Your teen age cruisin' hang outs

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DartGTDan said:
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As a teen, Gratiot Avenue was our closest option. These days we choose to go to Woodward Avenue.
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Gratiot and Woodward don't intersect... They are both north-south streets for the most part....

Don't forget about Telegraph Road also - a great cruisin spot...

Then you have Fort Street downriver for cruising...


The Woodward Dream Cruise is by the best cruise of the summer in Detroit...
 
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On the south side of Chicago, we had Duke's Drive In - home of the world's fastest street cars.... They were consistently in the top three picks of the country for both Hot Rod and Car Craft magazines back in the 70's and 80's... They would literally draw over 1000 people on the end of the block every Friday and Saturday...

There were many street races negotiated there... The car owners would talk smack to each other, then challenge each other to a race to be run at one of our local "spots" after Duke's would close after 10 PM... There were some true 9 - 10 second street races that originated there... They would trailer the cars out to the designated race spot after someone scouted the spot and gave the 'all clear' on the CB and then unload them, race, load them back up and get the f*ck out of there before the police showed up... Those races were usually ran between 12 AM to 2 AM out in the boonies... Most of those races had a $2000 bet between the two cars, in addition to all of the side bets between the spectators...

Sadly they closed this summer... Cruising there died out in the 90's for some reason and it couldn't draw the crowd that they used to...

However, they had a great turn out the last few weekends that they were open, that was almost like the 'good ol days'... Here's some pictures from Duke's last cruise night.... This isn't even half of the the crowd that they used to draw on a weekend night back in the day, but still a good turn out...

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Some of the coats that they sold inside...

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This is an original M-code 69 Barracuda... I knew this guy's uncle who also had a 68 Dart GSS... How great is it to have two original 440 a-bodies in the family... I however could not find the owner of the Barracuda that night to ask how his uncle is doing...

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Don't be fooled by this 78 Dodge truck... It has a 360 with nitrous that beat a 68 Hemi Charger... It can run 13 seconds or better... I remember him from the old days, he was a regular...

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mbaird said:
Hopkins Minnesota ,Bumper to bumber cars every Friday and Saturday night .
The city actually redesigned Main St so that it zigzagged thru downtown !
Hotrod did an article on Hopkins Cruise nights.

That was in the 70s
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And the early 80's too...:thumbsup:
 
Concord, CA, Hayward and of course El Camino Real were the big hotspots in the SF Bay Area back in the day. I lived in Vallejo, north Bay Area so Concord was our normal go to place. However, in the spring of 73, my senior year the City of Concord received numerous complaints about the cruising. Saw more pullovers by the police, street barricade etc. They finally opened up the fire hydrants on the downtown streets which precluded anyone wanting to cruise. Didn’t take long for the cruising to dry up. El Camino Real became our monthly vigil after that.
 
69conv said:
Not as big as the world renown Woodward Dream Cruise, but a better chance to meet and talk. No the shirt doesn't still fit. lol


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No, not as big as the Woodward Dream Cruise, but the cars at Dukes were much faster.... Plus Dukes was a weekend thing all spring and summer long when it didn't rain, not just one weekend in the summer like Woodward Dream Cruise... They consistently drew over 1000 people at one time on their corner of the block on Friday and Saturday nights with many people coming and going throughout the night... It was pretty crazy and exciting... People would work on their car all week long to have it ready for Fri and Sat nights at Dukes... The local ma and pa parts stores made runs to their warehouse three times per day minimum and you could get your parts within 4 hours max of ordering them...


One guy had a 70 Hemi Challenger with an R/T hood with a snorkel scoop... He blew his engine at the Mopar Nats one summer and had the car running and back at Dukes within two weeks...

Mr. Mustang had a late 60's Lincoln Continental that could run 13's...

Another guy had a Duster with dual quads in it, refused to open the hood and told anybody that asked that it was a small block, but if you looked closely and knew what to look for, you could see it was a 426 Hemi intake bolt pattern...

Many of the cars there could do 12 - 11 seconds in street trim...

