Point is kids these days dont want to cruise. There is just too much else to do. Its a fact. Cruising became illegal here in GA back when I was 18, and to be honest, if we had the same stupid bullshit video games and 5000 tv channels and the internet when I was their age, I would prolly have never turned a wrench or dragged on the street..or cruised to find a race for a couple dollars so I could gas the car up and eat out. Cheers and beers Hodge
The break down of Moral's over the last 30 yrs. Kicking God out of school's 40+ year's ago was the start of the massive decline of this country. It's a fond memory for some.
Cruising died because of all of the distractions kids have had over the past 25 or so years, amongst many other things mentioned. Back in the '70s and early '80s, there was no internet, home computers, texting, cellphones, or any of that crap. Kids and young adults hit the strip and cruised on a Friday and/or Saturday night to hang out, street race, cruise, and pick up girls! Cars are just transportation devices for the vast majority of kids these days. At that time, I had the opportunity to cruise many of the great cruising spots in the US, like Van Nuys Blvd in Van Nuys/Pacoima; Colfax in Denver; the Puyallup Loop in Washington State; Sacramento; North Avenue in Grand Junction, Colorado; Air Depot and Broadway in Midwest City & Moore, OK, and many other really great weekend cruise spots in big and small towns. Back then, there was much more respect for people and their property. That has gone away. And with that, the trust of city officials, the cops, and the public in general. And, really, how ridiculous is it to see a bunch of 40 - 70 year-olds cruising a boulevard somewhere, acting like it's 1968 again? Or 1978? We had our fun the way we did back then. Cruising is not a spontaneous thing these days, but almost always an organized part of an overall car event somewhere. Not a weekly thing. Just occasionally. Times are different. I feel fortunate to have been born when I was and experience real cruising in what I consider the end of the cruising heyday. Just get in your car and enjoy the ride, wherever that ride may take you. If a cruise night is part of that enjoyment, great! If driving down a two-lane highway on a Sunday afternoon out away from the big city does it for you, wonderful! If sitting at a car show somewhere trips your trigger, magnificent! Enjoy the ride, whatever you do!
well the h@l# with that pedal to the medal and f%c& it all cruising and street racing is not dead cheers
Still cool in some places here in Indy. For a thread that was going to be dumped from the git-go this this one sure has a lot of wind.
most kids these days don't seem to get it, "Like why cruise around for no reason". Cruising started to die with the invention of the strip mall, no longer were people walking along main street and in my town theres seems to be no nightlife except around pubs or clubs. People seem less interested in cars except as a means of transport and they wanna do it as cheap as possible. I cruise everyday, to work , doing the groceries or visiting mates , daytime is the only time i can guarantee i can give whiplash to a pedestrian. The sound still reverberates of shops, and i can see my kemps reflection in the windows easier, maybe nightime cruising is dead (unless its a holiday destination), but daytime can be just as cool.
You know I haven't seen booze mentioned here (or I missed It) but when I was young in the 60's,cruzin allways included beer. And then now you get popped for a DUI or a DWI it's gonna cost you big bucks. I don't condone it but that's the way it was.
It use to be nice to go out to where ever it was that cruizers would park their rides and everyone would just walk around and check em all out. Now a days you see all this "NEW CRAP" done up in all kinds of crazy ways to stand out from the other "NEW CRAP". I can just picture it now if we had some place to meet at. Some nice H.A.M.B vehicle parked next to one of these pieces of shit.... There are H.A.M.B friendly cars out there and every once in a while you come across one that is going in a different direction than you. That's what i miss seeing, all these new builds that are very H.A.M.B friendly but we only see them passing by. We don't get to tap into each other's brain and find out how they did this and that.
OK boys and cars. I like my style, hot rod, and maybe the guy next to me has a new $75000,00 Mustang. I really don't give a shit I'm out to have a good time.
If you miss cruizing. do something aboat it, organize it in your town or city, invite your kids, make them a part of your social life, tell them they can invite their friends, talk to your city concil, tell them that it will bring revenue to their bussines distric.talk to shop owners and get them behind you . talk to the cops, tell them you will have organizers that will help, so it doesen't put an extra load on them. Do it with several car clubs in your area, so the work load is less on everyone. It's up to us to make cruizing popular again.
I think its because with every push of the pedel we feel THE MAN rapping us for $4.10 a gallon. FUCK IT HURTS!!!
And climbing. I'm waiting for the new $5 bill, it's supposed to have "good for one gallon of gas" printed on it. Oh well, I drove my A the farthest the last time the gas prices rose by a dollar, guess it's time for a road trip.
