Stars and stripes drive in movie#

They want to make more memories at the drive-in.”Ĭan’t get to New Braunfels, but want to see a movie outside? There are a few options around San Antonio.Īlthough an enormous chunk of their 2020 schedule ended up “in total limbo” because of COVID-19, Angela and Rick Martinez returned with their popular outdoor movie screenings last June. “I think that will continue in 2021 because people want to share this kind of communal experience with their friends and family. “Drive-ins have been more top of mind for people this year than any year since I got into the business,” Smith says. “So, I’m really grateful that we can keep doing what we believe in.”Īs 2021 continues, Smith is confident that the nostalgic and distinctive experience a drive-in theater delivers is something that will continue to attract families-even after COVID-19 vaccines are widely distributed. “We know what it’s like to struggle and not to know what the future holds,” Smith says. Along with nightly screenings after sundown, the drive-in also boasts a ’50s-style cafe with corn dogs, popcorn, funnel cakes, handspun milkshakes and more. Since opening the New Braunfels location, Smith says the community’s support has been “overwhelmingly positive.” Even with COVID-19 shuttering many indoor movie theaters across the nation, drive-ins like his have done well since audiences are looking for ways to watch movies outside of the house in the safest way possible. “This was the path I was called to walk down.” “I really had no idea it was going to call my name,” Smith says. “New Braunfels already had this nostalgic, slice-of-Americana feel to it, so the theater fit in nicely,” he says.Īccording to the United Drive-In Theatre Owners Association, Stars & Stripes in New Braunfels is one of 305 drive-in theaters in the United States and one of just 12 that operate in Texas (though in 2020 several pop-up style drive-ins also appeared). He and his family, which now also includes his wife and children, opened their newest drive-in in 2015 on former farmland in New Braunfels. After running a successful drive-in business in West Texas for 12 years, he decided to expand with a second theater. He was 25 years old, the same age his grandfather had been when he opened his first drive-in. The year after spending a summer in Lamesa, Smith, along with his parents, broke ground on his own theater in Lubbock, Stars & Stripes. “It was incredible-sitting in my vehicle, under the stars, eating my food and waiting for the aliens to invade,” he says. Not only was he drawn to the business side of drive-in theaters, but he was also drawn to watching movies outdoors, something he had never experienced until his first trip to Sky-Vue that summer to see M. “So, I decided to try to use what I learned in undergrad and during that one year in law school to build a drive-in theater. “I really enjoyed the business,” Smith says. In the summer of 2002, Smith went to work for his grandfather to see what it took to run a theater. He built the theater there in 1948, 45 years after the town of Lamesa was founded. “Skeet” Noret, was the owner of the Sky-Vue Drive-In Theatre in Lamesa, just south of Lubbock.

But so was something else: drive-in movie theaters.

His father was a lawyer, so it was in his blood. Ryan Smith had finished his first year of law school at Southern Methodist University when he realized that he might not want to be a lawyer after all.

Stars and stripes drive in