Memories of YesterVegas
The Drive-In Movie Experience?
?Doobie Keebler
When was the last time you got to enjoy the drive-in? One of the most enjoyable things about the drive-in was the feeling of the potential cinematic freedom you could create without leaving your car. (Except for the potty trips.)
What?s a drive-in, you ask? Hopefully some of you have had the experience of being stuffed into a car with your entire family while trying to watch a movie with the sound quality of an AM radio. This may sound a bit uncomfortable, and unnecessary, but drive-ins were the tailgate party of cinema.
There?s no doorman, ticket-taker checking your bags for home-brought food, or sneaky managers roaming the halls of the theater looking for screen hoppers. (People who pay for one movie, then hop over to another screen to see another movie for the price of one.) You pay at the gate, drive in, and park. You hooked a diecast metal speaker box over the edge of your window and sat back to enjoy ?Dirty Harry?, ?ET?, or House Party?.
I wish I knew why drive-ins were located next to highways in Las Vegas, but it doesn?t matter. It was a nice drive to somewhere there was a lot of space as not to disturb the neighbors. The drive-in closest to us was about six city blocks away.
We would pack up some home-made food, some home-popped popcorn and drive across the major highway in our neighborhood, and the cinematic tailgate party was on. Of course my little brother Richie used this opportunity to be the cantankerous 5 year-old he was to spill his can of soda. (On me!)
Of course, I was a little busy watching Richard Dreyfus making mountains out of mashed potatoes in ?Close Encounters of the Third Kind?.
That was an amazing movie to see under the stars. It?s almost as though Steven Spielberg decided to make the perfect movie experience for the drive-in.
Really!
Usually any recollections of drive-ins involve a trip to a swap meet or a ?flea market?, but unfortunately that won?t be necessary in this instance. All you have to do is drive down to the corner of Boulder Highway and Desert Inn.
The Sky-Way Drive-In closed without much notice, and sat empty for several years until the Fertitta family purchased the land and began expanding their empire.
Behind the Motel 6 where local personality ?Buffalo Jim? mysteriously and tragically died from a heart attack is the parking lot of the Boulder Station Hotel and Casino.
Where once sat a drive in with four screens now sits another expansive parking lot of another expansive casino. Nothing against the Fertittas, because they have been an integral part of the Las Vegas valley, but every now and then, I long for the glow of the 20-foot screens at night. - Doob
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