What is cruising? Your thoughts please

For my two cents cruising isn't happening without that flushing state of mind washing over me – you all know the feeling... I know I'm going cruising when that creative reverence and inner-peace creeps up on me. I can feel the architecture, nature, fashion, music, and everything around me in high-definition; I become a part of space rather than just traveling through space. I become a part of creative production rather than a consumer of it - and evidently that is me being right with the universe.

Now, as far as cruising definition specifics..... In order to maintain the buzz, I have to be in motion a majority of the time though.. If I'm not in motion, I have to be in fairly close proximity of the vehicle, and have the promise of motion reasonably soon. Although cruising requires motion, I think the atmosphere can creep into a restaurant for a bite though – but you can't stay too long... What's been produced with the vehicle is the key, and if you lose association with it for too long you slip into – hanging out... Or even worse - grabbing a bite-to-eat... That ain't the same deal. Yeah, you can yack, and jive, and stretch the truth over a burger in some swanky garbs – but without that close custom made potential-energy slumped near by that aire of swaggered adventure slowly gets bent outta shape. So, time of day, destination, none of that really matters to me, so long as the pace is cool slow-motion.. BUT, and it's just a quirk, I can't cruise in the McMansions..... Those stucco walls of pain are a buzz-kill – that shit's like a black-hole for creativity. It takes a while to wash that off of me, but a malt or cherry-limeade works pretty good. Both have about the same timing as Pepto-Bismol. The best cruising is either around nature, or in aged urban environments – it's kinda like wine. For cruising to feel authentic I need that standing the test of time cultural magnitism. Now, music can kill it too... Again, that stucco McMansion culture can't creep in or I'll need to refill my malt... Only tunes with some grit, some truth, intellectual depth, or (once again) aged time tested cool. You see where this is going right?

 

Grim...a convergence of the Zen state and the Zoroastrian plain. Duuude!

 

Cruisin' was all about chasing girls. And trying not to get caught with what ever cheap ass beer you could score at age 17. I don't even think cruising would be an option if I were a young man now. Gas is $3.00 a gal. That would put a damper on driving that same 2 mile stretch of road for 3 hours. Can you imagine how it would sound now. Instead of the roar of real cars. It would be that fart sound fron 5" exhaust tips on shit box rice burners. Can't forget that fuckin rap music thumping on the stereo. Maybe it's good kids don't cruise now. They would ruin all my fond memories.

 

it just driving around now to me, no real destination, just driving and coming back home. when i was younger it was going to a spot that everyone else was at doing the same thing to see and be seen....no stopping and hanging out just driving. now it doesn't have to be where everyone is at, i can cruise up/down the coast alone....but it's still cruising.

that term is used way too much now, your not cruising if your driving around at a show (like the labor day cruise in costa mesa).......your just doing laps.

 

See? You're cruising right now! Listen real close now..... Did you hear that? Was that Fats Domino? HAHAHA

 

Scarpelli's Drive-In, the downtown shopping center on Thursday nite or McDonald's in Torrington, CT 1967. When there was a challenge, everyone would drive up to the 1/4 mile on the Norfolk Road.

 

My friends and I used to cruise a bit when we first got our licenses. I grew up outside a very small town so there wasn't much cruising going on by most people's definitions. Instead we would randomly drive around town for hours trying to find new places we hadn't been to before. Being a small town it didn't take long. We resorted to going out in the country and finding abandoned buildings to check out (it's a miracle that none of us got shot at). After a while we went to a bigger town and did what I consider to be cruising. Pretty much would go down the main drag for a few hours, getting chicks to talk to us, enjoying the novelty of a town large enough to have a Wal-Mart and a movie theater. I don't remember a whole lot of "cool" cars, just mainly old beaters that all the other broke high schoolers drove. It has been a long time since I've went cruising, heck it's been a long time since I've just went on a random drive for no good reason.

