Tuesday, August 15, 2006

Hillcrest Drive In 1953-2003


The last remaining local Drive In, the Hillcrest, closed in 2003. I made it a point to be there for the last night, when they showed 4 movies into the early hours of the morning to a packed field of patrons who wanted to say goodbye to a landmark. The Hillcrest was located in Surrey, on the surrey/Langley border and the once farm land, was quickly becoming developed. The land where the Hillcrest sat is now a condo development and a shopping mall. The owner of the Hillcrest has since built a brand new, from scratch, Drive In (named the Twilight Drive In) just 20 minutes away from the old Hillcrest site. I spent many nights at the Hillcrest, as I designed the original web site for the owner, and because of that, I got in free anytime I wanted!

When the Hillcrest closed, I took a few pictures. Above is a photo of the Hillcrest marquee, and a couple of photos of the speaker polls as they were being removed. I love the black and white photo of the speaker polls as they had been dug up that morning and piled up at the front of the field, ready to be hauled away. The photo has a kind of erie feel to it don't you think!?

3 comments:

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ said...

Sad that the Drive In didn't make it! Some great memories at them. The best started from the trunk!

Question for you as you are a Mac user. I gave a disk of my MiX to a family member. 3 or 4 of the mp3 files. They told me tha mp3 was of no use to them because they use ITunes. Now they want me to give them an audio cd so they can extract the files and record using ITunes. The comment was I don't want to get a new mp3 player and there is some sort of aggreement with apple and Itunes that prohibits the use of mp3! What gives. Only if you have the time to explain. I'm an IBM user and don't understand what they are talking about. I see a lot of Mac users coming to ATOV and grabbing music so it must be somewhat easy.

If you don't want to hog up your comment space you can get my email at ATOV profile.

Thanks in advance for your time.

Timbo

Ronn Roxx said...

Glad you liked the blog entry on the Hillcrest Drive In. I only tried to get someone in via the trunk once. The funniest thing is that we were so concered about sneaking our 3rd hidden movie goer into the Drive In that we didn' t notice that the movies that were playing had not changed and we had already seen them. We ended up leaving the Drive In and our friend had to get back in the trunk when we left! ;-)

As for Macs and mp3 files, I don't know what your family members concern is, but mp3 files work just fine in iTunes. You can drag most music files (from multiple formats) right onto the iTunes icon in the dock and they will play! Once in iTunes, you can use the the "Convert to mp3" feature to convert any of those oddball formts into mp3 format (or a few other formats such as Apple lossless, ACC and AIFF).

If they are playable mp3 files, they WILL play in iTunes.

Ronn

Anonymous said...

Do you have any more old photos of Hillcrest. I am working with a company in the area that wants to create a mural in its memory.
My email is sales@towergraphics.ca