One last visit to Denver's last drive-in | John Moore

COMMERCE CITY – Nostalgia and a loudly ticking clock demanded one last drive to the last drive-in in the Denver metro area.

After 51 years, the lovingly decaying 88 Drive-In stands shakily as the final remnant of an American family tradition that was once so popular, 4,000 drive-ins nightly celebrated the cherished institutions of movies (with inaudible sound), cotton candy, teenage makeouts and human trafficking. (As in, the time-honored practice of sneaking in stacks of bodies hiding inside car trunks.) Now, there are only 321, mostly in rural areas.

At one time, everyone in Denver had their home drive-in: Cinderella Twin. Evans. Lake Shore. North Star. West Colfax. In my hometown of Arvada, we had the Wadsworth Drive-In, which for a time actually offered both outdoor and glass-enclosed indoor options that could accommodate 1,000 cars.

We got hooked on numbers games at an awfully young age, because, for years, the Wadsworth admitted every 50th car free.  

In June, the family that has operated The 88 since 1976 asked Commerce City officials to rezone its lot to allow a warehouse to replace the drive-in. But, I have to say: While I was paying my funereal respects last week, it felt for all the world like that family is already long gone.

The vintage marquee welcoming visitors on the corner of 88th Avenue and Rosemary Street is held up by three rickety wooden planks and a couple of Band-Aids. The faded red paint looks like The 88 might have last shared a gallon with Lakeside Amusement Park back in about 1978. Driving down the bumpy gravel road to the ticket booth is a little like four-wheeling up a Colorado 14er.

On this night, the yellow-and white brick ticket booth, ironically, has a visible “closed” sign in the window. It’s not: There’s a young woman inside to take your $10. A bargain-basement, to be sure, but still: The sign below her window says admission is actually $8. But that’s only because the price went up so long ago that both the 9 and then the 10 that were once taped over the 8 have both long since withered away – leaving that fading $8 in full view – along with a hint of the adhesive residue that once covered it up.

I always thought of the ticket-booth person as the Sheriff of the Drive-In. This was the guy (usually) you had to fool into thinking, “No, sir, there are NOT three more people in my trunk. I just have no friends, so I have to come to the drive-in alone!” (“Please please please don’t ask to search my trunk.”)

This young woman is polite but, let’s just say … she’s no cop. The very long list of rules here are not likely to be enforced tonight.

“Are you getting sad about the drive-in closing?” I ask her.

“Um … not really,” she says with all the enthusiasm of a high-school senior on the third hour of her SAT exam.

By night’s end, I will have asked four 88 employees: “When is closing day?” And I still can’t tell you, because none of them knew the answer. Or appeared much to care. I kept thinking: Next to working for six summers in the Elitch Gardens (Fun and) Games Department (which I did), this place would be my dream job. 

I was the youngest of eight kids, closest to the two brothers nearest me in age. Danny, Kevin and I can chart the eras of our family’s history by what cars we took to the Wadsworth Drive-In. When we were the kids, Mom and Dad packed all 10 of us into the Dodge Polara station wagon. As teenagers (with driver’s licenses), we each took an active role in helping our oldest sister raise her son. Bryan became sort of our mascot, which meant that when we went to the drive-in, he did, too. In those years, the Volkswagen Bug was the car of choice, because we could slip baby Bryan into the “back-back,” which was the exact size of a baby carrier. He slept through “Jaws” entirely.

In high school, we came to be undeservedly popular for the simple fact that we drove a Ford LTD. (We called it the “LSD.”) It got only about five miles to the gallon, but it could pretty much fit an entire baseball team and a bag of bats into its wide trunk. So, doggone it … people liked us!

Back to the present

Tonight is a Tuesday, and despite the lateness of the season, it’s clear that our urge to kiss one of the seminal experiences of our youth goodbye is not exactly sweeping the Denver metro area. There are only about 50 cars here tonight  – which is actually a good thing, because fully half of the parking area is submerged in pools of standing water. Whatever the cause of this drainage problem, it is clear that no effort will be made to address it this season – meaning, ever. Instead, the western half of the lot is simply cordoned off with police caution tape.

The evening turns out to be as wonderfully bizarre as The 88’s double-feature offering of “Barbie” and the QAnon-beloved child-trafficking drama “Sound of Freedom.” To continue with that motif, I’d say tonight’s entertainment experience is sort of like a double-feature of “American Graffiti” and the apocalyptic “28 Days Later.”