 

Crusing in Nowheresville.
We wasted lots of gas crusing around and "draggin main". Yeah, it was mostly about chasin girls! Our little Nowheresville town in the middle of Oklahoma had nothing to do but drive around. The social scene generally started at the 89er Drive (now gone) in near down town and headed east down Oklahoma St. to the Masonic Temple and back again. Sometimes headed across the bridge to the west side to a small drive in for good eats. All the time looking for the girls. Irate citizens (squares) prodded the city council to outlaw all that uncessary horn honking! Ya could see some kids hold up a hand lettered "HONK" sign as they passed. The law was mostly ignored after a few days! And, if the cops caught ya with that beer they would just make you pour it out - not shoot ya in the head like now! This was the mid 1960's and we could usually pick up Wolf Man Jack on the AM radio after 10:00 or so. Fading in and out. Howling away from his bunker in Texas/Mexico. We heard the mostly pablim main stream music spewed from local WKY and KOMA radio. But Wolfman had a way DIFFERENT music - black blues, rythm & blues, and all that jazz. At that time, white boys like me never heard giants like Howlin Wolf, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, BB King and many others. Man, those cats could get down! Somewhere over the years I lost my "Official Wolfman Jack Roach Clip".
Over time it changed. Graduation, off to college, family, the war and all the insanity of the time!
Maybe some things don't change. I still find myself crusin down those same melancholy streets in the off hours of night....

 

i agree with M_S

 

Cruising: This is a phenomenon that occurs when a group of people in automobiles (nice ones prefferably) want to gather or hang out in an area without drawing the attention of J Law or J Q Public and thus roll between points within the general area.
Cruising for chicks: When a gruop of 17 year old boys hop in Ma's more door and hang out the windows and whistle and bark at all but the elderliest of old ladys down thru all but the youngest of girls and or any guys they may consider dorks or nerds.
Cruisin for a bruisin: This is what happens when 15 guys pile into a car to pulp on the guy who knocked up lil sis.

 

easy,we had a circuit that we used to cruise.up pine street,down rolla st. out to the burger joints just off of the interstate. look for someone to run. after a couple of laps i head out to the interstate to blow the carbon out of the beast.always looking for chicks.hi test was 25.9 a gallon,the music was out of sight.i loved my eight tacks and loud pipes.god life was good.

 

anywhere I go in my custom is cruising, plus cruising also applied
when I was in the Navy.......did a lot of that in the late 50's and mid 60's
on water...lol

 

Heck, people ain't got gas money now-a-days to go cruising!

 

Frisch's Big Boy was the hot spot where we cruised, all about being seen, racing, girls and cheap beer, not necessarily in that order!

 

Cruising OSU Campus, Looking for Hot Drunk college girls. Drive slow to be seen and to see. Park long anuf to eat. Find a street race and back to cruising.

 

cruising's all about the chicks - i don't pick up chicks any more though, it makes my wife mad

 

Crusing today is about a bunch of guys meeting for an early breakfast and BS session then going on a drive on the back roads for 4 hours or so to a lunch spot. It may only be 30 min drive directly from the starting point but the long drive through the back road is fun. The rule is no freeways except to get home after lunch.

Sometimes a hoarder's shop or garage is visited, sometimes a car or aircraft mueseum is visited sometimes we just go the long way for a pleasant drive. Gas stops about every hour or so just to stretch and grab a coffee.

The object is to enjoy you car be it a restored Essex or a more modern muscle car.

You can step on the gas once in a while but no racing or high speed stuff..stay within the speed limits.

Nothing like a cruize with 30 cars. Just keeping everyone together is a fun task. CB radios,GPS, and cell phones are going all the time.

We also keep a look out for 'finds' along the way. you never know where your next ride will come from.

By the way these happen rain or shine too. It's hoot driving 4 hours in a rainstom with 14 inch Hoosiers on the back of a supercharged Willys.

3-4 days a week is my average.

