You can still see movies under the stars at Jacksonville's Sun-Ray drive-in

If you want a front-row "seat" at the Sun-Ray Cinema drive-in theater, you'd better leave the pickup truck at home.

The drive-in — yes, Jacksonville really has a drive-in movie theater — parks vehicles by size, so shorter passenger cars go up front, SUVs, vans and pickups farther back so everyone can see the screen.

It's in a field behind the Ramona Flea Market, screened by trees from the busy I-295/I-10 intersection just a few yards away. Tim Massett, one of the owners of Sun-Ray, said the property is actually zoned for drive-ins, but it isn't set up like the drive-ins you may remember from back in the day. It's really just a field, with a half-dozen light poles, a projection trailer and a portable screen. There are none of those speakers you hang from your window — moviegoers listen to the film through their car stereos, tuned to 90.3 FM. 

A concession trailer sells popcorn, hot dogs, veggie dogs and bottled soft drinks. A guy under a tent sells cake pops for $1 each. A pair of portable restrooms stand behind the concession trailer.

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The screen, which is raised and lowered every night, is probably smaller than veteran drive-in-goers recall. Fabric is stretched over a frame to create a screen 27 feet tall and 50 feet wide, plenty big enough to see even from the back row. 

The theater opened in 2020, during the early days of the pandemic, when no one was going to traditional sit-down movie theaters and studios weren't releasing any new films to show. In 2020, an estimated 15,000 people attended 60 screenings.

"We didn’t open a drive-in; the drive-in opened itself," said Shana David-Massett, Tim's wife and co-owner of Sun-Ray.

The Massetts contracted with some out-of-work Disney Imagineers to build them a state-of-the-art projection trailer that throws a 4K picture onto the screen. It sat in their front yard, mocking them, until they could find somewhere to park 60-70 cars and some movies to show.

They kicked around several locations — a race track in Callahan, the Tailgaters parking lot across from TIAA Bank Field, the site of the former Metro nightclub — before settling on the Ramona Flea Market site. In those early days, they couldn't even run a concession stand because of Covid concerns. That's why Sun-Ray is one of the few drive-in theaters in Florida that allows patrons bring in their own food and drink.

All told, the Massetts estimate they have at least $150,000 invested in the drive-in. They show first-run movies and can fit 60 or 70 vehicles, at $25 each, on a good night.

At a recent showing of "Nope," vehicles parked in lines, some facing the screen, some facing away from it. Some people chose to pop open the tailgate and sit in the rear of their vehicle. Others brought lawn chairs and sat outside. Most sat in the car and watched through the windshield, with the air-conditioner running. Cars zoomed by on I-10, barely noticeable except for the occasional emergency vehicle with lights flashing — it was a Saturday night in Jacksonville, after all. Now and then, a bird would pass in front of the projector, throwing odd shadows onto the screen.

The theater draws all sorts of people. "I think it’s an everybody-friendly thing," David-Massett said. "A lot of families come out, depending on the film."

Like every drive-in, Sun-Ray is at the mercy of the weather. Hardly anyone shows if it's rainy, and the screen has to come down to avoid damage every time the winds reach 30 mph. 

For now, they're showing one film nightly on Fridays and Saturdays, but that may change later this year. "When the sun starts setting a little earlier again, we’ll start doing double features," Tim Massett said.

Drive-in movies once were common in Jacksonville, as they were across the rest of the country. In the 1950s, Jacksonville had 11 drive-ins, according to the Jacksonville Historical Society. Prior to the Sun-Ray's opening, the city's last drive-in theater was the three-screen Playtime Drive-in on Blanding Boulevard, which went through several names in its long history before closing in 2008.

Sun-Ray is one of three Florida drive-ins that opened during the pandemic. Others are in Fort Pierce and Miami. The state has just seven drive-ins operating today.