Cruising

views updated

CRUISING

I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down this same old strip
 
I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip

—"I Get Around," The Beach Boys

Take one automobile, one full tank of gas, as many teenagers as will fit into the car, and a strip of pavement frequented by all other teens and the mix is a recipe for cruising. The latter years of the 1950s through the 1960s were the heyday of this most emancipating of teenage leisure pursuits. As a form of teenage expression, cruising afforded a generation of young Americans a sense of liberation never before realized. It's no wonder then that the car has been referred to as the "machine of freedom" (Goodale and Godbey).

When cruising, the motivation is neither to get somewhere nor even necessarily to be somewhere. Rather, cruisers are motivated by the expectation of seeing, meeting, and being with other teens, particularly beyond the gaze of parents. Cruising is simply the means by which these expectations are realized. Another motivation of cruising is the desire to be on the move, even if there is no end destination. Despite this intent, cruising can be a misnomer particularly in heavily congested areas where the sheer number of cruisers can bring traffic to a crawl. Because cruising affords teens a freedom away from parents and their homes, cruising teens are largely left to interact with other teens unsupervised. This is a particularly appealing option when hoping to meet members of the opposite sex, since cruising vehicles are often segregated according to gender.

A number of social, economic, and geographic influences conspired to give rise to cruising during its early years. The first wave of Baby Boomers reached legal driving age in the late 1950s. This large influx of teenagers stretched private and public resources and as a result teens took it upon themselves to carve out their own unique form of recreation. Leisure choices then were facilitated by a rapidly expanding economy and the attendant affordability of automobiles. Vance Packard documents the automotive industry's strategy of "planned obsolescence" in which new models continually replaced older models thereby making used cars relatively inexpensive, thus affordable even to teenagers. For the first time in history, teens had the means, both financial and vehicular, to gather away from home on their own terms and under their own prescriptions, as opposed to attending scheduled athletic contests or school dances. Finally, the spread of suburbia resulted in towns built for the automobile owner. Not surprisingly then, cruisers too would have access to the edges of town and beyond. Drive-in restaurants and theaters in particular became popular during the 1950s and early 1960s. In 1950 there were 450 A&W Drive-Ins across the country; just ten years later there were more than 2,000.

In Popular Culture

As an illustration of the prevalence of cruising during the late 1950s and mid-1960s consider the pervasiveness of this activity in popular culture. It appears the first use of the term "cruisin" in print was by Max Shulman in his 1957 novel, Rally Round the Flag, Boys. Although primarily identified with surfing, the Beach Boys released a number of songs, and even whole albums (e.g., Little Deuce Coupe ), devoted to cars and cruising. Most obvious might be their song "I Get Around," which describes the essence of driving around on a Saturday night with a car full of friends. Other musical artists of this time who sang the praises of cars and cruising include Jan and Dean, Chuck Berry, and Gene Vincent and His Blue Caps. Tom Wolfe's 1965 essay on the "Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Streamline" addressed the lure of having a custom car when cruising. In 1979 George Lucas's movie American Graffiti told the story of teenage hopes and dreams against the backdrop of cruising during one summer night in 1962. Following American Graffiti, the spin-off television series, Happy Days, took the theme of teens and their cars and transported them from southern California to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In this series, the principal characters would often use Arnold's Drive-In as a hub of their nightly cruising.

The Demise of Cruising

With cruising identified as one of the most popular teen leisure options in the 1950s and 1960s, one might ask if the activity has since faded away. Cruising continues to be a mainstay leisure option for a number of teenagers in the early 2000s. However, as a widespread, teenage phenomenon it has been replaced by a number of other leisure pursuits: playing video games, surfing the net, and going to the mall. The last of these, going to the mall, carries a number of parallels to cruising, especially the opportunity to find and meet other teens. And just as a mixture of social, economic, and geographic influences combined to contribute to the rise of cruising, a similar mix has abetted in its dwindling popularity. Where once the town's main street or boulevard defined the boundaries of the cruising area, now four-lane highways connect once-sovereign towns and urban and suburban sprawl have created decentralized commercial zones. As a result, the malt shop or drive-in has given way to the strip mall along the four-lane highway or to the megamall with its multicultural food court.

Additionally, anti-cruising legislation has been adopted by a number of towns in an effort to alleviate the traffic and other social problems associated with cruising. For example, between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. from April through September in Virginia Beach, Virginia, it is illegal to drive a motor vehicle past a traffic control point two times in the same direction within any three-hour period (Cardon).

A booming economy in the 1990s continued to make automobile ownership affordable, yet not as affordable as it was half a century ago. Still, having access to a vehicle does not appear to be a limiting factor in the popularity of cruising in the early years of the twenty-first century. Rather, teens now have greater options to escape from parents and their homes. The mall has become the preeminent gathering place for teens; malls are ubiquitous and serve the teens' needs in any weather and any time of day. Of course, malls do not satisfy the motivation of being on the move or just going anywhere and nowhere. It is with this goal in mind that cruising may well continue in some form, as the desire to be mobile is best and most conveniently served while sitting in a car watching people and places pass by.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cardon, David A. "You Cruise, You Lose at the Oceanfront." Available from http://www.cardonlaw.com/cruising.

Goodale, Thomas, and Geoffrey Godbey. The Evolution of Leisure: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives. State College, PA: Venture Publishing, 1988.

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.

Kunstler, James Howard. The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

Packard, Vance. The Status Seekers. New York: David McKay Co., 1959.

James Harding

Encyclopedia of Recreation and Leisure in America