—A base for the blanket

No glass, no tables. Bring a blanket.

Name: The Outdoor Movie Cup Holder
Brand: Steadi Labs

That is not hospitality. It is a subtraction list. Bryant Park permits no chairs, no tables and no plastic ground coverings on the lawn — sheets, tarps, bags, pads and yoga mats named one by one. Brooklyn Bridge Park allows no chairs but wheelchairs. Glass is banned nearly everywhere.

So the rules pick your cup for you — a can, a pouch, a tall insulated tumbler — and then hand you the softest surface in the park to stand it on. After dark. This is the 5.2-inch base that goes under it.

4.9 average · 120 reviews

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from $14.95 · free shipping on every order

Ships from Orange, California. 90 days to change your mind — three or four screenings’ worth.

A charcoal Steadi holding a Jarritos bottle on a weathered picnic table on a park lawn in low evening sun, paper plates of chips beside it. — Night Sky, on a park table in the last of the light. Twelve colours in all.

—Read this before anything else

Every line on that flyer removes a surface.

These are the venues’ own published rules, looked up on 2 September 2026 and quoted as they are written. No single event page says this out loud, but read four of them side by side and it is hard to miss.

The table

Gone

and no substitute

Bryant Park: no chairs, tables, or plastic ground coverings are permitted on the lawn — sheets, tarps, bags, pads and yoga mats included. What is permitted is fabric on grass.

The glass

Banned

so it picks your cup

Brooklyn Bridge Park prohibits glass bottles at all times. Austin Parks Foundation: no alcohol, styrofoam or glass. Minneapolis: no glass please. What is left is cans, pouches, plastic bottles and tall tumblers.

The chair

Varies

or it costs you the front

Brooklyn Bridge Park allows no chairs on the lawn other than wheelchairs. Santa Rosa lets you bring one, then seats you further back or to the sides, because the area up front is for blankets.

Or on the ground you already have

$14.95

nothing driven in

A 5.2″ moulded base, about 3.6 ounces, that the drink stands in. You set it down and you pick it up. There is nothing to stake, clamp, strap or unfold.

Sources: bryantpark.org · brooklynbridgepark.org · austinparks.org · minneapolisparks.org · srcity.org. All fetched 2 September 2026.

—What “begins at dusk” commits you to

The lawn opens at five. It is properly dark by nine.

Dusk is astronomy, not a showtime
The National Weather Service puts the end of civil twilight at the moment the sun’s centre sits 6 degrees below the horizon — up to that point, it says, artificial lighting is often not needed. Past it you need a light to do anything detailed. That is the same threshold the projector needs, which is why the film cannot be given a 7:10.
It lands at a different clock time every week
In Chicago the same series goes dark at 9:03 on the Fourth of July and at 7:58 on the last Saturday in August. Further south you get less grace: Houston’s window from sunset to dark is 27 minutes where Minneapolis gets 36.
And the lawn opens hours before the film
Bryant Park opens the lawn at 5pm for an 8pm movie. Brooklyn Bridge Park opens at 6 for a movie at sundown and tells you to arrive early to get through bag check and stake out a spot. So it is roughly three hours on grass, and only the last ninety minutes of it is the movie.
The pre-show hour is where the packing actually gets tested
That is the stretch when the snacks are open, the kids are up and moving, and there is still no table. Then the light goes, and everything after that happens by feel.

Place	Date, 2026	Sunset	Dark enough	Gap
Chicago	Sat 4 July	8:29 pm	9:03 pm	34 min
Chicago	Sat 29 August	7:29 pm	7:58 pm	29 min
Minneapolis	Sat 18 July	8:54 pm	9:30 pm	36 min
Houston	Sat 18 July	8:22 pm	8:49 pm	27 min

Sunset and end-of-civil-twilight figures from the U.S. Naval Observatory Astronomical Applications Department, for 2026, fetched 2 September 2026. Twilight definition: weather.gov. Lawn-opening times: bryantpark.org · brooklynbridgepark.org, fetched 2 September 2026.