 

We cruised between driveins in the late '50s and early '60s--always had to cruise the main drag due to the full length windows so se could see how the ride was lookin'. Burned a lot of .23 gas that way. Drank our fair share of 4.95 a case bottled beer too. Good days----------

 

It was just like that in the south 'burbs of Chicago in the '60's. We cruised from White Castle's on 95th and Cicero to Buses' drive-in, to Dog'n'Suds, to the Roller rink parking lot, to Burger King, to McDonalds, and back to the Castle all night. We would caravan up to Skip's on North ave. and Rocky's out west near Wolf road. The serious street racers would go over to Roseland and race with the black guys on 111th st, Doty road, or, out to the quarries where the junk yards were.
One time, 4 or 5 suburbs got together with the county sheriff's police and blocked off both ends of 107th and trapped about 30-40 of us. They caravan-ed us to the county lock-up in Argo and put us all in a very small cell-block to issue minor nuisance tickets. We had a BALL!
Dark nights, no traffic, made Maple Lake and Bachelors Grove, (a cemetery), the places for the "submarine races".
Archer ave was the place for us city boys who were relocated to the 'burbs by our parents to "save" us from the old neighborhoods. Racing was by the Incinerators.

It was just like American Graffiti.........
"cruisin' and playing the radio, with no particular place to go........"

 

WOW NORBY48. How did you get into my mind and get my memory.....White Castle's on 95th and Cicero to Buses' drive-in, to Dog'n'Suds, to the Roller rink parking lot, to Burger King, to McDonalds.
I was Exactly there. When I read your post. I can picture each of these buildings.
Bachelors Grove and the Quarries.
Thanks for the memories. Even though I am thousands of miles away now, it is still fresh in my mind.

 

You nailed it for me! There was always a little side trip out to ave 320 for the obligitory drag races till the Shariffs showed up. Good times!

 

This about sums up what cruising was to me growing up in Houston from 78-83. We would all "cruise" up and down Westheimer to a parking lot, hang out till enough people got there and we put some races together and then we would "cruise" out to where the areas that we raced at. It was all about racing for me.

 

Sights, sounds and tastes of the 50&#8217;s&#8230;.Golden, Colorado - May to October each year&#8230;.The night air is warm and there is a gentle breeze. You sit in your chair on the lawn in front of the local Checker and listen to the 50&#8217;s tunes from the DJ across the street at the Pizza Hut. When you get hungry, you walk across the street to McDonalds and get a hamburger, fries and a coke and then go back across the street to your chair and bite into the burger and fries and sip on the coke&#8230;. you are transported back to a better time. You watch and listen to the cars that are mere feet from you&#8230;.as the night goes on, the 50&#8217;s and 60&#8217;s cars dominate the view in front of you. It is like American Graffiti, except that for a few fleeting hours, it is not a movie, and you are back to a time that made sense. Then when you think it doesn&#8217;t get any better, you fire up your ride (for me it is the 53&#8217; Merc Convertible) and join the cruse with the top down, my radio on the local 50&#8217;s AM station (mine is still the old tube type AM). The sound is different from the new radios, they are warmer. As the evening draws to a close you drive home, with the memories of the events of the evening still going through your mind, only to begin the wait for the first Saturday of the next month&#8230;.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egrP-Naxyjs

 

Sooooooooooooo? who are you? What did you drive? PM me if you want.

 

Cruising is me and Breeder putting on our best silk shirts and tight jeans and hitting our favorite "boys only" bars.... opps.... wrong message board....

 

Coupe I think the NW is the only place in thw world that the main drag is called or was called the "Gut".

I wondered if that would come up.

 

Is it me or has it slimmed out for ocean city, I've been deployed the last two mays so I've missed it for a few years. But I went to the one last october and it was Thinned out from what I remember it being six years ago.

 

I'm glad you asked this. I was reading the posts on the other cruising thread, and it became really obvious that some folks didn't really know what was being talked about. Just driving around betwen parties with your buds AINT cruising. Not even close.
We'd almost do a lap kind of thing. All you Bakersfield guys will know: Go down Chester Ave, then turn around at Garces Circle (or earlier if you want) and come back up--cruise by again, then turn around and do it all over. a "see and be seen" situation. Then pull over eventually and hang out. Also, American Grafitti had it right--same thing. Unforfunately by the time I was doing it, loud ass woofers were more important than what you were driving for the most part. Still cruisin' though.