I graduated in 1986 and everybody for as long as I can remember had a collective right of passage… cruising. You got in mom’s car, picked up some friends and did the never-ending loop-to-loop down the main drag, culminating in showing off at the local drive-in (which in my case was the Sonic). So, when in the cornbread hell did this stop happening?
Ya see, lately I’ve been working the late shift. I come in at 11:00, so typically I pass through our small town around 10:30 on the way there. The first time, the lack of kids didn’t really sink in, but by the third or fourth time I drove through, it hit me. Friday / Saturday night and it’s a ghost town. Now, I’ve been doing this job for almost six weeks and nothing has changed. I’m sure we can chalk some up to football games and probably more to various electronic devices, but still.
When did it begin to decline? Is it like this everywhere? Y’all know anyone or area that still does it? Has no one seen the great documentary, American Graffiti? Doesn’t anyone care anymore about carrying on our time honored hormonal traditions? How exactly do young ones mate these days?
Anyway, spill on what you know. I’ll be over here dipping my onion rings into my malt and looking at cute boys in hot cars.
I never did it or saw it during high school (graduated in 93), but I was more of a stay-at-home-with-pizza-and-D&D-nerds kind of guy. At college (93-97ish), there were plenty of people doing the cruising thing on Fri/Sat night (though not me). Now I’m 40ish, I’ve still never done it. But it does still seem to be a “thing” since I’ve seen signs posted on the main drag around here prohibiting cruising.
Many states changed their laws regarding teen drivers. Gone are the days when one could get a full license on one’s 16th birthday. Nowadays teen drivers have a variety of restrictions such as no driving after dark and no driving with other teens in the car. Many kids are waiting until they turn 18 to even bother learning to drive and get their license.
Add in price of gas, price of insurance, price of a car, the Great Recession, families with two working parents (less time for driving lessons) and I can see why this tradition has died. I haven’t seen it since the late 80’s myself.
In terms of the buying power of the dollar, gas is cheaper per gallon now than in the 1950s (25c a gallon), and cars get nearly twice as many miles per gallon as tghey did then (15 mpg). So in the 1950s, the per-mile fuel cost of cruising was 2-3 times as high as it is now. A kid in dad’s V8 then, who had a job, likely made 25-50c an hour, which was the pump rice of 1-2 gallons of regular.
Where I grew up (Sacramento area, graduated 1996) it was illegal on many streets–marked specifically with NO CRUISING signs.
I dunno about today, but there are frequently many kids out late (midnight+) at the local In-N-Out parking lot. They seem pretty tame, and I don’t see them driving recklessly up and down the roads. Maybe kids have gotten smarter in the last few decades.
That’s the other piece - kids today are less likely to have jobs. High school jobs are on the decline, thanks to a combination of higher stakes testing, mandatory community service hours, an emphasis on extra-curriculars to impress colleges…
Also, we really cannot overstate the amount of time today’s teens are spending socializing electronically while being in different ZIP codes. My son, 23, and my daughter, 11, can spend whole days socializing without ever leaving their respective rooms; texting, selfies, chat, video chat, phone calls, video games…going out and sitting in a car with people you’re talking to instead of lying on your bed talking to them doesn’t have a whole lot of appeal.
Sounds like me, weekends, here. Except different counties, states or countries. We have few here all that close to my Zip. That I know of. I should poll.
Both in the Scranton and Pittsburgh areas, the cops cracked down real hard on the practice starting around 1995/2000. To be frank some was linked to drug and other illicit purchases/trades but it was also to keep voters and business owners happy. You may have been different but when we were cruising mid-70s we weren’t spending much money other than gas.
Gas prices and the internet probably also helped in the decline.
Among the kids I know there is very little “car culture.” My son and most of his friends are quite indifferent to car makes & models & horsepower. Indifferent to driving in general. They socialize on-line and I’m sure most of them would consider it ridiculous to spend an evening driving up and down the same street looking at a bunch of other dorks from their high school doing the same thing. At one time, though, my city did have a cruising circuit called “The Gut,” which was a few miles of our main street through town. Mark Worman mentions it sometimes on Graveyard Carz. Where I grew up we cruised on 1st Street.
Huh. I stand informed now. I don’t want to be an old fuddy duddy and lament the loss of something that was no big deal anyway, but it does make me a little nostalgic. Thanks for all the replies, guys. It’s a whole new (insular) world out there.
The teens of yesteryear turned into entitled little pricks who were causing all sorts of problems. Throwing things at cars of people not involved in cruising, driving on lawns, pissing in peoples front yards. But especially they were jamming up city streets and racing.
A lot of municipalities passed ordinances on passing the same area area twice within an allotted amount of time during certain hours of the day. I don’t have a cite just now but a lawsuit against such laws failed.
Too bad the dickheads had to ruin it. I was a teen in the mid-70’s and cruising was outta sight!
Gas may be cheaper now, but we went through some long periods where it was rather expensive. With the Internet available, they sought out their “freedom” there instead. And now going back to cars seems limiting.
And, from what I’ve seen with several teens of my acquaintance in recent years, being able to socialize easily with your friends online has taken away a lot of the urgency to get a driver’s license right at 16 (this seems to be especially true of girls, but that may just be anecdotal). If, ten or twenty years ago, teens would have spent their evenings cruising, or hanging out at the mall, can now hang out together online, with no need for any of them to leave the house.
Is it, tho? It’s a new world for darn sure but just because kids aren’t meeting up outside your local strip mall in the middle of the night doesn’t mean they aren’t socializing. Kids today probably know kids from way further away than you knew when you were a teen.
When I was a kid the BBS was my thing so I was meeting other kids from all across my area code (because outside of my area code was long distance and no one long-distance dialed to connect to a BBS). We met in person sometimes but even then we did a lot of talking on the phone and online. Now that has evolved 20 years on and kids are for sure still super social, both with people they know locally and no doubt their various communities online. Pretty neat!
Thanks for all the replies, guys. It’s a whole new (insular) world out there.
It’s a new world for darn sure but just because kids aren’t meeting up outside your local strip mall in the middle of the night doesn’t mean they aren’t socializing. Kids today probably know kids from way further away than you knew when you were a teen.