—Does it actually work

It wobbles. Then it settles.

Somebody crosses the blanket in the dark and the fabric ripples underneath. The base is 5.2 inches across, so the drink and the base move as one piece and come back level instead of pivoting on a two-and-a-half-inch can bottom.

Filmed indoors on a couch cushion — not on a lawn, and we are not going to tell you it was. It is the softest surface we have on camera, and the thing it shows is the thing a blanket does: the fabric moves, the base rocks, the drink comes back upright. Footage on real grass at a real screening does not exist yet, and when it does it will go here.

A full can standing in a bone-coloured Steadi on a couch cushion, a folded blanket over the sofa back behind it. — Real footage, one take, no cuts.

—How it holds

Width, and the ground under it.

The base

5.2 inches across and fixed. It moves the edge the drink would have to tip over much further out, so the whole thing has to lean much further before it goes.

The fins

Six of them, holding the bottom inch. Cans and bottles slide on over the top; tumblers and glasses drop in through the fins. Drink and base then rock as one piece.

The ground

The blanket is not what holds it up. The ground under the blanket is. The base is rigid and does not change shape to match what it is standing on, so it works on the part of the ground that actually carries its weight — firm level turf, a cooler lid, a tray. Over a dip or a root, part of the foot is carrying nothing and you get less of the benefit. Press your palm flat where you are about to put the drink and you will find the hollow before the drink does.

A macro photograph of the flared base of a terracotta Steadi, showing the moulded STEADI mark. — The flare, close. That width is the entire mechanism.

See the packs — from $14.95

—The object

One piece of rubber. Nothing to unfold, nothing to lose.

No stake, no spike, no clamp, no strap, no tray, no batteries, no parts. It goes in the tote next to the bug spray, comes out on the blanket, and goes back in at the end of the night. It rinses under a tap.

Base5.2″ — fixed
Height2.8″
Opening at rest1.64″
Weightabout 3.6 oz
Fins6, from 0.92″ up, flexing to 3.15″
MaterialShore 85A TPU
Driven into the groundNothing
HardwareNone
CleaningRinse, wipe, or dishwasher

A hand carrying a can seated in a terracotta Steadi, holding it by the flared base. — One hand on the base, drink still in it. That is the carry from the wagon to the blanket.

—What seats and what does not

Bases between two and three inches. Measure the bottom, not the rim.

A standard 12 oz can is 2.6 inches across the bottom. A Stanley Quencher 40 oz is 3.1 and seats snug — it goes in with a push rather than dropping. A mug with a handle does not seat at all: the handle lands exactly where the fins grip, and that is a straight no. A stemmed wine glass is the same no, for the same reason.

Search by container

Every width below comes from a published specification, not from us. Where a spec is uncertain, the answer says so.

Container

Or the width across the bottom

Width in inches

A width across the bottom of the cup, in inches.

Six cans of different heights and widths standing in terracotta Steadi bases on a kitchen counter. — Six can formats, one base. It is the bottom inch that decides, never the rim.

Without a tape measure

A standard sticky note is three inches square. A cup standing on one with its base inside the paper will seat. You can settle it at the kitchen counter on a Wednesday, before anything gets loaded into the wagon.

Anything that overhangs, or anything borderline — hello@steadilabs.com reaches a person, and the answer will be honest either way, including a no.

—Where they end up

The cooler lid, the flat lid of the bin, and the patch you found with your palm.

The best home for a drink at a screening is whatever rigid, level thing you already carried in — a hard-sided bin with a flat lid, a serving tray, a cutting board, the cooler lid if the cooler got past the gate. Those are the surfaces this is best on, and the reason to bring one is the same reason to bring this.

Then the blanket itself, over turf that takes your weight without giving. Then a camp chair’s flat arm, where you have a chair and the park allows one. Wooden park tables and the tailgate of a parked car are the easy ones; those are flat and level and already there.

