We just had a big article here about a local drive-in re-opening.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/durham/durham/story/2762740p-9201733c.html
It was amazing how locals kicked in to help restore and rebuild with an eye on what it would mean for future generations.
We used to frequent the drive-in as kids in the northeast. When we got a little older, we would even ride down on our bicycles and sneak in the back when our parents couldn't bring us. We loved it growing up.
We hardly have any now. Land is just too valuable for people to run a drive-in here. We had four or five of them in our area when I was a kid. Now they are all gone. You can't blame the owners really. I would do the same thing. You make a few hundred or even thousand dollars a night compared to many millions offered by developers for the land. A simple 15000 square foot residential building lot here goes for $250,000. Then if there is a house on it, the developers simply bulldoze it so they can build a bigger, more expensive house and sell it for $500,000.
The only ones left around here are an hour or more away in areas where the land isn't quite as expensive. Those too will disappear relatively soon I would suspect.
We brought our daughter to one last year while we were on vacation. She wasn't all that impressed. She is used to the cinema mega complex. I guess part of the fun was seeing your friends, neighbors, classmates, etc. there too.
I would love to see one open up in our area again. I would love to go, bugs and all. It was part of the character. Remember the mosquito coils?
Ah, yass; the mosquito coils. We couldn't afford them, but I heard about them.
We've got a new drive-in theatre opened up not too far from where I live. Actually, this theatre basically was closed down in another location and re-opened in another.
All the other ones closed down years ago.
I can remember....way back when in the 1950s....... where we had an outdoor sit-in theatre across the street from where we lived. You'd bring a chair or a blanket and sit in front of a big outdoor screen.
Now how many of you had any of those, eh?
Now that the theater is open, I haven't had a burning urge to go there.
My wife and I don't even go to a regular theatre that often.
When we do, it's matinee.
