Seconded. The idea was that you were teenagers and couldn’t exactly go to her parents or your parents house and have sex. But you also wanted privacy. West Virginia provided an ample amount of dirt roads for this purpose. The only trouble you would have is if others that were there before you threw a bunch of beer cans out and pissed of the people that lived up that road. Then if they spotted your strange car, they mind call the police or drive up on you themselves. Both times I was approached (one by police, one by homeowner) they confirmed we weren’t drinking , asked us not to litter and drove off.
But I think a parking lot outside of town with other cars would not serve that purpose.
I know of a road that I believe is still a lovers lane. It’s a side road that ran for several miles and used to have a bridge in the middle of it. The bridge was closed so what you have now is two secluded dead end roads. It’s a good spot to go hiking in the daytime, so I’ve been on it a few times. And you can tell from the litter that people are parking their cars there, presumably at night when I’m not around to see them. I don’t know for certain if people are going there to have sex. They may be using the secluded location to drink or use drugs. I have felt zero urge to examine the litter closely enough to make that determination.
I was last there in the mid-ninties. At that time, there were houses along the road, but the end had a nice overlook of the river area. And there definitely was a street sign with the name “Lovers Lane” on it. That’s how I found it. (I was just bicycling around town exploring and came across the sign.)
Now you can see that the end is all houses with no overlook. Streetview does not show a street sign. Maybe people kept stealing it.
I thought it was from some TV show or movie where teenagers parked by a lake to make out. I keep thinking Happy Days, but their spot was Inspiration Point. American Graffiti, maybe?
Googling the term, I couldn’t find the TV or movie source I heard it from, but I guess it can also be taken to be a euphemism for something ‘racier’ than simply making out, though I wasn’t intentionally going there (I don’t race and tell ).
Cool, thanks! That was bugging me a little-- I thought I had heard it on Happy Days. You clearly have the superior google-fu (though I only spent about 15 seconds clicking the first two links to the term ‘submarine races’)
A few months ago I read The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, a true story about the search for the murderer (or murderers) of couples who drove out into the countryside around Florence to make out. Apparently there’s an entire ecosystem based around this activity. You have the young couples who want to get away from their overly protective families and cultural restrictions to have sex, then you have an entire class of sexual voyeurs who get their jollies by sneaking out and spying on the couples (along with societies of them that note the best vantage points and times for this activity). Then, preying on them you have an active class of blackmailers who know where to go to spy on the voyeurs and take compromising pictures of them so that they can blackmail them.
Preston, both by himself and in collaboration with Lincoln Child, has authored a plethora of thrillers and series of thrillers, including Relic and the rest of the Agent Pendergast series. But every time he’s gotten personally involved he’s gotten himself in trouble. He found himself threatened by the Italian authorities and barred from the country. When he researched The Lost City of the Monkey God he ventured into the jungles of the Honduras and, like many others in the expedition, came down with a very serious case of Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis, requiring painful experimental treatment.
The term itself is just a jokey reason for being parked next to a secluded pond or lake. You’re watching the races. There’s nothing there? Well, they’re submarine races! If you had little kids in the car, they’d groan at your lame Dad Joke.
Sure, you’re actually there to make out but the “submarine race” part doesn’t refer to your actual activities. You could just as easily say you’re watching the invisible horse race or something.
I think I’d heard ‘submarine races’ before Happy Days, but can’t be sure.
People didn’t go make-out spots to be watched, but often to be seen being there by others, and often being seen with somebody. There were always plenty of secluded spots if you didn’t want to be seen.
I mentioned make-out parties before, and aside from the appeal of the beer I’m pretty sure those were the most voyeuristic events. Apparently some parents thought that was a good reason to give beer to high school kids because … they weren’t going to get in any trouble? Beats me. There were all sorts of silly rules about this, like the parents would but 1 case of beer for the kids and that’s all that was allowed. So then someone would call me and I’d bring more beer in through the basement door. I could get alcohol easily since I looked like an adult so I was popular for that purpose, but I was also on the way to becoming a teenage alcoholic. Anyway, good memories… good times.
If you check on Google Ngram, you can see that, although there are uses before the 1950s, that’s when usage of “submarine races” really picked up. There’s a glimmer of justification if you happento be going to the beach to make out. But if you use the term in the mountains or the woods, you’re being blatantly obvious.
Evidently “submarine races” really are a thing. I’m sure those peaks of usage on Google Ngram from 1860 and 1900 referred to actual races between underwater boats. And you can rea about real submarine race here
I actually just googled this subject out of curiosity to see if there were any real places called ‘lover’s lane’ and was rather astonished to find an english primary school.
A buddy of mine owned property in the Allegheny Mountains near the ship hotel, where we used to camp.
One day he took us on a hike on a dirt backroad. We left that road to take an even less maintained “road” that went into the woods. You could see that cars occasionally traveled the path.
Walking through the woods we eventually came to a spot where you could see the treeline ended. My friend kept warning us, “WATCH YOUR STEP”. I thought he meant we’d exit the woods on the edge of a cliff, but nooooooo. “Watch your step” was because when we emerged from the woods onto a flat plateau (with an amazing view) there were literally hundreds of discarded condoms.
).