Twelve colours, one per drink, and that is not decoration. On a crowded blanket after dark, a colour each is how everybody finds their own cup without turning a light on and ruining the row behind you.

—The fixes, and the rule that blocks each

The spiked holder is not a bad product. It is the wrong venue.

If you already bought the stake-in-the-ground kind and quietly stopped bringing it, here is the part nobody connects. Its entire mechanism is anchoring, and a lot of parks prohibit anchoring. Every quote in the right-hand column is the park’s own published wording, looked up on 2 September 2026. We are not pricing anything against ourselves here, because price is not what decides it.

What people try	What it needs	What the park says
A stake-in-the-ground drink holder	Ground it can go into, deep enough to stand up straight	Bend Park & Recreation District: stakes over six inches are not allowed in the parks. Oregon City: no stakes are to be driven into the ground for any reason without prior permit approval and locating. Bismarck Parks: driving stakes can hit sprinkler, electrical and gas lines, and you are responsible for all costs of repairing the damage — and buried sprinkler piping mostly cannot be located in advance.
A folding side table	That tables are allowed at all	Bryant Park: no chairs, tables, and/or plastic ground coverings are permitted on the lawn.
A tarp or foam pad, to make a firm patch	That ground coverings are allowed	Bryant Park names sheets, tarps, bags, pads and yoga mats and bans all of them. Plenty of parks allow them — see the note under this table.
The camp chair’s own mesh holder	A chair, permitted, and a cup the loop actually fits	Brooklyn Bridge Park allows no chairs on the lawn other than wheelchairs. Santa Rosa allows a chair but seats you further back or to the sides, with the blanket area up front.
The Outdoor Movie Cup Holder	$14.95 · four for $39.95, $9.99 each	Nothing. It is not staked, clamped, strapped or unfolded — it is set on the ground and picked back up. None of the rules quoted on this page has anything to say about it, because there is no mechanism in it to prohibit.

If your park does allow a tarp or a ground pad, bring one. It costs a few dollars, it is the single biggest upgrade in the wagon, and it makes everything else on this list work better — this one included, because a firm flat layer is exactly what the base wants under it. This page is about the parks that have already said no to it.

Sources: bendparksandrec.org · orcity.org · bisparks.org · bryantpark.org · brooklynbridgepark.org · srcity.org. All fetched 2 September 2026 and quoted as published. Rules differ park to park and season to season; read your own event page before you pack.

—Get one

One per drink in play, and a colour each.

Count the drinks, not the people — the kids’ cups are the ones that go over, and they go over first. Most families take four. Free shipping on all of them.

The colours do real work once the light is gone. Give everybody their own and nobody is patting around the blanket by phone light looking for a cup.

Checkout is handled by Steadi Labs — the company that makes The Outdoor Movie Cup Holder. Secure checkout at steadilabs.com. Free shipping on every order, and 90 days to change your mind, used is fine.

—From people who bought one

One of these says picnic blanket. None of them says movie in the park.

Verbatim, unedited, not filtered by rating — and said plainly: not one review in the corpus was written about a screening in a park. These four are the closest it comes. A picnic blanket. A state park picnic on lawn chairs. An outdoor bench and a cooler lid. A wobbly patio table. Everything else in them happened in somebody’s living room, and you should read them that way.

A black Steadi on a grandstand bench holding a canned drink in a glitter koozie, a spectator's leg beside it, at an outdoor race — Photograph sent in by Holly J with this review.

★★★★★

Our seats are metal benches with a slight slope towards the back, making it impossible to set down any type of drink. We were able to use these for a 20oz bottle with a koozie on it as well as a slim can with an insulated Brumate on it! They worked perfect, holding our drinks on the bench & on our cooler.

Holly J · June 2026Photo from the buyerPhoto from the buyerPhoto from the buyerPhoto from the buyerPhoto from the buyerPhoto from the buyerPhoto from the buyer

★★★★★

The design for this is amazing. Simple and highly effective. No longer worrying about knocking over my drink from the side table or setting down my drink on a picnic blanket.

