Theater of pain

The Loew’s 128 Drive-In movie theater is now the Burlington Crossroads shopping center at 34 Cambridge Street. As soon as the theater opened in 1954, and even before it opened, it provided plenty of real-life drama that probably exceeded anything on the movie screen. Look at these entries from the 1954 Burlington police blog.



So what happened to drive-in movie theaters? They fell victim to soaring cost of property in populous areas, the rise of comfy mall-based theaters with shopping as an attractive sideshow, and the advent of cable TV, and the challenge of poor weather, and the lousy sound quality, and the cost of high-resolution projectors demanded by the industry. And now even indoor theaters are under pressure from Netflix. Movie theaters are doomed, inside or outside!
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I never saw a large rock blown…
I always felt that a big factor in the decline of the Drive-In was the polio vaccine. Before that most people avoided crowds and indoor activities in the summer.
The decline of the Drive-In was the price of beer and better TV reception.
For the 128 Drive In we would all chip in for the driver to get in, but before he went in, he would drop us of at the power line on Mountain Rd ( it went all the way thru then) we would walk along the power line to the back of the Drive In and meet the driver in the back row. At the Pinehurst Drive In there was a wooden fence along the back by Cook St, there was a lose board we could get thru, sometimes there would be a line waiting to sneak in.