Porn as high as an elephant’s eye

Ask anyone who remembers the Westlane Drive-In, and they’ll give you a wry little grin. Turns out, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, Davis had its own triple-X movie theater. That’s right, Davis had a drive-in, and it showed nothing but porn. What’s more, motorists tootling along I-80 would catch a swerving eyeful of Westlane’s giant, often flesh-covered screen.

I learned about it in Joel Davis’ compelling book, Justice Waits, about the murder of two Davis teens in 1980. Part memoir of growing up in Davis when it was less than half the size and much more rural than it is now, the author explains that for kids of a certain age—he was 13 when a friend’s older brother lead him by bike to the Westlane—sneaking peeks was a local rite of passage.

To find out more about this decidedly un-Davis-like institution, I gave Davis a call. Back in the day, he explained, you could hardly wait for the night.

“Every red-blooded kid in Davis went to that place,” said the author, who in the interest of full disclosure is an occasional contributor to these pages. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. You have to keep in mind this is Davis back then, there wasn’t a lot to do either. The downtown was really dead.”

Located east of the car dealerships on Chiles Road and west of the new Yolo Fruit Stand, the Westlane was carved into the surrounding farmland like a field of, well, dreams. It had a giant single screen that switched from mainstream feature films to porn sometime in the mid-’70s.

Davis says the format switch—a move not all that uncommon for drive-ins back then—made the Westlane a popular hangout for teens.

“You could sit in the gravel road in the ditch and watch the movies as a kid,” remembers Davis. “It was quite an eye-opening thing, if you’d never seen this stuff. The first time I went out there I got sprayed by a skunk, I think I got my bike a flat tire, and it was worth every moment.”

Police officers would often appear with flashlights, shooing away the underage from perches just beyond the Westlane’s fence.

“But I always wondered,” says Davis with a laugh, “why are the cops here? It’s not like there’s any crimes being reported. Knowing what I do about cops now, I’m sure they loved going out there. … They probably had to draw names out of a hat.”

Among peers, Davis was considered lucky, living as he did in south Davis.

“The El Macero crowd was big. I had kids ask me to spend the night at my house just so they could go out there on their bikes. It wasn’t me that was the draw; it was that movie theater.”

Also, says Davis, you’d see an awful lot of men out there taking the family dog for a walk. And about those awkward-silence-inducing moments on the interstate?

“You could see stuff from the freeway—you couldn’t always make out what it was, but you saw a lot of moving skin. That was always kind of weird because you’d be in the car with your parents, and you’d be in the backseat with your sister laughing your head off.”

I wondered if there were any were complaints from local parents or startled motorists. He didn’t think so.

“It was a different environment back then,” he said. Davis wasn’t the “chi-chi college town” that it is today, and it wasn’t nearly as family and civic-minded. It was still more of a cow town back then, like Dixon or Woodland is now.”

The author says he never actually went inside the grounds of the drive-in, the novelty having worn off by the time he was old enough to get in. According to Davis, the Westlane burned to the ground in 1986, in what may have been arson. Done in by the advent of home video, drive-in porno—oh, to have a window-tinting business back then—steadily went the way of most drive-ins. Today, the grounds on which it stood host youth soccer games. Scoring is definitely down.