We have shows & get togethers, but I still drive up & back a few times on my old cruise strip every now & then when I'm out toolin' around...no cruising going on...just me in my own little world in an ornery old hot rod. Kinda sad, but kinda cool at the same time. Riding with a lot of memories of the old road, and old times, but I'm still kickin' and now I get to listen to the whine of a blower that I couldn't afford back then and I think the old road is still glad to see me.
I cruise all over my county in my 56 Dodge pickup....just fill 'er up and go....no planned route no timetable to adhere to.....just cruzin'....putting on at least 50 to 75 miles each time I go.....always cruise with my bride along side, and never with other vehicles.
I was just at a car show here in Orlando and was talking with some really cool old timers and we were talking about the exact same thing. No one wants to cruise any more they just want to park. All I can say is that once I get my Ford presentable (aka running reliably) I fully plan to cruise down town Orlando every chance I get.
Nowadays it seem I go out cursing instead of cruising. Price of gas, dick head drivers, pot holes, construction, crap flying off trucks, wayward shopping carts, SH*&%$T!!!
Same here. Driving has become a fearful game of avoiding hefty fines/ accidents/ litigation. And $6.00 a gallon.
We used to cruise the oceanfront strip back in the '80s. Everyone was relatively well behaved and I rarely saw anything going on that warranted a police response. Then in the early '90s a new "urban" element started showing up for a non-city sponsored "festival" which very quickly turned into something that required a National Guard response. Since then, the city has placed laws allowing only 2 passes up and down the strip every so many hours, police presence has at least quadrupled, and it's still more dangerous than ever. 30 years ago, we could be on the strip all night long and not worry about anything. Now, I wouldn't dream of taking my wife down there to hang out or cruise for fear of getting mugged or car jacked. Eh, times change I guess.
I cruise mine every chance I get... I do wish there was more actual cruises though. It always feels good leaving a show with a group of bad ass cars all together.
A few things that contributed to the closing of cruising locally were the gang problem, loud or super loud sound equipment in cars that a lot of non cruiser find obnoxious. Plus some of the greenie bunch thinks that cruising burns up too much fuel and lets out too many emissions.****************************************************agreed, the complete absents of common sense and respect!
It's funny, I was just talking about this the other day with some friends, When I was a teen, to my early 20's I would be on Noland road in independence every friday and sat night....And it was packed bumper to bumper with kids cruising (having fun) Now those days are gone and No one is out there on the weekends. City also due to a very rich bitch!, who didn't like the noise closed our race track recently. basicly the fun is over!....Kids today are living in the same make believe world you are, And that is the internet world,....Where Know one has to leave their computer screen anymore. I am sure there is some sort of make believe cruising program you can download and not have to get up from your computer. I know the internet is cool and all, but when you stop and think about it...It is really quite sad!...Kids don't play ball anymore they play Xbox....They don't learn shop class, they learn keyboard 101
Beacuse many of the people that started the thing called cruising are dead !!!! Also today what are kids gonna cruise in the folks minvan or worse yet a Prius????
Just a few weeks ago, I took a 207 mile cruise from Northport, MI down to Holland, MI with a 1/2 way stop in Manistee, MI for a car show. We were in a 1955 Olds Rocket 88 (friend's dad's car) and his 1969 Oldsmobile CS. He was averaging somewhere around 14 MPG with factory 350 with a tuned Q-jet 4 barrel. By the way, all this talk of "kids" - I will be 26 years in July, and vintage steel is the only way for me. I am going to be working on a 1963 Caddy this summer, so if you are in the Chicago burbs, I am absolutely up for a cruise. I will be out at the Road Block (sans car unfortunately...) but would love to meet some HAMB-ers!
It was just different back then. Most of us had jobs and drivers licenses at a younger age. While we were encouraged to go to college and get good grades it is not like today where every kid is pushed very hard to go to college. Because of this most kids parents will not allow them to work, instead they want them focusing on the schoolwork. This means they can't go out and purchase and old beater to cruise in and must borrow the parents car. (not to mention most parents would not let their kid drive some of the old beaters we had) The same parents who would prefer to have the child home and studying instead. Another reason is all the focus on extracurricular activities. Most of the parents I know complain about all the time they spend running little Betsy to choir, dance, soccer, music, etc. Kids just don't have the time anymore. I noticed the other day that the malt shop that we used to turn around at, and therefore spend large sums of money at, has been closed for many years. Pretty sad when you think about it.
