It feels more common to see abandoned drive-ins than active ones as you travel on Southern California’s endless freeways. But the rise of TV, multiplexes, and VHS all made outdoor cinemas steadily decline in popularity. The industry peaked in 1958, when there were over 4,000 drive-in theaters across the country. That nostalgic feeling is one of the main appeals of drive-ins. Yasmine Askari: It kinda takes you back to like the classic feel. Greg Rubin came to see the movie with Yasmine Askari. Greg Rubin: I just kinda like the environment, cuz like the big-screen feel of going to a movie theater but you get to bring your own food and drinks. And when you’re in your SUV, you can do whatever you want, the kids can be loud, they can be in their PJs, and you know you can drop food on the car, I mean it’s not a good idea, but it’s just a whole different feel. Ralph Matamoros: You cannot compare the feel of being with your friends, your family, your kids in a car and if you’ve ever been around a bunch of kids, you know they like to be loud and obnoxious –– you can’t do that in a theater. Halfway through the movie, I looked around the parking lot and realized that fifty other cars full of people were all having their own unique experiences - together. We were so comfortable in our own little bubble that we forgot about the rest of the audience. We laughed and talked about Johnny Depp’s wacky performance without worrying about annoying our fellow moviegoers. When the movie started, we tuned to the theater’s FM radio station for the sound. We grabbed dinner from Porto’s Cuban bakery and ate it in the car. I visited Electric Dusk with my younger brother. Ralph Matamoros: People love to bring their kids, and they like to sit in the back of their cars, or you will see a lot of people with trucks, and they sit in the back bed of the trucks. ![]() It’s fitting that Electric Dusk is a family affair, because the whole business feels directed toward spending quality time with your family. His older kids also help out occasionally. ![]() Matamoros’s youngest son coordinates parking and logistics, and Ralph’s girlfriend runs concessions and social media. Ralph Matamoros: One night, I went out with my girlfriend and we went to a drive in that was up downtown and I found out that the guys were selling the drive-in, and I told her, I said, I thought “wow, this would be a really cool little business to have with the family, that I could involve the kids. He bought the theater in 2016, and never imagined something like COVID would hit. Ralph Matamoros is the owner of Glendale’s Electric Dusk Drive-In. We always gotta play it around the Halloween time because we know it’s sort of like a family favorite. It’s a fun movie to watch, people enjoy it every time we play it. Ralph Matamoros: This is a movie that’s been around for quite a while. Just before the movie starts, the theme song from Mission Impossible starts blasting through the parking lot, and Ralph Matamoros welcomes everyone to the drive-in. But everyone’s looking at the same thing: a massive inflatable movie screen that’s about to play Edward Scissorhands. Some cars are parked facing the street, and others are turned the opposite way. About fifty cars are lined up in rows of four and five. I’m at an unassuming little parking lot in the middle of downtown Glendale. But now that vaccines ae widespread and indoor theaters have reopened, how will drive-ins survive? Ampersand’s Wesley Stenzel investigates.ĪMBI: street/speaker sounds from the theater What was one of the only industries to thrive during the pandemic? An unlikely blast from the past: drive-in movie theaters.
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