Hot Rods What did ya do back in your day,local car hop hangout?

" Way Back Story" Taking ya back with me to my younger years in very early 1960s.Thinking back OH NO,How about a story;
Just funny stuff we did wayback;
Back in the very early 60's,@ Hot Shoppies {it was a car hop hang out,with our hotrods,a kind of meeting place on weekends for our CC,so after too many hambrugers and FF plus a shake etc.,we'd get bored and think up a contest or two,this one time it was gross, to see who would find the biggists most stained pair of granny panities hanging on a line in a yard /steal them and bring them back for compairsion ,these were about hr, time limit deals,then we ran winning thing of the hunt up the flagpole { how most of these ended with something up the pole other then a flag,always woundered why we got tosted out of the place so much.? You,know one nite it was most broken up bike,another nite it was biggist landcrab,didn't need to be dead ect. We hung at other places too like The Big Wheel,Pizza Palaces{3 of them around town
}, but only 2 A&Ws,Pizza Padio,but only HotShoppie had a flagpole! My same hotrod years later still hanging out near a flagpole,in Miami Florida .LOL

 

In the late fifties, there were a number of the usual drive inn hang outs in San Diego. The hot ticket was on Imperial Avenue and Federal where there was a live DJ playing in a record store on the weekend. Music was pure rock and roll. You could make dedications with a note to the DJ and everybody would turn their radios up to listen. More than a few dead batteries before the night was over!

 

In the early 70's onward in St John's we hung out at the "Rat Shoppe"...a local Kentucky Fried Chicken (Colonel Saunders) joint wrapped up in an urban legend of having served a snack pack with something other than chicken at some point.
As a result when you went to the Rat Shoppe, the snack packs were referred to as "a Rat"! LoL
Lot was always lined off with cars and the place was actually exceptionally clean...so nobody ever really believed the story.
We also hung out at an old supermarket parking lot where other than the club itself had room and from that lot most of the nights street racing action would be planned out. That lot was referred to as the "Soup" (SOUP-ermarket) or the "General" as that was the actual name of the company that ran the market.

We use that lot again now this last few years...but the Rat Shoppe is now a Mary Browns take out and not as popular becasue its so small and the number of cars has risen beyond its capacity.
Fun times...

 

Dog n' Suds on Dewdney, and the A&W Drive-In, both long gone now, theres an A&W that holds a pretty big "cruise" but its in a different place, and not a Drive-In. We would do the "loop", trying to pick up a race. Leave the "dub", head west down Lougheed, north on 216th, East up Dewdney, south up 224th, the "main drag", and back to the "dub". There would usually be guys parked on 224th as well, you would stop along there every few rounds and bs, pop hoods, make cat calls at the guys with slow cars, ect. You would also stop at Charltons Phillips 66 station across from the "dub", the Super Value parking lot, and Andy Mackenzies Chevron at the corner of 216/Dewdney.
If you did find a serious race, you would head out to Neaves Rd. or down to the North end of Harris Rd. Lots of squaring off at the lights and through 2 gears too. It was pretty wild around here in the sixties/seventies. Just about every weekend night, someone would make a couple passes through town with open headers, and there were some VERY healthy cars around here, it took 11's if you wanted to dance with the big boys, in the seventies, that was a REAL serious street car. I miss that shit.

 

Dog n' Suds....Man I haven't thought about the place in a 100 years....we had one in our town is Southwest Missouri.

 

The late 70-s (high school days) in Greensboro, NC, we didn't have clubs...just guys that liked cars. We would cruise High Point Road from Roy Rogers (now Arby's) to the Putt-Putt (about 2 miles one way). No real hang outs other than Putt-Putt. We would just pull into the closest parking lot and hang out.

Later (early 80's), I started hanging out with the street rod (old) guys a bit. Every Wednesday we met at Bob Petty's Oakwood Drive-In. Good burgers and better lies! Oh, how I miss that little hole-in-the-wall!