With the L.A. traffic, the only time I cruise, is to either a car show or early Sunday morning along the coast.
Localy the cops banned cruising in the mid 90's on the strip that had been home to the traditional cruising scene, made it a $500 fine. They used a feble excuse of "gang problems"....only there weren't any gangs to found. Now days it is still illegal to cruise the strip, but cruising is just a forgotten memory to those who remember. Kids these days don't what cruising is. I imagine gas prices don't help either.
Cruise? The kids would have to put down their cell phones and ipads and actualy interact face to face! They wouldnt know what to do
Im 25 and love to cruise. I hit all the local cruise ins every chance i get but i find myself realizing everytime that im one of the few under the age of 50 with a hot rod. All the other kids are in honda civics. A kid that wasnt lucky enough to be raised around hot rods like i was just doesnt see it being possible to build a hot rod financially so they opt for the $1,500 honda civic. It drives me nuts but then again i understand how a typical teenager just cant afford a hot rod but man how i wish everybody was riding around in a A model or shoebox just hangin out.
then another problem is most younger guys my age cant hang out anywhere without smokin weed,drinkin and fightin and thats the main issue. My generation is STUPID and dependent and cant grasp the idea of BUILDING a car or actually getting a little dirt and grease on there saggy pants. I spend multiple nights a week under a car on my drive and people look at me like im nuts.
Yup, I'm 29 and I'll say that is accurate. When I bought my 50' I had a dozen people who offered to help me work on it. When it came time to get under the hood and get dirty not a single one could be found.
My Dad would tel his co workers I had more mileage on my engine taking it out of my car than I did driving it. One Saturday I was up at 7:00Am, I pulled the motor to put in a new clutch, pulled the tranny to clean 13 years of crud off of it and repaint it, put in new brakes and had it all back together by midnight. I had grease and grime from head to toe, even some under my arms! I was tired as hell cause I did it all by myself but ,wow was I satisfied with myself. My car in High School was a beater by most standards but it was mine! and I drove the hell out of it and cruised all over Dallas in it, Street raced it ,got lucky a few times in it too. Most cruise spots over the years have been closed down due to the traffic and racing. Here in Sugar land we have a few spots where gear heads gather on Friday and Saturday evenings but nothing like it was back in the late 60s. If it was not for the crowd at one place on Saturday, I don't know how they could stay open. Peole begin arriving around 4:00 PM and the lot might hold 60 cars? There are a lot of folks that get a bite to eat there then go out and look at our cars. I guess we all have to just keep working at bringing it back in some form. Mike
Vasos's Bar-B-Q? I haven't been there since my accident a few years ago. Maybe I'll scoot up there this weekend. I live about 7-8 miles away. I know they did it on Friday evenings, do they do it Saturdays as well?
I know, Right!! I had some rare glimpses of young kids driving some muscle around my town about a year or so but never saw them again. There was one particular kid I saw driving a red skylark at least every summer, but don't know where he's gone this season. I'm always so sad to run errands into town and never see anyone to relate to. It's all about the parties and drugs. It just makes you feel like the only one. The closest I'll get to cruising with fellas are those I watch on Tv.
its Alive and well in idaho almost every friday nite all through the summer . and some really cool events . northwest motor fest big jack put on a really cool show check it out www.rpmprod.com
I remember taking the 2.5 hour drive to Berlin Tpk in the 80s. I had cousins out there who used to cruise that strip. It was a great scene in CT.
We had a cruise night in our town. Everything was great the first couple of years. Just 30 or 40 of us old guys with our traditional hot rods, customs and american iron. After a while the guys with their hats on sideways started showing up with BMWs, Hondas and VWs. Language issues and fights caused the police to shut it down. Now the town wants the hot rods back because all the local restaurants and businesses are loosing money. Nope, its over!
