drive-in

[davemerrill]

Last weekend was the long weekend (we had Monday off)! Saturday we drove way out into the sticks, up to the Blue Mountains area, which is this rolling, hilly, scenic part of Ontario in between Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Had some lunch, walked around the harbor of Meaford, got back late Saturday night so we missed the knifing that happened in Exhibition Place while the Caribana was winding down. Sunday we went to the Beguiling and I bought some stuff.



probably gonna review the Emeraldus; the Ultraman Ace book comes with a 33rpm single, and the weekly was out of a big box of weeklies from the 80s, which is always cool.

Monday we went out to the drive-in theater and saw the Ghostbusters and the Star Trek, so it's basically like we went back to 1984. Both are good movies; the Ghostbusters is firmly committed to being really funny and in a way that's not at all beholden to the original. The Star Trek is an action picture full of giant outer space spectacle - visually it's stunningly well designed - and the script is solid, moves forward aggressively, and is simplistic to the point of at one point Kirk calls Scotty to have Scotty explain something to the audience. And after that last Star Trek picture, which for the life of me didn't make a lick of sense, I appreciate a movie that at least has the self-awareness to realize when it's getting a bit ahead of itself.







Tuesday is when it really started to warm up. It wasn't warm enough on Saturday for us to get any beach time in, so we might have to squeeze in a trip out to Grand Bend sometime in the next couple of weeks - and we'll have to do it before August 27, because that's when we're Featured Artists at the Cambridge Comic Arts Festival!

Comments

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

So, is that sad looking 'play area' by the screen some kind of universal Drive-In experience? I remember that vividly from the one I was most familiar with here.

I assume the idea was that if you got there early with the kids they could wear themselves out running around so that when the movie started they'd be tuckered out.

Kinda miss Drive-In Theaters. They were a pain, of course, because you really couldn't start the movie until it was dark and that comes around 10 PM in the summer, so that means you're getting home well after midnight. Then of course there was the terrible sound from the speaker. I guess what I miss is the IDEA. I dunno.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

Heck, over behind the screen this place has a beach volleyball court. They do a flea market thing on the weekends, too. Drive-ins use low power FM radio for the audio these days, so what we've been doing is backing the car up, opening the hatch (low), and sitting at the back of the car in camp chairs, with the sound coming from the car stereo and a couple of portable radios. it isn't, you know, acoustically pure or anything, but it gets the job done. TECHNICALLY you aren't allowed to bring in outside food, but we brought in chips, drinks, cookies, and walnut cakes from the Korean bakery in the Annex that makes walnut cakes.

Double feature means that we weren't out of there until after 1:00am. We don't usually stay through the second feature, though.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

One of our dead theaters, Studio 28, had a drive-in next door that also did the flea market thing. For a time they were really smart and opened the concession stand for the market, because hey, somebody might want a hot dog or a 32 oz. soda.

The oddest thing about the arrangement was, Studio 28 did NOT pop their own popcorn. They only had warming lights in the cases. All the popping was done over at the drive-in stand and hauled over in large trash bags. They eventually were forced to do in-house popping when they hollowed out the drive-in stand, leaving only the bathrooms and the rest became storage.

Studio 28 is one of those really sad cases. They had built up to 20 screens (from 2 back in the '60s, a 'main house' and a small 'art film' theater), they had very complicated film chains so one print could play in several theaters by simply running along tunnels from one projector to the next, but they never upgraded to all digital or added an IMAX theater. When the original owner, Jack Loeks, died, his son decided that Studio 28 was useless. It was one of the key businesses in one of the suburbs, one of the few attractions, and all the restaurants and bars took a big hit. From announcement to total demolition about 2 months passed and now there's a giant empty lot since...wow... 2008.

The parking area where the drive-in used to be is still used as a flea market this time of year.

Stupid trivia. Studio 28 is where I saw Godzilla Vs. The Smog Monster. It was the 'big' theater that my Star Trek club would use for opening weekend of genre films. Star Wars, Close Encounters, Outland, blah blah. Getting an entire club to meet at one time, GOD I don't ever want to deal with crap like that ever ever again. :)

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

when I worked at the Akers Mill theater, we popped our popcorn upstairs and brought it down in bags to fill the bins in the concession stand. It was generally fresh, every once in awhile somebody would ask us why we didn't have the poppers right there in the concession booths, but popping that corn... it gets hot doing that. Nobody wants to be standing next to that all day.