Obsessed · July 2026

★★★★★

My Steadi order arrived just as we were packing for our annual three generation family vacation. So into the car they went. Our time away is at a rental property and preventing spills in someone else’s house seems like a good goal. Additionally, most of our time is spent outside, at the house and nearby parks. The Steadi has been popular for sitting out under a pop up canopy on lawn chairs and at a picnic at a nearby state park. We brought the four we ordered and have already placed an order for more since family members have claimed the first ones!

Haila Buskirk · May 2026

★★★★★

They are great! They work very well in keeping the soda cans from falling over and spilling on the bed & couch when the three Beagles and one Border Collie jump on or off. They also stay steady on the little wobbly patio table outside.

Susan Ilkenhans · May 2026

18 more, photographed by the people who bought them

Sent in with their reviews. Tap any one to read it. Different rooms, different drinks, different colours — none of them staged by us.

A slice of one product-wide corpus — reviews of the Steadi, not of this page and not of this event. Two of the four are trimmed to the passage that describes the surface; the full corpus is published live, unedited.

—The limits, in one place

What it does not do.

It is not spill-proof — nothing is.
It resists tipping by widening the footprint the drink has to lean past. A running foot that catches it square still wins, on a lawn the same as anywhere else. If somebody kicks it, it goes.
The ground has to carry it.
The base is rigid, 5.2 inches across, and it does not change shape to match what is under it. On firm level turf, a tray or a cooler lid the whole foot is doing work. Over a dip, a root or a gopher hole under the blanket, part of it is not, and you get less of the benefit. Palm first, drink second.
It attaches to nothing.
No stake, no spike, no clamp, no strap, no adhesive, no suction. That is precisely why the staking rules do not touch it — and it also means nothing is holding it down. It stands there, and it lifts off.
A handled mug does not seat, and neither does a stemmed glass.
The handle lands exactly where the fins grip, and that includes two-handled mugs. A stem cannot seat in the fins at all. Both are honest noes, not borderline.
It does not float. It sinks.
Worth knowing if your series is on a lakefront lawn and the blanket is near the water.
It does not insulate and it does not seal.
It is a base, not a koozie and not a lid. Lids are still the thing that saves the blanket, and condensation still runs down the outside of the can.

—If it turns out to be the wrong thing

Ninety days. Used is fine. Nothing goes back in a box.

A summer series runs for weeks, so take it to three or four actual screenings before you decide — that is what ninety days is for. If the answer is no, hello@steadilabs.com reaches a person and the money comes back: no form, no restocking fee, no questions about condition, and nothing to pack up or post back.

You order. Free shipping, every order, always.
It leaves Orange, California within one business day.
USPS, 2–5 days, tracked.

—Who makes it

Steadi Labs. One person, in Orange, California.

The steel injection mould open in the machine, the cavity that forms the base visible. — The mould, in the machine.

Scott Rodriguez at a workbench, holding a terracotta Steadi and looking at it, with shipping boxes behind him. — Scott, who makes them.

Scott Rodriguez made the first one after a full drink went over on a soft cushion with three kids under three in the house. A blanket over turf is a less forgiving version of the same problem, not an easier one, and the limits above say exactly where it runs out rather than pretending it does not.

We make one thing and we make all of it here — the moulds, the material, the colour runs, everything within about three and a half miles of the shop.

Steadi Labs — veteran founded and veteran owned
Designed, injection moulded, picked, packed and shipped in Orange, California
Patent pending
100% BPA free
5.2 inches across the foot, about 3.6 ounces

— Scott, Steadi Labs

—Questions

Straight answers.

Will it stand up on a blanket on grass?

On a firm, level patch, yes — the base spreads the load across 5.2 inches instead of balancing on the two-and-a-half-inch bottom of a can, so the fabric moving does not take the drink with it. Over a dip or a root it is doing less for you, because part of the foot is carrying nothing. Press your palm flat where you are about to set it down; you will feel the hollow straight away.

