UDITOA holds fall meeting at Circle Drive-In

photo by RetroRoadmap.com, used by permission

photo by RetroRoadmap.com, used by permission

Cell phones, a satellite dish, a couch, a car seat, a leopard-print bra, and an orthodontic retainer with headgear. That’s a list of some of the stuff that drive-in theater owners have found lying around after their shows were over. Several of those owners were swapping stories about that debris and much more during the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association‘s annual fall gathering, held this year at the Circle Drive-In (Dickson City PA).

The Scranton Times-Tribune posted a very informative story to let us know about the UDITOA’s get-together. According to the Times-Tribune, about 60 owners attended. They heard from Dave Castelli, the Circle’s manager, about how the advantages that drive-ins have over indoor theaters. At the drive-in, small kids have room to walk around and young adults have the freedom to text in the privacy of their cars.

Another topic of discussion was the economics of drive-ins, many still facing the cost of converting to digital projection or the worry of not knowing when Hollywood studios will stop providing film. Two owners talked about their side jobs (factory worker, CPA) that they need.

There are more details in the article, which would have benefitted from a few photos. In any case, you know you need to go read it!

Drive-in author tells USA Today his top ten

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:

Project Drive-In roundup 3: Dark of the screen


I warned you that it might come to this. With less than a week left in Honda’s Project Drive-In voting period, I’ve found media reports about a few more of the candidates.

Here’s something confusing: Some of those media reports only partially duplicate other reports. That is, if a new story lists drive-ins A, B, and C, but a story from one of my first two round-ups already mentioned A and C, then I’ve added B as a new candidate in this third round-up. If you click through to the story, it’ll mention all three, but we know that B is the only one that’s new to this list. Okay?

With that in mind, let’s go through a few more:

And that should hold us on Project Drive-In news until they start talking about winners. Wouldn’t it be nice if Honda chose more than five?