"People cruised for different reasons back then. My wife cruised w/ her girlfriends in their parents car w/ the radio turned up & singing loud- badly. They would meet guys & go have a vanilla cokes & wet fries at Henrys (Valley Blvd in Alhambra). They would buy cigarettes & smoke & drink Akadama wine like the "adults" did. I have to admit- I don't remember Akadama wine. I'm quoting her now)" Wow! Your wife sounds like she the girls I hung out with. She could very well have been a friend of mine. I haven't seen anyone mention Henry's wet fries and vanilla cokes in DECADES!! They had the best cherry cokes and chocolate too. We spend hours at Henry's, then Bob's on Colorado and Whittier too. We had to do the Valley loop and Colorado Blvd when we had a full tank of gas sometimes we'd go to Hollywood. We did Hollywood when we were a little older. What was the drive-in in Downey? They seemed to have the most outrageous hydraulic cars, great paint jobs..and most outrageous hairdo's. Pompadour kings and queens to be sure. We spent a lot of time cruisin' looking for parties, too. One of my girlfriends had the coolest black and pink Mustang. Always great music on the radio and at parties then. My boyfriend taught me to drive in his '57 Chevy then allowed me to use his '62 ice blue Impala many times. It had Hurst 4 on the floor and when I drove it, it seems like all the guys wanted to race me. It was a sublime delight to shut them down 95% of the time. The look on their faces were priceless. Akadama was a plum wine as I recall. I think they still make it. Say Hi to your wife for me and thank her for remembering Henry's cokes and fries
i beleive just the opposite they outlawed it for the stupid things we used to do.yesterday we went to my moms house to help clean yard i rode my 4 wheeler and my wife followed in my jeep at a red light i told her i beet my kids if i ever caught them doing this.(4 miles on some busy roads)it was fun though.where did the drive in movies go
Just to put things in perspective, I don't think that kids are stupid these day, but I do know some stupid kids. Funny thing you very seldom here anyone say " hey ya know what, I ran into this kid today that was just a sharp as a tack." That hasn't changed since I was a kid By the way. I remember my grandad saying "Kids these days are just dumb." I always figured that he was talking about the other kids because I just wasn't smart enough to know that he wasn't. That's just the way it goes with dumb or crazy unless someone points it out to you you just don't know.
I guess the reason that most people don't cruise anymore is the same reason most people don't go to church socials, after school dances, or most 'clubs' in general. They don't have to because there's an easier way to socialize and meet the opposite sex. Kids don't have to leave their chair to meet and talk to new people. Facebook, Match.com, even the HAMB are perfect examples of technology replacing the need to actually have face time with other humans. A lot of us use to need cruising. Today's generation doesn't. Cruising was, more than anything, a mating ritual. There's easier (not necessarily better) ways of doing it now. I think that's all there is to it.
Here in South Florida we cruise quite a bit still and I haven't seen too many signs saying you cannot. A1A on the beach from South Beach to Palm Beach is still the standard for anyone with a cool whip.
That is true, I meet new chicks everyday on the HAMB, some of them say that they aren't but I know that they are. I am not sure that cruising is dead or that anyone killed it. If it is dead it may have died from old age, or just been replaced by other toys. Cruisin' may just be like Puff the Magic Dragon.
im amazed this topic keeps resurfacing. I think kids are just as stupid as kids were back in the day. i mean; lets be realistic here. As far as i've heard it; hot rodders were looked at as trouble causing hoodlums back in the day. Cars were built to look cool and go fast. They caused just as much, if not more trouble than the kids of today. Today; especially in CT, the driving laws are CRAZY here. teens can't drive with friends in the car, etc. Food can also be expensive and most kids meet up at the movies or go out to dinner in small groups. In the case of us, we had bon fires and ordered pizza . Most resturaunts or locations dont want a bunch of kids meeting up and loitering on property. Kids still go for rides in their cars...its just that kids drive the 1990's leftovers instead of the 1920's-1940's leftovers that were available during the 50's. On top of that most parents dont support mechanical hobbies for kids. Most fathers cant turn a wrench and most of them just genuinely dont have a clue. Jobs are meant for the desk in a suit and tie. Most parents support their kids out on the ballfield and such and would much rather see them succeed in doing something like that than encourage them to tinker with "junk." those that cruised back in the day did so to hang out with friends in a cool atmosphere. Nowadays the majority of that generation isn't building cars and never passed on that knowledge. Cruising still occurs within the hobby with those that still enjoy it. I know around here kids hang out in small gruops and go shopping or to dinner or to the movies. it just doesn't occur every week or multiple times a week. We're a society who encourages our kids to sit in front of the TV for hours on end from the start of a very young age....kids are losing creativity.
