Category Archives: Texas

Mission Drive-In mural will soon be relit

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Restored Mission Drive-In mural

Click here for the full story and a 24-picture slideshow

As reported by KENS, San Antonio’s news leader, the restored mural at the abandoned Mission Drive-In Theatre recently passed its lighting test. The city expects to officially switch on the lights at the end of February.

As discussed earlier, San Antonio is restoring the old drive-in site to include a community library with space for more facilities, and it’s restoring the original solidly built theater screen/mural. Gary Edenburn, special projects manager for the San Antonio Development Office, said he expects to see outdoor movies there this summer.

Not only did the old drive-in have this beautiful mural, the mural’s figures were outlined in neon. For the 21st century, San Antonio officials chose to use LED lighting instead as a faux-neon for the same outlines. I’d be curious to see how that compares.

According to the story, “Locals are already flocking to the Mission Public Library that sits on the same property. (The adjacent) Mission San Jose is poised as a historic backdrop for those who gather in the library’s cozy sunlit reading nooks.” Ah, I love new libraries almost as much as new drive-ins.

I really wish KENS had included a piece of video to go with the story so I could have embedded it here, but their 24-picture slideshow of the mural and library are the next best thing. (There’s a year-old video that includes helicopter shots of the site, but that story is about local artists complaining that the old mural contained stereotypical images. The city agreed not to include those parts of the mural in the restoration, but KENS’s story continues with more complaining.) And if you want to read about Carload’s special relationship with the Mission, go read this earlier post.

San Antonio’s Mission may reopen, sort of

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I’m excited about the news this week. According to the San Antonio (TX) Express-News, the city may start showing movies again at the site of the old Mission Drive-In. The plans are part of a tax increment reinvestment zone that’s already going to include a library with a facade that looks like a drive-in screen. (You can read all about the library here. Click the link to see the artist’s conception. And click that Express-News link for a great photo that matches how I remember the Mission.)

You could say that the Mission is the reason I started Carload.com so many years ago. In those ancient times before Carload came to be, I lived in Houston, which had no drive-ins. To get my occasional drive-in fix, I’d drive out to a nearby town that had one. Before each trip, I looked around with the rudimentary internet and long-distance, pay-per-minute phone calls to find a movie worth seeing. As it turned out, the Mission won my business every time.

The Mission’s atmosphere was like no other drive-in. Within sight of a real 18th-century Spanish mission bell tower, all the cars packed in together in fairly close quarters. The crowd was a mixture of Hispanics and folks like me who don’t know 10 words of Spanish. Everyone was happy to be there in the cool evening, mixing together at the concession stand. Before the movie and during intermission, car doors were flung open and a rich mixture of Tejano music overwhelmed the drive-in’s speakers. Then the movie started, the music stopped, and we all shared a fun movie experience.

Toward the end of my stay in Texas, I began planning a web site to help drive-in patrons like me know what’s available and what’s showing. Then I moved to Colorado and started Carload to celebrate the dozen drive-ins that were still alive in the state. (Five have closed since then, and the digital projection conversion may claim more this off-season.)

If you’re going to keep a drive-in closed, perhaps the best use of the site is for a community library, especially if you keep the old marquee. I know that I said that I wouldn’t include any more stories about movies in the park that are supposed to be like drive-ins, but I hadn’t considered a situation like this. From now on, outdoor movie stories are eligible for mention here only if they take place at old drive-in theater sites. Are there any others like that I don’t know about?

Town & Country holds fundraiser to stay open

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Town & Country Drive-In (click to visit)The Town & Country Drive-In (Abilene TX) is hosting a Movies and Mistletoe fundraiser this evening, December 1. The cause is the digital conversion, which KTXS reports will be $165,000 for both screens.

Local vendors will have booths to sell stuff, and Santa will be there, and there will be a bouncy castle. No word on whether Santa will be inside the bouncy castle. If you miss out, you can also donate online here.