Here’s a video to tack on to the sad story of the closing of Guthrie, Oklahoma’s Beacon Drive-In for no good reason. That YouTube video, not the closing, is courtesy of KOKH, Oklahoma City’s News Leader.
Program note: Drive-in news was getting so slow in mid-January that I thought I could take a couple of weeks off. I was wrong. I’ll be catching up on the news for the rest of this week.
What a crummy way to start the new year. The Beacon Drive-In Theatre in Guthrie OK has shown its final movies. According to the Guthrie News Page, the drive-in was sold a few days ago and will be replaced by a credit union building.
The Beacon was built in 1949 and opened on April 22, 1950. Its final program was at the end of 2024, and sales negotiations apparently continued all of last year. It makes me deeply sad when a perfectly good, historic drive-in closes like that. Let’s all hope for better days ahea.
The Tee Pee Drive-In in Sapulpa OK is my guiding light sometimes. When I get depressed about drive-in closures, the Teepee reminds me that renewal is possible. Under the right owners, half-derelict drive-in theaters can come back to life with modern amenities and respect for the past.
So I enjoyed it even more than usual when the news crew at KOTV, Tulsa’s News Leader, took their families to the TeePee to see how much fun a December visit can be. The only drawback to the loving 3+ minutes of video they posted is that, unlike most news videos a few years ago, I can’t embed it here. Please go enjoy it on the KOTV page for yourself.