You tell 'em kid. The kids in this part of the country are certainly not getting the education that they were 30 years ago, but they are not any dummer than they were 30 years ago. There will always be dumb people and people not so dumb. its been that way since the beginning of time. I am amzed myself but hell it gives me a chance to step on some else's toes. Not yours by the way, I still feel bad for the first time I did that. There is actually a better cruising post that one of the fellas started I'll see if I can find a link. Here fellas go on here and try and say something constructive: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=557460
I think cruising is dead because of gas prices and the crack down on "street racing". HUGE fines and impoundments. You will eventually find someone to race if you cruised the strip long enough. Plus cars just arent just part of the American culture like they used to be.
last year Van Nuys blvd started to have the wed. night cruise again. I went a few times. I have no idea if it is still happing this year.
No malt shops to cruise to. Heck no malt(ed)s anymore. Ask for one and you get a 'deer in the headlights' look No soda fountains. Remember cruising downtown and angle-parking in front of the local drugstore? Goin' to their lunchstand...a quarter in the jukebox for what - 6 or 7 plays? And a real, "put-the-syrup-in-first-then-the-fizzwater" fountain Coke or Root Beer? But just to cruise for sake of cruising? Kids don't do it anymore, just like they don't play sandlot baseball or hopscotch or jump rope.... I agree - it's gone with the wind. Replaced with twitter-dee and a twitter-thumb. . . Kind of a sad reflection on the good times of many of our own younger years.
Cruising began to die in the late '70s (in my experience) because it got too big for the venues and friction, then conflict, was the natural result. The best cruises from my youth were small Main Street affairs with not too many cars, maybe a few hundred at most. Most of the kids knew each other or were familiar with each other and observed a kind of code of conduct--let's not ruin this good thing by being too stupid. Once word got out (word of mouth, car magazine features, news media reports) the number of cars and cruisers increased and the stress on the venues became apparent. Vandalism increased and local business people, who had been tolerant before, were pushed beyond their limit and the police began shutting cruises down. Tribal differences played a part too and I am not pointing my fingers at anyone. Hey, if a new tribe shows up on your tribal lands the chance for conflict goes up. Once those conflicts began and then escalated the tolerance level was exceeded and it all came to an end. I can remember not wanting to go out to our old cruise location because the conflicts had ruined the scene. We tried to develop new cruising venues in other towns but word had gotten out that cruising was causing lawlessness and vandalism and the police were ready and waiting. Yes, bad behavior existed long before my time but it reached its breaking point in the late '70s and early '80s and the law responded. Cruising, as we knew it, was a kind of paradise, and with any paradise the word gets out and eventually it changes and becomes something else. In this case it went from a fun way to spend a Saturday night to becoming illegal. I just wish I had taken pictures and video before it ended!
--------------------- I'd never heard of it before, but I did a quick google seach on "Akadama wine" and this is what came up. Apparently it's a Japanese style wine, made in the U.S. from plums imported from Japan. http://store.liquorama.net/akadama-plum-royale-us.aspx Akadama Plum Royale Wine Tasting Notes: "Akadama Plum Royale is made with the choicest plums of the beautiful Wakayama Orchards of Central Japan. The rich plum nectar and other natural flavors are blended with carefully selected wine until they reach the perfect balance of flavor and aroma." Mart3406 =================================
It has been outlawed in Louisville, Ky. the city I grew up in. For about 5 years you couldn't cruise a car in the southend, but during Derby weekend, you could go to the westend, and cruise your 24 inch rims down Broadway. They finally stopped that also, when someone was shot.
