At The Drive In

The Drive In is where the swap meet happens on weekends, which is personally significant because it's where Gersh and I would go crate diving in search of old and/or awesome records. Recall that the mid-to-late 90's were the early years of vinyl revivalism and you could still get copies of basically any record for a dollar or less. We often bought boxes for ten bucks and divided them between ourselves sight unseen. I was really into The Who then. There was also a selection of the typical swap meet expendables including cheap leather working gloves, tools made of poor-quality steel and cholo shirts which usally had airbrushed Virgin Marys and Jesuses on the front.

Apparently the property is still owned by Metropolitan Theaters, though one has to wonder how long that will last with Goleta becoming the new Wild West of Santa Barbara County. The major buildings are still standing including the snack bar and projection house (both pictures housed in this set on my Flickr,. Apparently the airport shuttles idle their time there between shifts so the grounds are usually populated to some extent. The other drive in in Goleta is the SBA long term parking lot, so it's ALWAYS populated.

I left my car idling in the driveway of the theater to go fire off these quick pictures -- probably a bad idea positionally, considering I ran around the corner and out of view of the car. I don't know why I ran. I seemed like I had to avoid the workers there for some reason. Most likely I just didn't want to have to interact with anyone.