Drive-in movie theaters are still around and worth checking out. This past weekend, I was re-watching “The Hunger Games” on Netflix when my room mate looked at me with disgust and said, “It’s drive time: enough is enough of you sitting on that couch!”
What?! No, it wasn’t enough, I just got started! But I was hungry, and we had nothing to eat. So I let her drag me out of the house to take a little road trip.
I was excited to get myself a double-double burger, maybe get my fries Animal Style…and I was not pleased when I realized we were passing both In-n-Out Burger and Carl’s Junior!
Apparently, I heard her wrong. We were heading for a drive- in , not for a drive- through .
She handed me a power bar and a bag of gummi bears in return for my patience. Sold.
We drove all the way to San Jose to the West Wind Drive-in, less than an hour south of San Francisco. We parked in a fairly crowded lot with families, couples on dates and groups of hipsters. Some people had blankets and beach chairs. We just stayed in the car, took off our shoes and kicked our feet up on the dashboard.
For just $7.25 we saw two movies. Instead of a double-double, I got a “double feature” (which I learned is common for most drive-ins). By the way, “The Internship” isn’t as funny as it looks, but Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are still fun to watch as a dynamic duo.
I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have had a blast laying on my couch and falling asleep with my laptop on my face. But I’m glad that I tried something new, an American tradition that I didn’t know was still around.
I was curious to see how many other drive-ins still exist. I thought that drive-ins were a thing of yesteryear–just something old and fun to see in the reruns of “ Happy Days .” I was very wrong.
It turns out that drive-in theaters have gone from thousands in the 1950’s, to hundreds today. But you can still find one if you’re willing to look.
Texas might just be the perfect place to find a drive-in theater . Most parts of the lone star state will stay warmer than 70 degrees at night this summer. If you don’t have your license yet, there are a lot of ways to make it happen fast, just in time to watch a movie under the stars.