 

Wetson's Drive In, Sunrise Highway, Valley Stream

 

One thing I'll mention, just more for the PNW guys who know who Buck Kinney is, this was in my dads time, but in the late fifties, Buck Kinney street-raced in Maple Ridge in a very fast '57 FORD! Yes, that's right, Uncle Buck ran a Y-Block!!!

 

Schorr's drive inn Sunrise Hwy. Oceanside? We street raced on the Jones Beach Causway. Big Bow Wow Crossbay Blvd.

 

1968 Houston, Texas..I lived in Katy working for the Ford dealer, drove into Houston (20 miles) several times a week in my 63 Falcon Sprint 260 4-speed. Hung out at Prince's Hamburgers on S. Main and would cruise down to Allen's landing (hippy hangout) and back down Main to another drive-in restaurant which I can't remember the name of, south of Prince's, near the Warwick Hotel. Lot's of street racing and girl watching. Frankie

 

The Mighty Mo, Queens Chapel Rd. Hyattsville, Md. or the Capital Plaza Hot Shoppes, Rt. 450 between Landover Hills and Bladensburg, Md. Check out the Mighty Mo thread on here. I was driving this at the time.

 

.....

 

Any Dog N' Suds or A&W. More girls at A&W as my older cousins taught me.

 

Cruising North Street on Thursday nights in Pittsfield, MA.


Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

The MOO/Rte #30(Lincoln Hwy)/ Radnor-Villanova !/4mi lights to the bridge....

 

I'm in the middle of my "back in my day" era at the moment. Im 18 years old and the weekends consist of me going to town in my Rod and getting it all cleaned up despite the chipped up paint thats on it now then when night falls i cruise over to a little town called Calhoun City and ride up to "the square" its just this little circular town district where all the other kids ride around and hang out and cruise. They actually cruise around and such! this has been a thing since the 60's from what I've been told. It wouldve been in the 50's if everyone wasnt so broke. (Farm town) anyways i cruise around in the Model A with my buddies in their chevelles and early mustangs and (attempt) to pick up some chicks. Sometimes we success sometimes we dont. It's all for fun anyways. When everybody begins leaving my buddies go out to a backroad straightaway we call "Airport Road" (located next to a crop duster's shop and its nearly a mile long) and do a couple of runs. When we get it out of our system we ease back toward the house and go to bed. I have to say i feel pretty blessed to have the chance to experience something thats kinda close to the old guy's teenage years. I really enjoy it
This is the model a parked at the square on 4th of july weekend... Buddy and i did a side by side burnout for everyone they went nuts over it. Wasnt that much of a challenge to picking up chicks after that, that night!

 

Street racin' on Rt. 50 to the Cheverly exit, George Palmer Hwy., 295 at Blue Plains, V st. Wash. D.C.

 

Peters Drive In, KCKS to set up races, off to speaker rd, noland rd, fairfax to do real street racing.

 

So here is my best Dog n’ Suds hangout story: There was a big open parking lot next the Dn’S where a Realty office had burned and was never rebuilt. On the night in question a local city cop pulled into that lot and ran out all the cruisers that had been parked there minding their own business. He sat there for a few minutes until a deputy sheriff pulled alongside him. They turned their cars off and were just sitting there doing exactly what they had chased us off for doing!

I had pulled over to the Dn'S and just turned the car off when a guy I knew that had a reputation for doing crazy things came up and said he had a plan. He was going to take his Cutlass up the street, come barreling back down into the parking lot in question, do a donut in front of the two cops and head south out town. He said the city limits sign was about 250 feet from parking lot and the County line was less than a half mile away. There would be nothing they could do about it.

This was going to be one of those have to see moments. So we all got out to watch and sure enough, he tore out of the back of the Dn’S and headed North up a back street. I am not sure if it was tire smoke or burning oil but he made an impressive exit. A few minutes later he made an even greater entrance. He must have been doing 60 mph when he flew by us . I remember thinking there is no way he is going to be able to convert that speed into anything resembling a donut. He didn’t.

