“We never close except with the caveat if there’s a 10-inch snowstorm right before the movie goes on the screen,” says Clark.īengies Drive-In, outside Baltimore, rents electric in-car heaters. He judges ticket sales this October have been twice what’s typical. ![]() “I will concede the fact that we are unusual,” chuckles co-owner William Clark. The Ford Wyoming runs from dusk to dawn, selling tickets as late as 2:30 a.m. Their owner also runs a construction company, so they have snowplows on site. The five-screen Ford Wyoming Drive-In just outside Detroit never closes. Some drive-ins have advantages that others don’t. ![]() “We would keep it going all year if we knew it wasn’t going to get stupid cold and snowing.” “How far into December we can go will depend on Mother Nature and turnout,” says DeLeonardis. Now she expects to go at least to Thanksgiving. But how long can they hold on? For Jude DeLeonardis, owner of the 700-car Delsea Drive-in, New Jersey’s last remaining drive-in, the limit is “stupid cold.” Before the pandemic, she had planned to close around Halloween. That’s made drive-ins want to keep rolling as far into the cold as they can. “It’s been crazy and wild but we’ve loved every minute.” We’ve kind of brought it into the 21st century,” says Snyder. “We built our whole business on nostalgia and it’s nice that we’ve turned a corner. Drive-ins like Tibbs have adapted to not just online ticketing and concession ordering by app but have rethought what the drive-in - so unchanged by time - can be. This fall, though, most are seeing much higher attendance than normal. So ticket sales in the summer, even during sell-outs, wasn’t necessary off-the-charts for many locations. Like indoor theaters, drive-ins have been operating at 50% capacity to space people out. “If it starts snowing, what am I going to do?” “We’re looking at frost warnings but the people are still coming,” says Snyder, who has seen hot chocolate sales skyrocket as temperatures have plummeted. The requests are still coming for November or December. Marcella Snyder who runs the Tibbs Drive-in in Indianapolis, usually hosts one or two private events a year. Showing movies is only part of it, especially since Hollywood studios aren’t releasing their big films. John Vincent, president of the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, estimates more than 200 drive-ins were still operating through Sunday. On Sunday, a Shakespeare theater group was on the schedule. That’s mainly because the drive-in has turned into what Wiggin calls “a major community service project,” hosting graduations for everyone from fifth-graders to doctors of internal medicine. ![]() The Northfield Drive-in went over by two months before its Halloween-weekend finale. Well, OK, if you’re willing to come out, I’m willing to come out.” “I’ve seen people bring sleeping bags and, like, a tarp. “I don’t think people mind the cold,” says Wiggin. But many drive-ins are staying open well beyond normal closing, stretching a season that might usually end around Labor Day much later. With temperatures dropping - and even some flurries this past weekend - one of the pandemic’s few bright spots is running low on time. They aren’t built for the cold, and they’re definitely not built for the snow. Drive-ins in Texas, California and Florida can keep humming all year but most of the U.S.’s roughly 300 drive-ins are seasonal. But, well, it’s starting to get pretty cold - at least in much of the country. Yet the drive-in has undeniably saved a small slice of 2020, offering socially-distanced salvation at a time when most large gatherings are off the table because of the pandemic. I don’t get it,” said Donald Trump after Joe Biden’s Atlanta drive-in rally. (At one, Bill Murray joked that he’d visit every car.) Even the campaign trail joined the trend, leading to the first ever presidential race that included a mini-referendum on the drive-in. Red-carpet premieres that would normally consume Lincoln Center uprooted to drive-ins. Dodger fans watched their team win the World Series from a drive-in in their stadium’s parking lot. It has hosted concerts and comedy shows, business conferences and Sunday services, graduations and weddings. Summer and early fall have seen their simple, old-fashioned lots transformed into a surprisingly elastic omnibus of pandemic-era gathering. “It’s definitely time we closed.”Īfter a historic season, winter is coming at the drive-in. “It’s cold,” Wiggin said on a bitter, wet morning. NEW YORK (AP) - Julia Wiggin was still shivering after running out to hang up the weekend’s marquee - “Ghostbusters,” “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” - at her Northfield Drive-in near Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Please look at the time stamp on the story to see when it was last updated. ![]() This is an archived article and the information in the article may be outdated.
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