Feb. 12: Hi-Way Drive-In, Santa Maria CA

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It’s Day 43 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I left suburban Santa Barbara and got back on Highway 101 for a one-hour drive to the Hi-Way Drive-In in Santa Maria CA.

An article in the Santa Maria Times said that the Hi-Way was opened in 1959 and bought by current owner Bob Gran in 1979. My 1972 Motion Picture Almanac show only one drive-in in Santa Maria, the Park Aire which opened in 1949 and closed in the 1990s. I guess no directory is perfect.

I got here early enough for the Sunday-only flea market. None of those special protective roofs like they had in Florida and Arizona, but the temperature here never even grazed 70 degrees. Glad I had something warm to wear to watch the movie while drinking hot chocolate and eating popcorn.

The Lego Batman Movie was so good that I really didn’t mind watching it for the second night in a row, since that’s what the Hi-Way had for its early movie.

Miles Today / Total:  64 / 5091 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Lego Batman Movie / 32

Nearby Restaurant: I don’t get many chances to sample Hawaiian food, so I drove up Santa Maria Way to Zoe’s Hawaiian BBQ. I had a mixed plate with teriyaki beef, chicken katsu, and mahi mahi, plus rice and a scoop of macaroni salad. Zoe’s also had Spam on the menu, but I had to draw the line somewhere.

Where I Virtually Stayed: The closest hotel to the Hi-Way may be the best in Santa Maria. The Radisson Hotel is three miles from the drive-in, and it sits between a park and an airstrip. I felt pampered with a robe and slippers in my room; I never get that at the Hampton Inn.

Mother with three children at a migrant campOnly in Santa Maria: One of the most famous photos of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl in the 1930s was taken by Dorothea Lange at a former migrant labor camp along US 101 just north of Santa Maria. Lange was concluding a month’s trip photographing migratory farm labor around the state for what was then the Resettlement Administration. The photo’s subject, then unnamed, was Florence Thompson. Her identity was discovered in 1978 when Modesto Bee reporter Emmett Corrigan located Thompson at her mobile home and recognized her from the 40-year-old photograph. According to Roadside America, a California professor tracked down the site of that photo in 2013. “The professor hopes to erect a marker at the spot, but for now it’s just a weedy field.”

Next Stop: Sunset Drive-In Theater, San Luis Obispo CA.

Feb. 11: Santa Barbara Drive-In, Goleta CA

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It’s Day 42 of my virtual Drive-In-a-Day Odyssey. I left the Los Angeles area and drove a couple of hours up the coast to the Santa Barbara Drive-In in Goleta CA.

All this week, I’ve been visiting California drive-ins that started with a single screen and added more. The Santa Barbara opened with two screens in 1966, became just a flea market in 1991, then reopened in 2010 as a single-screen drive-in.

After getting built on every edge of every town in the 1950s and 60s, the drive-ins that have persisted to today often have geographic protection. In this case, the Santa Barbara Airport immediately to the west probably prevents anything too tall from replacing the drive-in, and creeks to the east and west prevent encroachment from anything else.

West Wind, which runs the drive-in heaven I visited in Glendale AZ, runs the Santa Barbara and five others I’m looking forward to visiting. The company is a class act, as shown by the glorious panorama photos at the head of its Santa Barbara web site pages. You really should go take a look.

I was so glad when a fresh crop of movie releases came out Friday. For the first time in a week, I get to return to films I haven’t seen. Since the Santa Barbara has only one screen, I didn’t even have to make a choice.

Miles Today / Total:  114 / 5027 (rounded to the nearest mile)

Movie Showing / Total Active Nights: The Lego Batman Movie / 31

Nearby Restaurant: Sushi is not my favorite food. If I see it at an Asian buffet or some other setting that makes me suspect that it’s ordinary sushi, I’ll choose something else. But really great sushi is worth it, and the Goleta Sushi House is less than a mile from the drive-in, so there I went. It’s just a small, casual place, but they really knew how to make miso soup and salmon sushi for a reasonable price.

Where I Virtually Stayed: I guess folks like a good weekend getaway to Santa Barbara, because all of the closest hotels were a little pricey. It was a good excuse to try the Super 8 Santa Barbara/Goleta, where I got a decent night’s stay and enough coffee and oatmeal for breakfast to get me going while keeping a few more $20s in my pocket.

Only in Goleta: According to Wikipedia, Japanese submarine commander Kozo Nishino took revenge for an earlier cactus-based humiliation by shelling the Ellwood Oil Field in February 1942. None of the 20 or so rounds caused any serious damage, but the incident was used as justification for the Federal government’s internment of Japanese-Americans (most of them US citizens), which soon after.

Next Stop: Hi-Way Drive-In, Santa Maria CA.

Dallas OR’s Motor Vu Throws In the Towel

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One of America’s best drive-in theaters, as voted by the readers of USA Today, has announced that it won’t be reopening for 2017. The Motor Vu of Dallas OR recognized last year that encroaching residential development might result in this shutdown, and the owners had hoped that a crowdfunding program would give them a reprieve. After disappointing initial returns, they pulled the plug on that campaign.

Yesterday on the Motor Vu Facebook page, the owners posted videos of the drive-in’s fences coming down and photos of equipment for sale. (Including a digital projector for just $15,000, which ought to work well for someone else’s last-minute conversion from film. But I digress.) “Thank you to all of our wonderful customers who helped us make wonderful memories,” read one post. Sorry to see such a class act go.