When the going gets tough,
The weird Mericans get going..
What can I say, except the old cliche,
WAF ed..
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Cruising on Van Nuys Boulevard rumbles back into popularity
By John Rogers
The Associated Press
Posted: 05/30/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT
Mike Castelano drives his 1941 Willy during a Van Nuys Cruise Night in Los Angeles. ( Jae C. Hong, The Associated Press )LOS ANGELES — As tricked-out old cars rumbled past on Van Nuys Boulevard, Reid Stolz still had trouble believing what he had done.
This was not just any crowded six-lane urban thoroughfare but the storied street immortalized in the 1970s film "Van Nuys Blvd." and in folk tales as the place where cruising might have begun.
But much has changed in the land of cars since then. The cruisers left long ago, driven away by police. In the years since, they and their gas-guzzling cars were replaced by the big worries of global warming and $3-a-gallon gasoline.
Today, just as the decades-old American love affair with cruising seemed to be ebbing, the 52-year-old mechanic is all but single-handedly bringing it back to Van Nuys, giving thousands of car lovers a place again to transform it into a rolling ode to the 20th century.
"That first night, there were about 600," Stolz said as he leaned back on the hood of his 1972 red Corvette. "Then it just grew."
As the first anniversary of the return of cruising approaches, thousands sometimes show up on the second Wednesday of every month. So far, however, they haven't brought with them a return of the huge traffic jams, drunken fights and other problems that led police to shut down cruising on Van Nuys in the 1980s.
Instead, as the sun goes down, cruisers rumble peacefully onto the historic if slightly ugly urban blacktop that cuts through the heart of the San Fernando Valley, looking to meet a fellow cruiser at a stoplight and earn a smile and a thumbs up.
Gabriel Stasilli, 25, shows up in his 1969 Camaro Z-10. He said he thinks he knows why cruising was a hit in the old days: "the freedom, the camaraderie, people shooting the breeze, hanging out, grabbing burgers, just good old-fashioned American fun."
denverpost.com |
