61st Street Drive-In

O Yes, the 61 Street D-I. Built between several junk yards. This D-I was built to handle the overflow from the Airport D-I. Both operated by Budco Theaters. The screen tower was built on marsh land, need I say more. One night with a VERY strong wind the right side of the tower started to pull out of the ground. We had to FIND and then rent a crane to secure the upper right of the tower sooo it would NOT come down. This is just one of many fun nights at the 61 Street D-I. It was a great time working for Budco when D-I's were D-I's. rg

A small picture of this drive-in can be seen here.

No picture at this site

The photo is hosted on Drive-ins.com. That website is doing updates so you might not be able to see the photo for awhile.

Here is a new link for the 1963 photo.

There is still an inty portion of the "61st Street Drive-In" sign still standing amidst the other rubble to this day. It's mainly yellow with (I think) blue and red lettering. Saw it en route to work one day and wanted to hop off the bus to photograph it, but 61st St. is a very busy stretch of road.

"TINY" portion!!

I was talking once with a projectionist that worked practically every DI in the area-he mentioned how much of a problem the rats were here. Another projectionist kept one in the booth for company! Was this the DI theater that had several speakers outside the fence on the street side? The screen was angled toward the other direction, though, so they wouldn't see much!