Yeah, a lot of "cruise nights", like the one in Freehold, and countless other municipalities throughout the nation have developed into quite the ugly mess... You're right about Englishtown/Raceway Parks cruise nights... They have become a local phenom among rodders looking for a true "hassle free" alternative to the run-of-the-mill cruise nights hosted by surrounding municipalities. The next one is July 12th. There's also one scheduled for August 9th. Entry is free and you're also entitled to a free pass down ETown's famous 1/4 mile dragstrip (as long as yer car is street-muffled)-- Ya can't beat that. There's a burnout contest (with no fear of losing your license or a stiff ticket from a traffic cop like what happens at most other cruise nights). There's also music, food, beer... It's about time someone does a cruise night right... Unfortunately too many of the towns that are now hopping on the "cruise night bandwagon" do such an awful job of it, with their hidden speed traps and restrictions that make it far more likely to send you home with a traffic ticket than a sense of satisfaction. Thankfully that's not the case at ETown's Cruise Nights... Cruise on down to ETown for "hassle free" fun...
Cruising by definition of a near by town is no more than 2 passes of the same block within 60 minutes. And on the weekends they have a cop strictly to enter the tags of each car they suspect to cruise. I actually got pulled for it one time and I was only looking for a parking spot. I was driving a toyota, not exactly something worth cruising.
Cruise night here is similar to old days however last week some 40 year old "teenager" in a500 hp pickup lit up his tires pulling out into traffic,,fishtailing,,,total idiot. Just the type of negative behaviour that appears unnecessary and dangerous..there's a place for everything
Shawnee Ok. Kickapoo street "THE POO" was shut down by the law after boom box stereo speakers replaced 6x9s and wanna be gangs/gangsters with guns ruined it for the good ol' high school brawls amongst area rivals, when imports rice burners replaced street rods and 4x4 trucks..... I wish a buck was still silver !
I plan on Saturday night cruising when I roll my '63 out... though I'll probably be the only old car out there. Start with a few loops around downtown, a stop at Sonic then out to the drive-in.
Yes, but if we have "Retro Amish," then we must also have "Resto Amish," and then what's next? Hot Amish, Street Amish, Rat Amish. . .
I took the wife out for a cruise and burger Saturday. We had a blast. It didn't hurt that I was driving my 30 A coupe that is a recent purchase, wife said every time she looked at me I was grinning ear to ear. When I was in High School (Prescott Arizona) it was a small town with not much else to do on the weekend. Everyone cruised, nice car or moms station wagon-didn't matter. I owned a nice red 65 Mustang fastback with a 289 and 4spd. The Saturday ritual was to get my work done wash the car, do any work that it either needed or I wanted to do, pick up my girl and cruise. There was some crap that went on, but mostly it was just a good time for everybody. I'll find an excuse to cruise anytime these days. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Just take the ride out of the garage, do a loop through town, have a burger and take the long way home. Need milk and eggs? I volunteer. If every one just took their cars out a couple times a week it would be a perpetual impromptu cruise all the time. Let's be honest, everyone on the HAMB is into the traditional cars and we like hanging out with our own. When a polished up 60's steroid car car rumbles up to the light beside my flat black A coupe, it kinda takes me back to High School and that's a good thing! Drive em!
Growing up near Van Nuys Blvd in the 70's I went to a few cruise nights with my older brother in his 1964 T-Bird. By the time I was 16, in 1977, n could get a license, the police were already barricading the Blvd off at each traffic light. So I'm sorry, it's not because of anything the kids are doing today. Even though I think the kids of today are stupid too, lol The Nintendo ushered in the new era of double screens and pocked arcade games . You don't need to go to hte bowling alley to play pinball or pac-man anymore. Since you can drive a 4WD and shoot aliens, fly airplanes with a cockpit pilot's view with the not so new home computer machines (didn't want to give xBox a free plug), who the hell needs to get in a car and drive to another part of town to look at the same cars that were there last week?? The newspapers and TV at the time were full of articles of crimes in the back alleys, such as rape and drugs. Even at the time I thought "Why the hell don't the police barricade the alley that ran behind the businesses??" It seemed to me even as a 16 y/o that the cruising did not "cause" the crime, the crime just follows the path of least resistance. They blamed the cruisers when the people on the sidewalk and up the alley's were doing the crimes. Women walking to their cars, leaving work late, were being mugged and raped. The criminals were using the noise from the boulevard to hide their footsteps. The rumbling cars were great cover so the rats of society could move around without being heard. Crime follows a crowd everywhere. There is crime every Christmas as hoodlems and family dad's alike brake into cars to steal gifts. There's a slogan for ya... "Steal a gift