A Chevy Monza with a 350 and cut out exhaust and slicks, etc... Kevin with a 69 Camaro raced him on 107th and it was a dead tie (asphalt starting line), then took him out to Sauk Trail where the starting line was concrete and beat him by 4 cars.... Kevin was running street tires and full exhaust to the Monza's slicks and open cut-outs...

The guy I knew with the GSS Dart could run 12.45 naturally aspirated and ran a best of 11.17 with nitrous and slicks... He could run faster if he could fit larger slicks on it, but refused to cut and tub it as it was one of 50 GSS 68 Darts with under 50 k original miles on it...

That black Dodge truck could run in the 13's with his nitrous... He surprised alot of people and took their money with that truck...

Another guy had a T-Bucket with a 440 six pack and gear drive that ran with the 10 second crowd... One summer he was the top dog... He worked as a mechanic at a local Chrysler dealer and got employee discount on parts...

Steve D. built a 79 Camaro with over $10,000 in the engine and a 4 link rear suspension that beat a race Suzuki motorcycle... Man that car was amazing to see launch off the line, it just squatted and jumped forward...


There was another guy that made a car out of a coffin... He could shoot flames out of the staggered exhaust pipes... Like the old hot rods, Munster etc, that drove it from the north side to cruise Dukes on weekends... We passed him on the highway once coming back from Marriot's Great America on our prom weekend...
 
69conv said:
Not as big as the world renown Woodward Dream Cruise, but a better chance to meet and talk. No the shirt doesn't still fit. lol


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I was at that cruise that year... I used to live in Detroit not far from 8 Mile and Woodward... I lived behind both of the cemetaries at 7 1/2 Mile between Woodward and Livernois... My neighbor down the street used to be in charge of Judging the Ferndale car show and recruited us as judges a few years...

I was at the Dream Cruises since they started... I've missed a few since I moved away in 2008, but my older son has been at every one of them since they started...

His grandparents still live near there also, not far from where we lived... He stays at the grandparents house and visits all of his friends that he grew up with out there... Sometimes he brings a friend or two from here to show them what it's like out there...
 
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Amazing how many garages in the downriver area have a work in progress or a bit of shiny chrome sticking out of a car cover. Clean bodies are hard to find in the "D" (salt) but back yard mechanics are fallin out of the trees!
 
69conv said:
Amazing how many garages in the downriver area have a work in progress or a bit of shiny chrome sticking out of a car cover. Clean bodies are hard to find in the "D" (salt) but back yard mechanics are fallin out of the trees!
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I had a friend in Wyandotte that had a 70 340 duster and his son had a 74 Dart with a 440 in it... His son was a regular at Milan Dragaway....
 
mbaird said:
Do you remember when they redid Main Street ? It was like a zigzag maze driving downtown so that nobody could drag .
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Yep, and the stop lights were timed so you couldn't go more than a block at a time.
Cops pulled you over for everything, they used to carry tape measures and check bumper heights...
Used to line up and race on Hwy 18 (now 169) just south of town. Great times in my 72 340 4spd Duster and 70 4spd GTO
 
toplscuda said:
Chuck A Burger was one but it had a small lot and unless you had a really nice car they wouldn't let you on the lot on a Saturday night.
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So we would go to Cross Keys Shopping center where the only thing open after 8 on a Saturday night was McDonald's and the Movie theater which left a huge parking lot to hang out at. There you would get a couple hundred cars on a Saturday night. Bob Chandler would sometimes drive up one of his in-progress monster trucks
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Looks like the Chuck A Burger on the Rock Road.
 
Alvin said:
Yep, and the stop lights were timed so you couldn't go more than a block at a time.
Cops pulled you over for everything, they used to carry tape measures and check bumper heights...
Used to line up and race on Hwy 18 (now 169) just south of town. Great times in my 72 340 4spd Duster and 70 4spd GTO
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Thats cool .. I had a 71 340 4sp Demon and a 70 Dodge Charger SE 383 Magnum. My Brother had a 70 GTO ...we grew up in Minnetonka . He lives in Champlin now .
Do you race BIR or Rockfalls ? If so you might recognize his Blue 68 Firebird 400 running low 11s looking pure stock .
 
