88 Drive-In

Colorado

A school in Commerce City had to fence off its own roof because students kept climbing up at night to watch the drive-in.

historicalroadsideculture

The East 88th Avenue Drive-In opened in 1971 after neighbors signed a petition asking the county to allow it. The first season lost money. So in 1972 the owner switched to adult films, and the neighborhood turned on him fast. Drivers on the road nearby were said to be distracted by what was on the screen. A nearby school put a fence around its roof to stop students climbing up at night for a free view. The theater tried to build a thirty foot wall around the whole property. Local authorities said no. It tried hanging a giant light screen from tall poles instead. The county rejected that too. In February 1973, under new owners, someone set off a bomb at the concession stand. It blew a twelve inch hole in the wall and did about fifteen hundred dollars in damage.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
A fence was erected around the roof of a nearby school to prevent students from climbing to the top of the building at night to watch the X-rated films.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Nearby, on the same roads

  • Dick's Sporting Goods Park 3.4 mi A World Cup qualifier here was played in a blizzard, and the losing team filed a protest with FIFA over the state of the field.
  • Disappearances of Paul and Sarah Skiba and Lorenzo Chivers 7.9 mi Police thought a father had run off with his daughter, until his friends climbed the fence and found bullet holes and a piece of human scalp on his moving truck.
  • Regis University 8.5 mi Queen played their first concert in the United States on this campus, in April of 1974.
  • Westminster, Colorado 8.9 mi A university here closed in 1917 because every single student left to fight in World War One.
  • Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum 9.3 mi Parked among Cold War fighter jets in a Denver hangar is a three-quarter scale X-Wing built to promote the Star Wars re-release.
  • Denver Art Museum 9.5 mi A famous Italian architect built exactly one thing in the United States, and it is a twenty-four-sided castle in downtown Denver covered in a million glass tiles.