What can Sturgis do to provide its residents with some local entertainment after all the motorcycles go home? How about turn one of their big biker saloons into a local movie house?
Easyriders Saloon opened the Sturgis Dinner Theater last Thursday with a ribbon-cutting and media event. The saloon rolls out a 20-foot screen and some nice recliners in front of the usual dinner tables in their big hall. Movie tickets are $5, but they knock that price off your dinner if you choose to chew through your film (just a bucket of popcorn shrimp for me, thanks!). A family movie free with dinner: I'd drive to Sturgis from Spearfish or Rapid for that... especially to see Star Trek: Into Darkness on April 4!
(Just one marketing quibble: dinner theater is when the waiter brings you your meal, then jumps on the stage with a bunch of other people and does A Chorus Line live. Easyriders is offering dinner cinema, which is its own kind of fun.)
KELO reports that the mayor and the city council have been working on a nice downtown cinema for several years. And now Easyriders has stepped up to the plate, expanding their entertainment to bring folks off I-90 and into downtown year-round. Madison, are you paying attention? What do you think will bring more people and dollars to town, dinner cinema or more second-hand shopping?
Dinner cinema focuses on sports this week with March Madness on the big screen. Sturgis's first movie offerings come Friday with Catching Fire and The Heat, followed by a nice weekend mix of movies for kids and adults. Now if we can just get the saloon managers to put together the obvious and ultimate tie-in triple feature: The Wild One, Road House, and Easy Rider... plus an ongoing lunch special featuring Charlie and Ewan's Long Way Round!
Imagine bellying up to a bar and being drowned by the dregs that have made Sturgis what it is.
Sorry,Cory,but Nicholson ruined every movie he was ever in-especially Easy Rider. IMHO this guy jumped the shark before jumping the shark was ever invented.
Corri, you enjoy the theater, have an understanding of business, and like Madison. Get some investors together and open a dinner theater.