Showing posts with label drive in theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drive in theater. Show all posts

Thursday, June 4, 2015

The last picture show

Next to where the original Farmer’s Market was, where The Grove stands now, used to be an icon of a cinematic, automatic, hydro-matic time gone by. The Gilmore Drive-In.

When I was in high school, some friends and I would ride our bikes over to the back of the drive-in, and watch the movies from behind the chain-link fence (which could be easily hopped) for free on the ginormous screen. I’m not saying they were R-rated, but I’m not saying they weren’t. Besides, what was the point of rating anything if the entire city could see it on a 7-story screen.

I always got the feeling that on the list of things the Gilmore Drive-In was about, movies were somewhere beneath community. Socializing was the point, and there were just as many people in their cars as out walking around talking to friends.

I suppose it was foolish to think property that valuable wouldn’t get developed. And the slow death rattle of drive-in’s having the life choked out of them by actual theaters made it all but inevitable the Gilmore would one day be a faded Technicolor memory.

Still, I remember being with friends, watching Clint Eastwood’s violent directorial debut Play Misty For Me.

Even on bikes, even without sound, even though it was cold. It was still magic.