We cycled through the popcorn really quickly. There was always somebody upstairs running the popper. A bag being more than a few hours old was rare. They'd let us take the leftover bags home if we wanted, but holy cow, after working a week in a movie theater the last thing you want is popcorn.

Also; "sure, that's real butter. Suuuuure it is."

Akers Mill was a General Cinemas theater and at the time General Cinemas was owned by a corporation that also was owned by, or owned, Pepsi. So it was all Pepsi products all the time, and since we were in Atlanta, every single customer asked for soft drinks by Coke brand name and we had to say "is Pepsi okay?". Maybe once a week somebody would get miffed that we didn't have Coke product.

My brother would know more about chaining the projectors - he worked projector there at the theater for a while, helping out the main projectionist on occasion. Akers Mill only did it rarely for big releases, though. Wasn't an every day thing, not at all.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

I hate the "Is Pepsi OK?" question, because it implies a choice. OK, sure, it IS a choice of Pepsi or nothing, but bleah. I know it HAS to be said and I'm sure every server hates to say it. I have on occasion been known to say "no, it's not OK but that's all you have, so..." so I guess that makes me a dick.

(I've also been known to answer "do you want cheese on that?" with "If I had wanted cheese I would have said Cheeseburger, wouldn't I?" so I'm evil)

The local theater chain now owned by Loeks son runs a Pepsi only concession. Yes I save money by smuggling in a bottle of Coke. I'll pay the extortion fee ($10) for Popcorn but I'm not paying $8 for a cup of Pepsi.

They don't seem to be worried about how hot it gets behind the counter, what with the popper and heated case, the warming rollers for hot dogs and such, and the Pizza Hut 'easy bake oven' machine.

Studio 28's popcorn, I SAW them storing the bags of popped for the next day. So they didn't do like your theater.

[davemerrill.livejournal.com]

I always wonder if servers can instantly tell where a customer was brought up merely by how they ask for soft drinks, and if asking for Coca-Cola products pegs me for a Southerner. Maybe not in Ontario. The only person I know who had a real preference is Dave III, and that's because his family owns a lot of Coke stock, so there's an immediate connection to the brand.

I want to say Jason brought some of the Akers Mill popcorn to some Atlanta Fantasy Fair functions; he worked at the theater longer than I did, I think he was assistant manager at one point. Of course, anyone with a pulse who could add to 10 and had their own car was up for the assistant manager position.

I wanted to make a Corn Pone Flicks movie called "invasion of the popcorn people", about aliens who possessed people and turned them into popcorn, the main appeal would be a shot of some clothes filled with free Akers Mill popcorn lying on the ground; the aliens would get shot or something and fall down and just turn into popcorn. Understandably, I was not able to get this past the pitch stage.

Dang, now I'm thinking about that arcade that was across the breezeway from the Akers Mill, first place that had Dragon's Lair in town, darned if I can remember its name. Time Out? Tilt? Next to the greeting card store that sold the 'cheeky' Spencer's Gifts type cards. My PO box was in the post office in the same shopping center, as well as the Turtles Records where I bought a lot of records and the K-Mart that was my first job. This weird girl in college who stalked me, the shoe store there is where she worked. Well, 'stalked' is too strong a word, but it got weird there for a bit in the mid 1990s.

I kept that PO box until at least 1999. They used to be super cheap, those things.

[tochiro998.livejournal.com]

So, like the 'Invaders'.

" *choke* He's...turned into popcorn! Like all the cells of his body turned into corn and popped!"

"Um, ALL the cells of his body? Shouldn't there be way more popcorn?"

"Shut up. They're aliens. Who knows how many cells they have?"

"Spa Fon! Don't have a cow, man!"

I dunno. I think it would have worked. :)

I had a gal kinda stalk me while I was in Ft. Wayne. I had introduced her and her Doctor Who/Sci Fi club to anime and I guess that made me husband material. She wasn't bad looking, really, just...worn down. does that make sense? Wasn't my type at all and it killed me to have that "but no" talk. She was a waitress at one of those now defunct bar and grille chain places that made the waitresses wear tacky Not PC barmaid outfits. That mall I worked at in Ft. Wayne was awesome, I'm sure it's a complete zombie pit now and I am 100% sure it doesn't have the two arcades.