Teenage years and later, the hot spot for me was famed Whittier Blvd in SoCal.
Friday and Saturday nights in high school several of us would get together with my buddy who'd saved enough to buy a '63 Impala SS with a 425-horse 409 with 4-speed. We'd all chip in a $1.00 for gas and head for Bob's Big Boy.
After high school I went to college (Cal Poly in Pomona) close to home and still cruised the Blvd. in my '64 Olds Cutlass. No muscle since it just had a 330 w/2 bbl. and 2-speed auto but it looked good. At the time I still lived at home in Montebello (west of Whittier) and dated a girl in La Habra (east of Whittier) so of course the Blvd. was always a great place just to drive on weekend date nights.
The girl became my wife in 1969 and we bought a very slightly used '69 340 Swinger in November of '69, R4 Charger Red with Cragars. We joined our first car club, Orange Coast Darts (still have the jacket), and had a lot of fun cruising and the occasional street race. I loved to pick on big block Chevelles. It was always fun to do a Saturday night bracket or class race at OCIR, then head to the Blvd. with the class winners trophy laying on the package tray of the Dart and do a little cruising before heading back to our apartment in Whittier. I sure wish I'd kept that car.
Not too far off of Whittier Blvd. was York Field is south Whittier. Big Willie and the International Brotherhood of Street Racers used to gather there about once a month to set up races. Racing was usually done either at the "Box Factory" or in Diamond Bar.
Lots of great memories from those fun times.
 
I lived between Lebanon ky. And campbellsville ky., cruised both, we would hang out at the TG&Y parking lot in Lebanon until the cops would run us off, then go cruise Campbellsville and hang out at the Burger Queen, its still there, it switched to Druthers in the 80's and is the last one left, still in business.

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I remember the White Hut on Secor was a great place to see trailered cars street race.
 
okay one more so when I turn 16 the local dragstrip shut down what a bummer, it used to be an 8th mile drag strip that was quite a hub of excitement Street drags where on Friday night. I never got to run my Dart there but I did see Polaroid shots of my car racing. Eugene's Maine Cruise was called the Gut it was Willamette Street and it ran right through the center of town on the south end. On a busy Friday or Saturday night it would be bumper to bumper four lanes and could take you 45 minutes to go 5 blocks 1 way in the center lanes. No matter if you were cruising or just hanging out Gut was the place to be in about 1983 the city passed a ordinance that forbid passing anyone area more than two times in like a half hour a anti Cruz law specifically to shut down the gut. The cops would just line up and write ticket after ticket and search your car or whatever it took to harass you out of the area and it served its purpose it killed Willamette Street slash the gut. It was very hard on police and youth relationships to say the least
 
In the late 70's & early 80's we used to cruise the far end of Westheimer Rd. in Houston. I made a deal with a fast food/ fuel station owner/manager that we could use his lot after 9:00 PM closing time. The place had a pipe rail fence around the parking lot & he gave me a key. The only stipulation was, I was responsible for clean up at the end of Friday & Saturday night. We had very few problems with the people who came to hang out & watch the cars cruise up & down the street. Some time in the mid to late 80's, the city decided to make a 3 lane road a four lane road, past an anti-cruising law & that spelled the end of cruising Westheimer Rd.
 
Covington, GA around the time we moved here from London, can You say culture shock!
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About 68 I built the first big block 55 Chevy in town, 2 door sedan, primer red, no bumpers front or rear, black rims and blackwall tires, bench front with the front edge cut out to allow the shifter to clear, 396, Erson cam, Schiefer aluminum flywheel, Muncie 4 speed, Eddy intake, 780 double pumper, rectangular port heads bill Thomas kit to install with headers, anywho, this is where we hung mostly, The Cow Palace and Tastee Freeze and the Dairy Queen (no pic)
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Mopar-Mitch said:
I lived between Lebanon ky. And campbellsville ky., cruised both, we would hang out at the TG&Y parking lot in Lebanon until the cops would run us off, then go cruise Campbellsville and hang out at the Burger Queen, its still there, it switched to Druthers in the 80's and is the last one left, still in business.

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Dag gone it, this thread made me crave the good old days and I had to go get me a Royal Burger and onion rings.:thumbsup:

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