Burlingame Drive-In

The Burlingame Drive-in has been completeley demolished, and the land has been regraded for construction. Nothing remains except the signature Century Theatres palm trees and a former marquee facing the 101 freeway which invites you to live, eat, and shop in Burlingame.

Hi there,

Amazing what you can find on the Internet. I was feeling nostalgic and google’d for ‘burlingame drive-in’ and here it is. I worked there in the summer of 1993 as a projectionist. I also did whatever other odd stuff was needed, like hanging my ass 50 feet above highway 101 on cold, windy nights to change the letters on the marquee. Fun times. We showed a main feature (new movie), “co-feature” (2-3-month-old movie), and main feature again. Sunset in the summer is at 9pm and I stayed until the last movie ended. If both movies were long, that might be 4am, and if it was the last night a movie was playing, I’d have to stay another hour or so to pack it up so it could be shipped out. The ticket booth and concession stands closed by 12 so I was there all alone for hours. Got a lot of reading done that summer—I remember I started “Firestarter” one night at midnight and finished it exactly 24 hours later.

As one of my first teenage jobs about 1978-79, I worked at the Burlingame Drive-In Concession stand, which was a huge high-ceilinged “bubble” in the middle of the property, with large windows. It was pretty rough and tumble, even then. The teens would invade the place on the weekends and there would always be drunken kids starting fights. The security guard (intimidating but a sweetheart)would confiscate the booze and weed from the patrons and split it with the employees! We didn’t feel bad about it, since the spoiled suburban customers were generally stupid and abusive to the employees. One night, some obnoxious drunk kid thought we’d shorted him on change, so after much yelling, and with a horribly loud crash, put his arm through one of the thick pane windows. He’d wrapped his arm in A DOWN JACKET, which of course offers NO protection, so he messed his arm up bad. No one was arrested, though—I was told the kid was the local Sherriff’s son!

I remember when it was called the Peninsula and Burlingame Drive in, it was a twin from the start, I use to manage that drive along with the Redwood and the last one was the Moffet in mt. View, running a drive in was fun, I took a short time away from the Syufy’s and worked for United Artists ran the drive in in Belmont called the Starlight it was torn down for Coca Cola built a plant there since then they torn that down now it an office park and Public storage

Seen a lot of movies in the Burlingame Drive in over the years.

Cannonball Run
Indiana Jones
Superman II
Demolition Man
Cable Guy
The Rock
Etc…