for Jesus's birthday". So why not outlaw Christmas, or driving your car to the mall to shop? Or, at least putting the gifts in your car and shopping for more. They should pass a law saying you have to go home each trip and unload your car, so nothing is left to steal. Then they could blame the crimes on burglars with black masks like in the old days. Yeah, I'm being stupid... but so is killing an American institution to stop crime that is happening a block away.But that was then... The main reason I feel cruising is not popular today is that the custom car culture was in the 50's. The mussel car culture came in the late 60's-early 70's But each decade since then, the fever has dwindled. As I was in trade school in 1981, my friends and I wanted to go cruising and there was no place we could think of that sounded fun. There were signs all over the Valley stating "No Cruising: passing this sign more than once per hour". Oh. Okay. So it's okay to pass by once, then go to the next cruise street, pass that sign once, then go to... yeah, whatever... The sad things is, in Y2K and beyond, that the restaurant parking lot "cruise night" is the best policy... "I didn't do it officer, here's my time stamped credit card receipt to prove I was in Bob's Big Boy at the time." But even that is going the way of the dinosaur. Flamer's in Chatsworth has been replaced by a Vietnamese restaurant. Cruiser's Car Wash hamburger stand on Tampa has closed. The A frame (used to be a Taste-Freeze) at bottom of the Santa Susana Pass has changed hands 3 times in 20 years. Due mainly to lack of customers. The car clubs coming every Friday night and jamming the parking lot so the cars spilled over into the Costco parking lot, causing the restaurant to have to rent rent space from Costco and cordon off an area for the overflow.... still don't pay the bills. Then too many don't support Cruiser's restaurant, They go eat Pizza just across the RR tracks or bring in In & Out form 2 doors down. Cruisers need to support the businesses that are supporting and putting on the cruise night! Pink's Cafe on San Fernando Road just north of Sheldon is another example. Now it is Cadillac Jack's and went private for film location shooting only. I am willing to bet for a fee, they would open up to a private club for one night?? Or not. You can still park on the street and look in the windows to see a totally restored 50's diner. It'll bring tears to your eyes. The Pink Motel and hte Pink Cafe are classic stops along Old Route 99. How do we reverse this???... There are places that are car culture friendly. Restaurants that have a 50's theme even without the car clubs showing up. Beep's at the corner of Sherman Way and Woodley in Van Nuys for example. Not a cheep place to eat, but worth it 2 or 3 times a year for the "step back in time" experience. You are paying for the static display museum value, not just the burger, fries and a shake. It is a treat to sit in metal flake red tuck and roll bench seats!! I would like to suggest a forum on this board, where each state has a thread and members can leave addresses and locations of venues that fit the "You gots to go here!!!" description. Living in Los Angeles, I know the value of this. In an 85 mile wide concrete jungle, I drive by places every few months that I did NOT know existed. I just reciently found out that all drive in's are not dead! There are 6 drive-in theaters still east of the 605 in the "Inland Empire". Last summer I gave my nephew a treat and took him to the Mission Tiki Drive-In Theater for his birthday. He had been saying every time he saw one in a movie that he wanted to go. All I could say to him is "I don't think any are left, Buddy" Then one day on Google, a search query turned up a site that blew me away. When I took him we kept it a secret and you should have seen his face when we drove around the corner and he saw the marque and realized where we were! It takes me a full 65 minutes at the speed limit each way... I've been 4 times since. I will leave you with a link to the one I go to, there are other drive-in's listed on that. Plus there is a drive-in listing showing currently open as well as closed drive-ins and a short history. Maybe it's a start to get the car culture going again. http://www.missiontiki.com/#/now/ Just going to the Mission Tiki website is a trip back in time. http://www.driveinmovie.com/CA.htm A few drive-in's that have closed, have reopened. You have to be vigilant and help these sites keep updated. Change the 2 letters to your states abbreviation to see your states page. AZ=Arizona; OK, VT etc... My point is, that the car culture is not dead but, it is under attack and we can keep it alive by participating. The Car Culture will stay alive as long as we are behind the wheel and not just peckin away from behind the keyboard. With that, I'm off to drive my 4 wheel hydrocarbon factory to the pool store to buy some chlorine to throw in my pool so it can evaporate and burn more holes in the atmosphere lol. Tootles! ((If anyone reads this that has any pull around here thinks a car friendly venue list thread would be a good idea, plz email the admin with a proposal to add that to the community, please feel free to do so))
Old Johnnie Law put a BIG Damper on cruising here in my area. I love cruising, but it's like shooting craps nowadays, 50-50 chance at getting a ticket or harassed.
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