It feels like a ghost town. Like the drive-in is already closed, but the handful of employees left behind were never told. The playground is long gone. The unlit concession stand is a delicious walk back in time: Vats of cold, buttery popcorn. Hot dogs with the words “Let’s be frank: those hot dogs are awesome!” scrawled onto their plastic covering case.

Mosquito wipes go for a dollar per, and with all that standing water outside, they’re going faster than the Big Papa Dill Pickles.

As the lovely late-summer sun sets and the largely “Barbie”-fueled crowd starts to settle in, the scene feels both skanky and somehow beautiful at once.

I came with old friends. I made new friends. A young couple is taking their gorgeous black goldendoodle for a pre-show walk, and I say hello. Their names are Cecilia Jones and Jake Riederer, and they introduce me to their adorable canine ice-breaker, named Samuel L. Jackson. Riederer has just returned from the men’s room and sweetly warns his beloved, “Yeah, you can't use the bathroom here.”

“I wouldn't want to speak ill of the damned,” Riederer continues, “but it's a trough – as in an old Mile High Stadium trough that doesn't necessarily drain all the way -  and the doors don't close.” 

They live 18 miles and a world away in Park Hill, and so far, trough aside, their first visit to The 88 is a blast. They had no idea they are among the final few hundred who will ever attend a drive-in in metro Denver. They came tonight because they could bring the dog; they came because Jones remembered once seeing vintage photos of drive-ins on the wall at the Cherry Creek Grill; and, most of all, they came for “Barbie” – like the drive-in, a fading American tradition herself.

“We knew we needed to see the ‘Barbie’ movie, but we just couldn't do it conventionally,” says Jones. “We've been chasing more fun lately, and we wanted seeing this movie to be an experience for us. And the drive-in is definitely an experience.”

Jones and Riederer, both Colorado natives, exude the energy of old and new Denver at once. The two recently left the restaurant business and, in February, purchased a 49 percent interest in East Denver’s iconic Spinelli's Market. “That was my first job when I was 15 years old,” Jones says. “That was 25 years ago – and now we are lucky enough to own it and run it.”

They both see a parallel between Spinelli’s and The 88. “Both have been built around the idea of community building community,” Jones says. “They are both about trying to preserve something special.”

Learning only now that The 88 is closing makes Riederer take new stock in the couple’s accidental Tuesday night adventure. “I am only now realizing how awesome it is that we got to come here tonight – because we've never once been to a drive-in in our 10 years together,” he says.

Let it roll

As “Barbie” begins, it is quickly evident that most things about watching a movie at the drive-in have not changed over the years. Freight trains regularly pass by, mingling with traffic horns to drown out dialogue that, turns out, is just as inscrutable coming through your fancy car-stereo speakers as it was in the 1970s, when it scratched its way through those battered old corded speakers. The speakers are long gone – but the poles that once straddled them remain, and for one important reason: There would be no order to the parking rows without those ancient poles to guide you. 

Here’s one modern twist: I was watching “Barbie” from the back of a smart car – the kind that automatically turns off every 15 minutes – taking the audio with it.

As you take it all in, you realize how out of place The 88 has become in the fully industrialized neighborhood that has grown up around it. It’s as plain as the interloping bright exterior lights at the Lowe’s across the street that make seeing what’s on the screen all the more of a challenge.

Not that any of it matters. The one thing that absolutely hasn’t changed in 70 years of drive-ins is that no one is here just to see the movie. Not really. They come for the romance of it all. They come to stoke their memories. (They probably don’t come for the mosquitoes.) To me, a night at the drive-in ranks right up there with a walk through the Garden of the Gods. That’s why, when I had a milestone birthday a few years back, I made my friends take me to the Star Drive-in in Monte Vista– where you can watch the movie from the bed in your room at the on-site Best Western movie manor. That’s a 225-mile drive from Denver. That’s how much I love the drive-in.

And, like every most other movie I have ever seen at a drive-in, I can’t tell you much about what “Barbie” is about. But, like everyone else, I cheer and honk at the final credits.

And, with that, most of the cars in the lot rev up their engines to leave. It’s after 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night, after all – and next up is that very un-"Barbie”-like offering, “Sound of Freedom.”

As we start to drive out, a voice rings out over the car stereo like the voice of God:

“For those of you who are leaving, please be sure to exit to your right because, as you know … the left side of our drive-in is a lake.”