Note: Going forward, my first ex-husband has given me permission to use his real name and show his face. 🥁 Drumroll, please! 🥁 “Ex-husband”, “Ex-husband #1”, and “Westley” is Blake. But, honestly, I think the only people who read this blog already knew that.
There are some places in Michigan that do not feel entirely real after dark. Places suspended somewhere between nostalgia and mosquito bites. Places where children run barefoot through grass while parents unfold lawn chairs like ritual offerings to summer itself. The kind of places where time stopped somewhere around 1963 and collectively agreed not to move again.
Cherry Bowl Drive-In Theatre is one of those places.
If Northern Michigan had a heartbeat in the summer, I swear part of it would echo through that little drive-in tucked away in Honor. Long before streaming services asked if we were “still watching,” there was the Cherry Bowl asking something much more magical: Do you want to stay for the second feature?
For most people, the answer was yes. For me…absolutely not. Respectfully, I am a sleepy girl 😂
A Drive-In Straight Out of a Time Capsule
The Cherry Bowl first opened in 1953, back when drive-ins were booming across America like popcorn in hot oil. Families piled into station wagons, teenagers snuck cigarettes behind concession stands, and entire summers revolved around what was playing after sunset.
While most drive-ins slowly disappeared over the decades, swallowed by streaming, multiplexes, and rising land costs, the Cherry Bowl somehow survived. Maybe because Northern Michigan still understands romance in a way the rest of the world forgot. Maybe because there is something sacred about watching a movie under actual stars instead of LED lighting. Or maybe people just really love eating candy in sweatshirts while getting annihilated by mosquitoes. Honestly…both can be true.
The theater became a tradition for my family during our yearly trips to Traverse City for the National Cherry Festival. Going to the Cherry Bowl was never presented as optional. It was simply part of the trip, stitched into the itinerary alongside lake water, sunscreen, and somebody inevitably getting cranky from exhaustion.
And honestly, one of the best parts about visiting the Cherry Bowl during Cherry Festival week was the fireworks. Once the sun fully disappeared, you could sometimes see them going off faintly in the distance while waiting for the movie to start. Then afterward, on the drive home through the dark Northern Michigan roads, more fireworks would keep popping up along the horizon like little glowing breadcrumbs leading you back to Traverse City.
The place itself is adorable in the most authentic way possible. Not frozen in time exactly, but lovingly committed to preserving that retro Americana magic that makes drive-ins feel cinematic before the movie even starts.
There is a playground near the screen where kids burn off energy before sunset while parents pretend their children will magically crash afterward. Every time I see it, I half expect somebody to start dramatically singing “Stranded at the drive-in…branded a fool…” like Grease while a kid swings nearby with a cherry slushie and another crawls through the concrete tube like it is the greatest architectural achievement of childhood.
The original speaker poles still stand proudly like tiny relics from another era, even though most people now tune into the radio station through their cars because the speakers crackle and the mosquitoes conduct organized warfare the second dusk hits. Over the years, they also added putt-putt golf, which somehow made the place feel even more like a summer memory you accidentally wandered back into.
And sitting among the parking spaces is their iconic old Volkswagen Beetle painted in pink and blue—the unofficial mascot of the whole experience. The entire place feels less like a business and more like somebody’s scrapbook came to life.
The Ritual Before the Movie
The best part of the Cherry Bowl was never just the movie. It was the waiting.
You would pull in early, get your parking spot, and settle into the strange temporary neighborhood that forms before every screening. Families unpacking blankets. Couples leaning against trucks. Kids sprinting toward the playground with the stamina of tiny immortals while oldies drifted through the evening air.
I have not visited since the Cherry Bowl was sold to the new owners but with the previous owners, there was always this warmth to the experience that made it feel personal. Every night they gave away free prizes before the movie started, which somehow made even adults weirdly competitive. The sky would slowly dim into that deep blue Northern Michigan twilight that already feels cinematic on its own, and then finally, right before the feature, “Let’s All Go to the Lobby” would begin.
The dancing hot dog. The popcorn. The candy. Cinema’s tiny chaotic mascots performing like caffeinated fever dreams from another century. Honestly, I would defend those concession cartoons harder than some modern films.
The last few times I visited, they also showed an old Mickey Mouse short before the feature started, which somehow made the entire night feel even more suspended in time. Like the world outside the drive-in no longer existed for a little while. No doomscrolling. No emails. No algorithms. Just cartoons flickering against a giant outdoor screen while mosquitoes hunted us for sport.
The Drive-In Version of Growing Up
I remember my trips there most vividly with Blake, even though I had been going long before him. That is the strange thing about traditions. Different people rotate through them over time, but the tradition itself stays standing.
One night we brought our doggos. Another time we brought board games because apparently we looked at a drive-in movie theater and thought, you know what this needs? Mystic Vale.
And almost every single time, I fell asleep during the first feature anyway.
I wish I were exaggerating, but there is apparently something about warm summer air, distant movie audio, and reclining car seats that shuts my body down like an old laptop. The irony is that I love movies deeply. I just also apparently love unconsciousness.
Nowadays, I have perfected my system. I arrive early enough to be one of the first cars through the gate, park in the second row a few spots away from the exit, and the second the first movie ends, I slip out between features like a tiny exhausted cryptid fleeing back into the woods.
There is no shame in this. The drive home through Northern Michigan at night already feels like a horror movie directed by deer. I do not need to tempt fate further.
Passing the Projector to Someone New
Recently, the Cherry Bowl changed ownership after decades under the original family operators. And honestly, whenever places like this change hands, it feels a little scary. Not because change itself is bad, but because places tied so tightly to memory become fragile in our minds.
We worry somebody will modernize the soul out of it. That suddenly the oldies will disappear, the free giveaways will stop, and the magic will get replaced by efficiency.
But the beautiful thing about drive-ins is that they almost require sentimentality to survive. Nobody opens or maintains a drive-in because it is the easiest business model in the world. They do it because they love what it represents.
And I hope the new owners understand what they inherited. Not just a theater, but a tradition. A thousand first dates. A thousand sleepy children carried back to cars. A thousand summers pressed into memory like flowers between book pages.
The Cherry Bowl is one of the last places where movies still feel like events instead of content. Maybe that is why I keep going back, even if I barely make it through the first feature.
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