Category Archives: Virginia

Virginia’s Moonlite will be back in business

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Moonlite Drive-In Theatre facade
photo by WCYB

Who would have thought that fall would be the season to announce so many drive-in theatre reopenings? The latest great news comes from Abington VA, where the Moonlite Drive-In Theatre is rapidly renovating towards a targeted reopening later this month.

The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier published a front-page story with the details. Kyle Blevins, a UPS driver from just across the border in Bristol TN, had watched movies at the Moonlite for more than 40 years before it closed three years ago for lack of a digital projector. Now Blevins has fulfilled his dream of owning a drive-in, sort of. The Herald Courier says he’s “co-owner” along with the previous owner.

The Moonlite opened in 1949 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007. Blevins said he hopes to show at least one movie by the end of October, with a formal re-opening in Spring 2017.

Blevins invited the community to spend Oct. 8 helping get the Moonlite ready, and he has a GoFundMe page set up for donations.

The crew from WCYB, Bristol’s news leader, also dropped by to talk about Moonlite memories with folks who had visited the drive-in during past decades. It’s an extensive story that I couldn’t embed here, so you really should go watch it!

Project Drive-In roundup

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I’ll admit it. I’ve been so overwhelmed by the local media coverage of Honda’s Project Drive-In that it’s been hard to write. On one hand, I don’t especially want you to vote for some Florida drive-in over one on Ohio or vice versa. Heck, I’ve even noticed that Honda has added at least a couple drive-ins (such as the Apache) that weren’t there when voting started.

There are only so many ways I can spin the local news when it says that nearby drive-in X needs to convert to digital projection, and its best / only hope is if it is one of the Project Drive-In winners. So I’m just going to gather them all a bunch of them in this list. There are probably lots of interesting, fresh details here and there about each drive-in, but I’m going to let you discover them. If you find something sufficiently cool, post a comment about it, will you please?

Your candidates, alphabetized by state:

Whew! That’s 20 theaters so far. I’ll see how many more I can round up for our next installment.

Voice of America celebrates drive-in theaters

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Voice of America News ran a wonderful video feature on the Family Drive-In in Stephens City VA, using it as an example of drive-in theaters in general. VoA ran the full transcript on the page that originally hosted the video, but watching it is a lot more fun.

I guess the folks at the Family might have a point about being in the Washington DC metro area, even though Maryland’s Bengies is closer. For one thing, they got DC-based VoA to come out to do its drive-in story there. And once they got there, VoA didn’t have any problem finding patrons who also made the long drive. I’m especially glad that VoA found nearby motels that host drive-in tourists; I keep telling one of Carload’s advertisers, TripAdvisor, that there are a lot of people like that.

Most of all, I’m just grateful for another nice video snapshot of the way a drive-in looks in 2013, in this case just before digital projection. The classic black and white photos are a nice addition, too. Check it out!