I guess It's how you define cruising. Here in Victoria in the summer on most Saturday evenings lots of car guys drive their rides to a local shopping center parking lot, park and hang out. There are all types of cars/trucks, many are HAMB friendly, some muscle cars, VW's etc. Very few rice burners. Later in the evening most times some will get in their cars and cruise thru the downtown area. Almost all are well past the teenage years, and are not doing a loop over and over like the old days.
gas prices!!! gas has always been an issue no matter what time 70s, 80,s 90,s ..i remember calling my friends and getting money together for race fuel or just regular old petro. the kids and adults today just dont have one key thing ..time!!.. everyone wants to be done quick, get going, keep it moving ... the whole part of cruzn was to hang out ..just like now people wanna complain about it but they could organize and start something but ,that takes TIME you think your first try youll get 100 cars ? not likely mabe 5, but you keep going ,as far as im concerned i think a car guy is a car guy stop the stupid school yard car bashing if a guys prostreet and your "traditional" so f-ing what.. street rod or the dreaded "R" "A" "_" rod who cares i under stand the ricer bashing but thats only cause that is what the youth is being fed from media the same as we were all i.e. california kid ,corvette summer ,vanishing point and so on ..truth is i bought a nova in high school for 600 bucks w/ a v8 ..try and find that now. a honda civic 600 bucks ? easy find.. were just all guilty of it we want the stuff for ourselves because thats what we know.. they have to be introduced
Okay guy's the problem is we are spoiled rotten, I just had dinner with one of my hot rod friends from Germany, over there , gas is 9 bucks a gallon. they only have two good months of weather a year, yet guys drive across hundreds of miles , through different countries , just to go to a show. And we can't spend the time to organize a cruize in our own town, you can cruize for a couple of hours on ten bucks of gas, and to me, it beats staying home , petting your car in your garage and whinning aboat the good old days. Shure it's work to organize something, but in the end, it's worth it, and we all benefit from it.
Just call some buds, meet somewere, drive to somewhere else, your cruising, pretty simple!!! Every town has stuff going on here in the summer, hell you can go from cruise night to cruise night and throw a dinner in there if you would like.
Lets face it, there are guys that are motor heads...and guys that are not. And if you are...you knew it by the time you were at least 10 to 12 yrs. old. And in the mid to late 60's you wouldn't even think about buying a newer car...you had to have an old one you could work on and make it your own the first thing was the wheels usually reversed rims with baby moons...then primer..,dual exhaust with glass packs, and what ever it took to get it to the right stance for that time period. Then you were ready to go cruising...now cruising to me is a group of cars that hang together wherever they go. But to me it was profiling...you'd go to all the places people would hang out, like drive through hamburger joints...so you could show everyone what you've been doin' to your ride. It was a lot of fun at 18cents a gallon. I seems to me that these days there are not as many guys into cars like we were. There's still a lot of em' out there...and I'm glad for that...it just dosen't seem that there are not as many. The problem is you can ride around in a new car your dad bought you...but you can't profile in a ford focus, or a honda civic. Anyway thats just my .02 cents. All I know is I love old cars and motorsickles...and have for over 50 yrs.
Gotta remember, too, that even in the days of thirty cent gas, a guy was making seventy five cents an hour!!! That is over a third of an hour's wage then. Today, gas is $3.50 here, and the "minimum wage" is $7.75 - nearly HALF the hourly wage per gallon now. Balance that out with cars that get at least twice the mileage than cars did then, and money-wise, the outcome is the same. So, the price of gas now is only psychological - you'd been as broke back then as you are today. Remember when gas hit a buck a gallon in 1979? And you were making $1.65 an hour if you were a min wage employee? That was nearly sixty percent of your hourly wage spent for fuel!
If you were 16 in 1985 then you wouldnt be asking me to prove anything. I just happened to be 16 in 1985, which means I lived then, and live now, and the difference is immeasurable. I dont have to prove anything. If you want to be a punk and argue about everything then apologize later on feel free, but Im not here to argue with kids who dont know anything about things but love chiming in...even when it on a thread they wished was closed, that hasnt been closed because a lot of other guys on this board are enjoying it. "Fact" when I was 16 I didnt know ANYONE with a computer, or chatted, or watched movies on demand or spent hours and hours playing video games...I knew kids that worked, studied, played sports street raced, trained for stuff... There was three sports in school, basketball, baseball and football, i hated all three so I worked or raced. Now in school, we have Lacross, soccer, golf, a track team, and two of each for boys and girls... There is a strip mall on everycorner, kids go hang at the mall... ya see, more to do now as apposed to then. Shit, my kids film/edit and make there own little mini movies, they make there own graphics programs there is more to do now for kids then when I was there age, and same fo rthe gen before me...I dont need to prove anything, shit is happening right in front of me...its a fact. I sure as hell would be street racing for money if I was a teenager today, I would be getting paid to build websites for older guys who cant figure that shit out.
it evens out if you think about it, I couldnt hardly afford gas when I was 16 either, I still cant hardly afford it... This past 9 months I put 10,000 miles on my harley...and dont get me started on minimum wage! Cmon guys, remember when you would work for $2.35 an hour? Every penny I made back then went to cruising/racing...and I couldnt bootleg my music I had to actually pay for it... I dont think really that cruising has gotten too expensive, or that its totally dead...I bet half the cops today in GA dont even know they could give a ticket for it. Really I was looking for two things when we cruised, one was a chick, the other was a race...I dont need either now like most of the rest of us, we let it die because the other stuff we get at a show. And it legal.
Cruising is not totally dead. I had to go over to my parents house last night. Stopped at Wendy's and cruised the long way over to their house. Had fun too.
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