Home > Relish Austin > Archives > 2010 > August > 25 > Entry
East Austin food trailer park adds drive-in movie theater
This week, Frank is opening a miniature drive-in movie theater in the back of the space at 2326 E Cesar Chavez St., which currently boasts three food carts (Old School BBQ, Along Came a Slider and Iggi’s Texicarian), a retail trailer (Wondercraft) and a two-level gallery space. The drive-in officially opens with a showing of “Grease” on Thursday night at dusk, “Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure” on Friday and “American Graffiti” on Saturday.
For $10, you can park your car in one of six spaces that has its own old school audio box that you can hang on the window. If you’d rather sit on a blanket, in a fold-out chair or on one of the benches or tables, the movies are free.
On Tuesday night, we checked out a sneak preview of “American Graffiti” projected on the back wall of the drive-in space. My hometown in Missouri is small and quaint enough to still have a full-sized drive-in theater, and although this drive-in definitely qualifies as “boutique,” I can assure you that it provides a real taste of the nostalgic drive-in experience.
You can grab a bite to eat at one of the trailers or fixins for s’mores from the concession stand set up in an old boat, break open a BYO bottle or six-pack, sit back and enjoy watching a movie outside. Frank says that, starting Friday night with “Pee Wee Herman’s Big Adventure,” one night a week he’ll be screening kids’ movies and that each of the food cart operators will have a day of the week to pick the programming.
You can count on movies being shown Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights around dusk, and the schedule of films will be posted about a month in advance on the Web site. At 8 p.m. on Sept. 3, the Alamo Drafthouse is screening “Der Golem” as part of its rolling roadshow series.
Photos by Josh Frank.
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By Rachael Keith
August 25, 2010 10:44 PM | Link to this
YAY! YAY! YAY! Finally! This is SO exciting! This is exactly what this town needed! On beautiful lush summer nights, what could be better???
If you ever went to a drive-in, in the mid-west as a kid, well….you just never forget it. There’s one left in the Seattle area, and about once a month we’d go…..because…we had to.
Also - if you are of a certain age….and Grease just happened to be the first movie you ever saw on the big screen - you are also hopelessly devoted to the idea of summer drive-ins.
Whoever Frank is - he nailed it, for sure.
I’ll be there the rest of the summer!
Thank you Thank you Thank you!
By jason
August 25, 2010 11:37 PM | Link to this
Great article. trending on austin twitter right now
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June 21, 2011 7:33 PM | Link to this
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