The Cinema Park Drive-In
A new comic about Calgary history!
Last week, I shared an old comic about September 11, 2001. This week, I thought I’d share a brand-new comic!
But first, let me say hello to those new folks who have signed up to follow The Drawing Book, thanks to a kind recommendation from dylyricus over on Bluesky! Since I started this Substack almost one year ago, I’ve been posting some occasional old comics about my adventures following Bob Dylan’s tour back in the late 90s and early 2000s. You can find those comics here. There are only a few left, that I haven’t posted yet. If you’re looking for Bob comics today, maybe check out this story about travelling to see Bob play in Buffalo, at Darien Lake. He just performed at the same venue last week, twenty-seven years later!
Curious Calgary
Today I thought I’d share a new comic in the Curious Calgary series. I haven’t been posting these here, but maybe I should!
Seven years ago (!) I started working with Calgary journalist Jeremy Klaszus, who had just launched a pop-up journalism project called The Sprawl, covering local news. I’d been writing comics about life in Calgary for a while, and The Sprawl seemed like a good fit for that kind of storytelling. Over the years, I’ve written a bunch of Sprawl comics about Calgary stuff - mostly web comics. Last year, we started a new series of zine comics, called Curious Calgary. Each zine presents a bite-sized story about a piece of Calgary history or infrastructure.
You can find the Curious Calgary zines here on The Sprawl’s website. You can also find PDFs of the comics that you can use to print and fold them yourself!
Today, we have a new story about something I’d never heard of before. That’s what makes these comics fun: I keep learning new stuff about the city where I’ve lived for so long!
When I was researching this story, I found out that there are still a few drive-in theatres in Canada: here’s a list I found online. I was interested to learn about the origins of Calgary’s Chinook Centre mall. I learned about the unique Calgary neighbourhood of Point McKay. And I also found out about the Tenerife airport disaster - yikes.
What are YOU curious about?
Is there a Calgary landmark or a Calgary story that YOU’re curious about? I’m always looking for new ideas for this comics series. If you have any suggestions, please send them my way! Comment on this post, or email me at the address on my website, www.the23rdstory.com.
P.S.
The Cinema Park Drive-In was in a part of town that’s quite far from where I live. But (as I often do), I still found a way to include something from my own neighbourhood in the story: the car on the front cover is my neighbour’s car, parked just around the corner from my house!
Thanks for reading. See you around!