Staying Cool, While 'Bringing Back Some Memories, As The Shirley Drive-In Facebook Page Continues To Explode

SHIRLEY, NY — When Steven Pirozzi started his Facebook page, Shirley Drive-in, it was actually a funny dare from a friend.

The pair were reminiscing about bygone times and places from growing up in the Mastic-Shirley area, and came across old photos.

He was challenged to start a page with the name of the old drive-in theatre that was once located where South Port Shopping Mall is on Montauk Highway in Shirley before it closed in 1988.

"I said, 'Okay, that'd be cool to bring back some memories,'" recalled Pirozzi, of Mastic, adding that he figured some of their friends from high school would join and couldn't think who else would.

He started the page, and for a couple of years, people joined.

"And, I always say I made the first meme for Long Island," he said. "It's been known, but people don't say it. I got a lot of hype."

He saw a picture from the early 90s of the iconic tunnels at Smith Point County Park in Shirley, and said to himself, "Hey, when I was a kid, we used to go through there and make noise."

So, he used the photo and asked who also remembered making noise as they ran through them.

The meme "exploded" on Facebook, Pirozzi said.

"I'm telling you, thousands and thousands of people liked it and shared it, and they went nuts. And then all of a sudden, I got emails."

He was asked what else he had from "the old neighborhood."

"'What else do you have?'" he said. "And, I started looking at old pictures of the neighborhood to write memes. Do you remember this? Do you remember that?"

His big moment came after Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012.

The combination of the storm and a full moon produced a storm surge that left many flooded out in Mastic Beach, and downed trees and damaged utility poles left many without electricity in parts of Mastic-Shirley.

Many of those affected turned to social media for more information on getting help.

The strangest thing is that before the overnight storm hit, Pirozzi turned up his air conditioner and went to sleep.

"When I woke up the next morning, the room was freezing," he said. "My TV was still on in my house. I still had lights. I'm like, "Oh, must have been okay.'"

When he walked out his front door, he saw that none of the trees on his property went down. But when he walked two blocks over, it looked like a tornado went through the neighborhood.

He could only describe it as what someone later told him: God must have been watching out for him because he still had power.

The fire department wrote him that day after the storm hit, and asked that he post important safety information for the community, then again, a couple of days later how residents could get food donations at the department's headquarters. In the days following the storm, he posted tidbits about highlighting resources for residents such as where they could get a hot shower.

He ended up posting information for communities outside of Mastic-Shirley because the demand for help and need to inform the public was so high.

"And for Sandy, it just became a big thing for me," he said. "I mean, my page just exploded."

The pleas for help on Long Island, where many other communities were underwater, or suffered devastating damage, were at an all-time high.

"'Can you put this up, please?'" he said. "'We need help. We have no power down this block.'"

But his help was not without a little rebellion.

His "big moment" came after the community was told not to celebrate Halloween, which was the day after the storm hit. Police and fire officials had concerns about safety due to the flooded roadways and downed trees, utility poles, and wires.

"They told us we couldn't have Halloween in Mastic Beach because there was no power," he said. "Sandy hit, and they put it out — warnings everywhere — for nobody to have Halloween."

So Pirozzi wrote this followers to buy candy and have Halloween anyway in Mastic Beach. He recalls telling them, "Don't let them take this away from us."

"I went down there for Halloween. People without power were giving out candy, and kids were walking around in costume with their parents, and one parent said to me, 'Thank you for putting [the post] up. My kids really wanted Halloween,'" he said.

The whole neighborhood continued with Halloween.

He remembers the police walking past him, saying, "Do you know what you did?" he said, adding, "Yes, I made people happy. That's what I did, and that was my favorite. I walked all over that neighborhood on Halloween that year. I met with everybody, and everybody was doing Halloween. And I realized that's the power of people."

"Mastic Beach didn't want to go down without a fight. They were gonna have Halloween," he added.

The roads were dark and flooded, but there was Halloween.

"I went down some pretty dark roads, knocking on doors," he said. "Everybody's like, 'Oh yeah, we have candy. We don't have power, but we have candy.'"

That day he stopped and listened to people's stories about how they lost power. He remembers sitting in the dark on a deck that collapsed talking with the person who lived there.

"It was a really strange time here for a couple months, it was weird," he added.

Someone told him to go down and videotape the destruction so that people could see it.

"The destruction didn't bother me so much," he said. "What really got me almost crying was people were walking around like they were zombies, like they had no place to go."

They were just walking around looking at the destruction.

His friend asked him what was the matter.

"I said, 'I'm watching these people have nothing at this point, and they're just walking around looking for some kind of hope or some kind of something," he said. "They actually look like just zombies."

In the roughly 14 years since Pirozzi's big Sandy moment, the Shirley Drive-in page has grown to 400,000 subscribers.

And he doesn't just post memes from Long Island's past and news bytes.

He's also known to post inspirational quotes about life, and tributes to celebrities who have passed on, such as Ozzy Osbourne in 2025, and Dolly Parton on Tuesday. He's even waxed poetic about the days back when teens had no cell phones, no social media, and maybe only a boombox with cassette tapes and the radio that they listened to for hours.

"I get emails all the time," he said. "I get recognized going into stores."

But is there anything else that the community might want to know about the page?

“My Facebook page, everybody really knows at this point, so it's not like I can put anything else out that it's already not been said,” Pirozzi said.