Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Save Brownsville Drive-In!

If you're a fan of the Facebook page, you've seen this a lot, so you can probably ignore it. Unless you want to keep voting.

The film industry is upgrading from film to digital, which poses a problem for little drive-ins around America--the cost of upgrading their equipment is $80,000, and I'm sure you can guess that little Brownsville drive-in doesn't have $80,000. So Hona has launched Project Drive-In, which will donate projectors to five drive-ins and you can vote for which drive-in gets one. You can vote for Brownsville here, and you can do so once per day. My Facebok page normally reposts the link once daily when it rolls across my news feed, but today I reposted it three times. #SorryNotSorry.

The project also takes donations via an Indiegogo campaign. All proceeds go to continue saving drive-ins across the country.

Need some incentive? Only a few hundred drive-ins remain around the country, and Fayette County boasts two with Brownsville and Connellsville's Comet Drive-In. We don't want to see one disappear, especially when this is something good that sets us apart. People talk all the time about wanting to do something good for the county, so here's your chance!

2 comments:

  1. So I saw this but I'm wary of voting. Mostly because of the way that the owners basically lamented on Facebook that this would be the last year they would stay open (in an extremely inarticulate, whiny way) and then behave as if they are relying on a contest to stay open.

    They should probably also have an individual incentive to obtain donations (Indiegogo, Kickstarter) just in case, idk, they don't win one of the five digital projectors from Honda. And if they DID win the projector, donations could go to improvements in other areas of the drive-in, like updating the concession stand and obtaining digital projectors for the other two screens (since I believe the contest only wins a single projector).

    I know I live in a completely different world now, but my favorite local independent theater in the Boston area (the Brattle, in Harvard Square, Cambridge) was determined to stay open and independently raised the thousands of dollars necessary to get a custom projector built (since they are a unique rear-projection theater) and upgrade their HVAC. While I doubt the citizens of Fayette County are as universally interested in culture/the arts as pretentious Harvard-ites and Cantabrigians are, I'm pretty sure they could be persuaded to donate funds to the Brownsville Drive-In if the owners had a positive attitude and were committed to staying open regardless of whether they win a contest.

    Rabble rabble rabble I'm sad I didn't get to hit the drive in this year. The Brownsville Drive-In is an American treasure regardless of how well they Internet

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    1. I definitely think these are all great points. I'm not the queen of news by any means, but I do find it interesting that I'd hear nothing of closing until this contest rolled around. That said, I'm sure they need help.

      Honestly, although having their own Kickstart campaign is a great idea, I'm sure the owners probably aren't all up-to-date on crowdfunding. That said, I think it has a lot of potential, especially should they lose. I mean, the Honda project's perks kind of suck until you hit the high-level ones, but I think it's something that could be creatively and effectively tailored to Brownsville or any other individual theater. All you'd have to do to get Fayette County on board is offer free admission at a reasonable level, plus perks have way more potential for being cool and of value beyond that.

      I'm sad I didn't get to one, either, but I will say seeing Brownsville's screen lit up in the middle of the night from the fancy new toll road looks pretty cool.

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