Apparently he was nearly as ignorant of the laws of physics as he was of laws of jurisdiction and or extradition. He hit the parking lot, whipped the wheel and put the car into a sideways slide just in time to side swipe the Deputies cruiser and slam all three cars tightly together. It still ranks up there as one of the absolute craziest things I have ever seen.

The City cop’s car would not start and so he had to crawl across the seat and exit from the passenger side. The deputy followed him but first had cross over to this car through the windows. The funny part was after they got out, the driver had to crawl through all three cars as his door would not open!

 

hung out at the Dog n' Suds in Clarence, NY, Teds hot dogs in East Aurora, NY or the now famous Anchor bar and Hertal Ave in downtown Buffalo....Never in the same car.....my friends all had their favorite hang out....

 

Early 60's, Friday night......Cruise the BIG A&W on Hawthorne Blvd in Inglewood, Ca.

 

In 60' we would load my 57' Bel Air streeter with Standard White Pump gas, hit the different Bob's Big Boys starting in San Fernando - Van Nuys - Burbank - Glendale then over the hill and come back on Hollywood Blvd

Then stop again in Van Nuys - Fernando looking for some street racing action and chasing skirts too

Van Nuys was the standard one to hang in every nite, boy those were sure good times ' Priceless '

DND

 

I actually stumbled onto this Hemmings article when researching for a prior HAMB thread. Funny thing is, the second photo is about a block from my high school era home and the same house I live in now.
My era of cruising started in 1969 when I got my first car, a 61 Impala then with my second car a 57 BelAir. I started college after graduating from high school in 1972 so the cruising kind of took a back seat. But THE place for many of us in the suburbs was downtown Portland, and Broadway was the place to be.
HEMMINGS CLASSIC CAR
Portland, Oregon, 1973
Daniel Strohl on Feb 13th, 2014


According to the captions for these two David Falconer photos, taken in September and December of 1973 for the Documerica project, we see darkened neon and other commercial signs due to the ongoing energy shortages at that time. But car guys don’t need neon signs to identify the cars and trucks on Southwest Broadway in Portland (above) and Highway 99w just south of town (below).



Complete article
https://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/02/13/portland-oregon-1973/

 

1949-----Scrivners at top of La Brea, & Sally's in Inglewood.

 

Growing up in the big town of Rose Hill, KS in the 70's (about 300 people then) we would drive to Wichita and drag the famous douglas street. Most of the time we would hang out on the south end of Rose Hill at the county yard, we called it titty hills. We told our parents it was called that because of the big piles of road gravel.

 

Late '50s early '60s the best hangouts in the Pasadena/South Houston area was the two Vickie's drive inn's. The one at the corner of Spencer Highway and South Shaver was Vickies #1 and #2 was about ten miles away. All of the cool cars would cruise through several times a night with Lake pipes uncapped, impromptu drag racing down the highway a few miles with the winner returning for bragging rites. Good music, friendly car hops and great memories.
Both locations are now shopping centers and the Humble gas station across from #1 that I worked the night shift is just another memory.

 

So many places and they are all gone now ~ The El Derodo,The Town & Country,The Acorn and on the South Side ~Essie's Drive-in,there was usually a fight on Saturday night at Essie's.

Most of the time was spent driving from one location to another. HRP

 

....................thus the phenomenon we refer to as "cruisin'.

 

I was a teenager in the early '60's in College Park, Ga, a suburb of Atlanta. We spent a lot of time at the local Mickey D's, but if we had the gas money, we would drive into Atlanta and cruise the Varsity. At one time, it was the world's largest drive-in or so they claimed. It was across I-75 from Georgia Tech.

 

In the Late 60's early 70. Spent every weekend cruising Lincoln highway along Massillon and Canton. Always slowing up at a light waiting for competition or tail. Hitting every drive in along the 10 mile route. Fun wild times.
Never remember being harassed by the police. Should have been pulled over nightly.