AL.com is all about Alabama’s drive-ins

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Blue Moon drive-in screenThe site called AL.com, apparently covering all things Alabama, posted a wonderful round-up of the state of the drive-ins there, complete with big scoops of history and a few photos.

To hit the high points of Kelly Kazek’s fine article, the Hatfield was the probably the state’s first drive-in, opening in March 1949. The King Drive-In of Russellville opened a month later, and is Alabama’s oldest living drive-in. There’s a lot of great anecdotal history about others that came and went, and the article concludes with the list of the remaining active drive-ins in the state. They include the 411 (Centre), Argo (Trussville), Blue Moon (Gu-Win), Cinemagic (Athens), Continental (Wicksburg), Harpersville (Harpersville), Henagar (Henagar), King, Sand Mountain Twin (Mountainboro), and Starlite (Anniston). Now go read it!

Vineland hopes to make an expensive conversion

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Screen shot of drive-in videoMost drive-in video is good, though some videos are better than others, and this little snapshot of the Vineland Drive-In in City of Industry CA is one of the best I’ve seen lately. It comes to us from Annenberg TV News of the University of Southern California.

If you’ve never been to a drive-in (how sad!), this video is the best news report to capture the full experience – tickets, screen, concessions, projectors, and the closing credits, a really nice touch. Oh, and it’s about how the folks at the Vineland are optimistic that it will be able to convert to digital projection by the end of the year despite the $320,000 price tag for four screens. Thanks USC Annenberg, for this fine report, and for letting me share it here.

Update: I am sorry, but the embedded version that USC Annenberg provided insisted on autoplaying whenever the page loaded. That’s darned annoying, and the version on the Annenberg page doesn’t do that, but I can’t figure out how to make it quit, so I took it out and replaced it with a screen shot of that video, linking to the original article. If you know how to make it stop autoplaying, please let me know and I’ll embed it again.

Valley 6, Wilmington now permanently closed

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Valley 6 Drive-In signWhile it’s great fun to celebrate the birth of a new drive-in, we also need to make mention of drive-ins that pass away. Sometimes they close to great fanfare, but more often they just decline to reopen in the spring. Here are two more of those stories.

From the Auburn (WA) Reporter comes word that the Valley 6 there really looks dead. It hasn’t ordered movies for the 2013 season, and its manager passed away in December. What appears to be its official Facebook page hasn’t been updated since May 2012, and a Valley 6 fan page there (where I borrowed that Valley 6 sign photo) says its phone number is disconnected. There’s also a Facebook group with discussion from former employees.

The Washington Court House (OH) Record Herald wrote last Friday that Phillip Chakeres, the CEO of the company that owns the Wilmington Drive-In, hadn’t decided whether it will reopen this season. He “plans to make the final decision within a month.” Then yesterday, the same reporter wrote in The News Democrat of Georgetown OH that Chakeres said the Wilmington “will not open this season and its future is questionable”. The stated reason is unusual for drive-ins these days: the Wilmington was losing money.

It’s likely that there are more closings that we will only hear about after the fact; newspapers rarely publish business obituaries. The News Democrat story included an ominous note about Chakeres’s drive-ins: “Chakeres now operates three in Clayton, Springfield and Fairborn, having recently permanently shut down three in Celina, Lucasville and New Carlisle.”