We tried the stake-in-the-ground kind and it didn’t work.

Two things were against it. In dry August ground it will not go in; in soft watered turf a shallow one leans. And plenty of parks cap or ban stakes outright — Bend Park & Recreation District allows nothing over six inches, Oregon City requires prior permit approval for any stake at all. A product whose whole mechanism is anchoring was being sold for venues that frequently prohibit anchoring.

Will it hold a 40 oz Stanley?

Yes. The Quencher H2.0 40 oz measures about 3.1 inches at the base, inside the range the fins flex to. It is a snug fit rather than a drop-in — it seats with a push, and then it is seated.

What about the kids’ cups?

Measure the bottom, not the lid. A 12 oz can is 2.6 inches and a lot of kids’ tumblers sit in the same range. Anything under 1.85 inches across the bottom is an honest no — too narrow for the fins to hold — and the width checker above will tell you before you order.

Is it allowed at the park?

We cannot speak for the staff at your event. What we can say is which rules it does not trip: it is not a chair, not a table, not a ground covering and not a stake, so none of the wording quoted on this page reaches it. Bag checks are common — Bryant Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park both inspect bags — and what is in the bag is a 3.6-ounce piece of moulded rubber.

Does it work on the cooler lid?

That is one of the better surfaces for it, because a cooler lid is flat and rigid. The moulded TPU has some tack to it, so it does not skate around on a lid that is beading with condensation the way a bare can does. Not fixed to it — just not sliding.

Can I put it in the dishwasher?

Yes. Shore 85A TPU, 100% BPA free. Rinse it under the tap, wipe it, or put it on the top rack when you unpack the wagon.

How many do I need?

One per drink actually in play, which in most families is four. The four-pack works out at $9.99 each, and colours are chosen per unit — which is how everybody keeps track of their own cup after dark.

Why does this site only sell one thing?

Because it is one thing. It is a Steadi, made by Steadi Labs in Orange, California, and checkout finishes at steadilabs.com where the company lives.

—Still deciding

$14.95 for a piece of rubber.

It is. It is also the only thing in the table above that no park rule on this page speaks to, and ninety days covers being wrong about it — used, with nothing to post back, after three or four screenings.

I already haul a wagon full of stuff.

It is 2.8 inches tall and about 3.6 ounces, one solid piece with no batteries, no stakes and no parts to lose. It lives in the tote between screenings and rinses under the tap when it comes home.

It’s dark by the time we actually need it.

That is the argument rather than the objection. Twelve colours, one per person, is how you find your own cup at 9:40 without switching a light on and lighting up the row behind you.

Won’t a kid just knock it over anyway?

A foot that catches it square wins — that is written in the limits above and we are not going to soften it. What the width is for is the other thing: the fabric shifting under it when somebody crosses the blanket, which is what happens far more often.

No glass, no tables. Bring a blanket.

Every line on that flyer removes a surface.

The table

The glass

The chair

Or on the ground you already have

The lawn opens at five. It is properly dark by nine.

It wobbles. Then it settles.

Width, and the ground under it.

One piece of rubber. Nothing to unfold, nothing to lose.

Bases between two and three inches. Measure the bottom, not the rim.

Search by container

Or the width across the bottom

Without a tape measure

The cooler lid, the flat lid of the bin, and the patch you found with your palm.

The spiked holder is not a bad product. It is the wrong venue.

One per drink in play, and a colour each.

One of these says picnic blanket. None of them says movie in the park.

18 more, photographed by the people who bought them

What it does not do.

Ninety days. Used is fine. Nothing goes back in a box.

Steadi Labs. One person, in Orange, California.

Straight answers.

$14.95 for a piece of rubber.

I already haul a wagon full of stuff.

It’s dark by the time we actually need it.

Won’t a kid just knock it over anyway?

Fabric over grass, in the dark, is the surface the rules leave you.