Myself and a few other H.A.M.B.ers here in Phoenix have been trying to re-invigorate the once leviathan cruise spot of Central Ave. in Phoenix. I MOVED to this neighborhood 25 years ago because at the time I was spending 3 nights a week here, so why not? The police shut the whole thing down 20 years ago, but we have never had signs posted or ordinances passed to prohibit it. Sad thing though, we have never bee able o draw many people, and those that do come out want to do the lawn chairs and sitting thing... I think we have a few factors going on here, The first is that regardless of age, so many people that are into cars now have become so in the last 10-15 years and don't remember what "the good old days" were like. They have come into this in the parking lots and hoods up age that we have experienced for the last couple of decades. I can say "lets go for a ride" and I get strange looks... Sad really, but what they are doing is what they have seen on T.V. since Hot rodding in general has become acceptable. Gas prices are a concern. I used to float from cruise scene to cruise scene in this huge city, and never think twice about it. This was even back when my "Street Bug's" 2274cc dual IDA'd drivetrain was set on kill and knocking out a solid 4MPG on race gas. These days I think twice about rolling across town to 35th and Northern ten miles away. Another factor for us here is that literally year 'round, you can go to about 10-12 cruise nights in different parts of this huge city. Yes, it slows down in the summer when it still 105 at 8PM, but there is still tons to do around here. Our population in this town has almost doubled in the last two decades. The final thing is age based. The dead flat truth is that the young guys today just don't give damn about cars, at least in the quantities that my generation did. I knew the end was near back in about '94 when I observed a high school getting out for the day and noticed kids jumping into white four door sedans like they were happy... The younger guys will come back to that and bitch that I'm just an older guy making fun of your generation, and maybe I am a bit. See, at my high school in '80, if you DIDN'T drive something cool, you were relegated to out cast status IMMEADIATELY!!! There had to be something horribly wrong with your /Mustang/Camaro/Chevelle/Charger/Road Runner/hot rod/V8 Vega/Duster/Dropped and pumped up Street Bug/life, for you to borrow mom's four door, then out of shear respect and anonymity you parked a couple of blocks away and walked. You younger guys don't have that dichotomy these days to contend with, just like my generation didn't spend most of the day staring at their phone. Even the movies of today's generation encourage habits that weren't part of the original vision of cruising. I write quite a bit about running Central and paying my mortgage from the profits of street racing, but unlike the movies, that didn't happen ON Central. That was the meeting spot, that was the pickup location. The actual races happened at industrial locations long after hours, or in worse case lightly traveled side, side, side streets late at night. Dead flat truth is, you let the younger guys hang out with the squirrelly little cars and they do squirrelly little things that even at 19 and full of bravado I would have never even considered, even just in the name of human decency. The next week you have police presence and problems from there on out. This has been a strange trip trying to reintroduce cruising to it's once natural habitat, and I just flat did even think there would be the level of ambivalence that there is. It seemed such a natural thing to do...
There's still a cruse scene here in Houston, but it's dominated by new Hondas, Mustangs and Camaro's. I go tangle with the for a little bit, but only once or twice a year. We have NOTHING in common with each other. So, I started going to a weekly "cruise" that was dominated by power parkers, folding chairs and Vette guys. God, I hate "Vette Guy." I'd go, check out the cars, but after a while, sitting around looking gets boring. My high metabolism kicks in and I have GOT to drive my car. Yesterday, Houston had it's first REALLY good day of the year. It was 72 degrees and I put 95 miles on my T Bucket. Car shows, I don't care if I miss them because I can't stand paying to sit and watch. Funny, when I bring this topic up with my friends, they start telling their stories, but won't get off their asses and get out there. I may not go on the long drives out of town, 3:73 gears are murder on the highway, but I put over 9,000 miles on my T Bucket last year and it was down 3 of those months. Guys, just drive your damn cars. Even if all it is, is a 15 mile run after work. You got to drive them. Either drive them or make them a freaking show car. At least then, you'd have a good excuse for having it sitting.
Here in my Berg the powers that be initiated a anti cruising law more than 30 years ago and they still enforce it..interestingly enough the law's intended target at the time are some of the same adults that still are involved & active with the car scene today. The city now puts on a down town car show on Fathers day once a year but the other 51 weeks of the year cruising the downtown area is strictly prohibited. HRP
You know what is Ironic? At the time the city shut down Central in '93 or so, it was because the cops were "worried about having that many young people in the same place at the same time...". As a then young business owner, I got a hearing with the city council and police to try to intervene and keep stuff alive under the auspicious of the fact that "Yes, if they are all in the same place you will know where they are!!!". Lots of heads shook that evening when I said that, and pointed out that it was allot more "controllable" than individual parties and such. Needless to say, as said above, it got shut down. A couple of weeks ago, just before the holidays I heard a statement on the news about the rise of youth violence and crime, and there was the chief of police saying, "well part of the problem is the valley has gotten so big that all of this is so spread out, that now we deal with lots of small pockets where this problem is prevalent". Vindication, twenty years too late.
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