![]() ![]() This place is good for the experience and probably better/more fun for people with children.Īudio - Unless you have a car with an amazing sound system, then your sound quality is gonna suck. If I find myself in Riverside on a nice summer evening, I know one customer he can count on.Not the best for quality junkies. “Young couples can come and bring a baby, don’t need to get babysitters, kids are a dollar a head,” he said. But Williams says he has found a niche in his community and thinks he will have customers for years to come. They now stand as a symbol of the American past. “We have superior sound because of the radio and digital projection,” he said.ĭrive-ins used to be an icon of American culture. Though the 21st century has seen countless technological and social changes since the 1950s and ’60s, Williams emphasized that not much has changed with drive-ins since he started in the business. It can cost $80,000 to buy a digital projector, and many owners operating on thin profits are expected to shut down rather than invest in new equipment. He already has made the switch to digital projection used on modern films. Williams is among the luckier operators of the less than 400 drive-in theaters left in the U.S. “The value of land outstrips how much you can make on drive-in,” Williams said about the future of drive-ins. If it were a purely financial question, the Van Buren might not survive. Land values continue to rise and we take up quite a bit of land.” “There are a lot of people who have never been to a drive-in and there are a lot of people going for the first time. “We are more or less a novelty, now more than ever before,” Williams said. “I just got into it part time in college and it just kind of stuck,” he said.ĭespite the prevalence of indoor theaters, the Van Buren is doing well and has hit capacity almost every weekend night so far this summer. Williams started working for Deanza Development, the company that owns the Van Buren, in 1961 as a college job. And I could comfortably sit in the back of the car with a blanket and my feet up, with no one else around. My sister could ask my mom for more popcorn. My dad could lean over to tell me it was Ryan Reynolds who did the voice of Turbo. People can control light, heat and so forth.” You don’t have to put up with other people talking or going in and out of your row or cellphones going off. ![]() We prefer you buy it here, but we don’t care if you bring it in. “You can talk if you want, you can smoke a cigarette or bring your food from outside. “You are in the privacy of your own car,” said Fred Williams, owner of the Van Buren since 1969. Hollingshead’s intentions for the drive-in theater experience still can be seen at the Van Buren today. The patent he obtained was overturned in 1949, and soon after drive-ins took over the movie-watching industry in the United States, with the boom peaking at 4,000 theaters in 1958. We were sitting outside on a cool, starry night, seeing planes fly overhead to the local airport and trains roar by on the nearby track. With numerous other cars projecting their radios in the parking lot, it sounded like a modern surround sound system. To avoid ending the night with a dead car battery, we borrowed a family friend’s boom box with radio capability to use for the night. The Van Buren uses a radio station to project the audio. Though the theater recommends you get there an hour before your film, we arrived with 30 minutes to spare and found a spot with ease.Īfter being directed to our screen, we backed the car into a parking spot, put the seats down in the back, got out the folding chairs and set up our boom box. Right off the 91 freeway, it was easy to find and the line to get in was minimal. My family and I went to the Van Buren on a Monday night in August. Here’s another blast from the past: your entry fee gets you a second movie at 10:30 p.m. For $7 per person, moviegoers can park their car for the night, set up chairs and blankets and grab some theater snacks for a movie at 8:30 p.m. It now has three screens, each showing two movies every night. The Van Buren opened in 1964 with just one screen. The Van Buren Drive-In movie theater in Riverside reminded my father of his teenage years, while I had a chance to see what it was like to watch a movie before the multiplex or digital streaming. I don’t own a time machine, but I found one nearby that was easy to use and cheap. ![]()
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