to WGRZ, Buffalo’s News Leader, we know that the Transit is still doing well, but Cohen was just looking to retire and enjoy life. I hope that one of these months, after he’s got some great times out of his system, he sits down to write the Transit’s history, or maybe that of all New York drive-in theaters. He’s already shown that he can write – check out this poignant tale he contributed here a few years ago. Best wishes to Cohen and the Transit, soon to be two separate entities.

Video: Transit Reopens For Another Season

WKBW, Buffalo NY’s News Leader, posted a nice little video snippet over the weekend celebrating the return of the Transit Drive-In for another season. The Transit has been around since 1952, and current owner Rick Cohen’s family bought it in 1957.

The video is well worth watching even though, frankly, the story doesn’t include much that will be new to drive-in fans. I’ll take any excuse to show Rick Cohen, but the views of the gorgeous retro concession area are also fun to see. Enjoy!

Greenville NY Hosts All-Electric Night

Greenwood Drive-In screen with mountain background at sunset

Photo from the Greenwood Drive-In Facebook page

In upstate New York, the Capital District Electric Vehicle Drivers group organized what it believes to be the first all-electric car drive-in night on August 28. They held it at the Greenville Drive-In Outdoor Cinema, in Greenville of course, on what would have been an idle Tuesday night for the theater.

Michael Kamm wrote about organizing the effort in a guest post on Green Car Reports, and the story is as much about putting together any special night at a drive-in as it is about the special challenges of doing so with electric cars. “(Co-owner Dwight) Grimm wasn’t too keen on that idea at first and I had to talk him into it,” Kamm wrote. (There are probably also advantages to taking an electric vehicle to the drive-in, but I couldn’t find any in Kamm’s report.) The movie they watched, ironically no doubt, was the 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?; I think the filmmaker’s 2011 sequel Revenge of the Electric Car would have been better. That title even sounds like a drive-in movie. But I digress.

Another great part of the guest post is the way it fleshed out how the Greenville looks these days, something I could only guess at when I made my virtual visit there last November. “One of the unique features of this drive-in is its beer garden,” Kamm wrote. “Actually, it is much more than that. Dwight is a great bartender and can make some truly amazing cocktails, often from locally grown and produced ingredients.”

For many more details and a nice set of August 2018 photos of the Greenwood, you really ought to go read it.