cruising – Here in Van Nuys

Van Nuys Boulevard Cruising: Early 1970s

May 27, 2014May 27, 2014Posted in History, Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "1970s", cruising, photographs, Richard McCloskey, Van Nuys Boulevard3 Comments

Richard McCloskey’s images of Van Nuys Boulevard in the early 1970s, the cruising and the cars, is now for sale at Art Prints.

The photos show young people having a good time while hanging out, congregating on the street, and in the shopping center, which still stands next to Gelson’s on Van Nuys Boulevard.

Cruising, as Kevin Roderick in LA Observed explains, “began before World War II, spread across LA with the car culture of the 1950s and 60s, crested when the baby boomer hordes were at their most numerous and bored, and finally faded after the LAPD shut down the boulevard in the 1980s.”

The GM plant in Panorama City (1947-1991) built many of the cars that roamed the street. It paid its workers well, who in turn bought cars and produced children to drive them.

The cars were fueled by cheap gas (29-33 cents a gallon) which ended after the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo doubled the price of fuel and forced Americans to abandon wasteful muscle cars.

Once the cars were gone, the pretty girls and the gritty guys packed up and went away.

Van Nuys settled into its current state of illegality, drift and decline.

Hanging Out: 1972

May 15, 2013May 15, 2013Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged "The Wild Bunch" and Blog, 1972, cars, cruising, Van Nuys Boulevard3 Comments

The Wild Bunch Blog has some interesting photos (supplied courtesy of Richard McCloskey) of the cars, guys and girls who cruised along Van Nuys Boulevard some 41 summers ago.

These young people and their gas guzzling muscle cars were enjoying their last summer of cheaper oil.

In 1973, after the Arab-Israeli War, OPEC got together and helped create the first “Energy Crisis”… and a gallon of gas went from 33 cents a gallon to as high as 60 cents.

1972 was also the summer of “American Graffiti”, a film which nostalgically looked back 10 years earlier to 1962, a time of greasers, cars, hanging out, and being young.

Now we look at these photos, themselves archival relics, and wonder how Van Nuys was ever so young, so thin and so very white.

Cruising Returns to Van Nuys Boulevard.

September 9, 2009September 9, 2009Posted in Van Nuys and the ValleyTagged cars, cruising, Rydell Chevrolet, show, Van Nuys and the Valley, vintage5 Comments

2009 has been the year that the American auto industry was temporarily rescued from its deathbed by an infusion of Federal money and the “Cash for Clunkers” program.

And this year has also seen the return of cruising on Van Nuys Bl., which was once the heart and soul of the auto culture parade in Los Angeles.

Ironically, it has been the needy dealers who gave. Thanks to the empty lot generosity of defunct Rydell Chevrolet and the newly resurrected Van Nuys Cruising Association, literally hundreds, if not thousands of vintage cars and restored vehicles are now congregating and parking near the corner of Burbank and Van Nuys Boulevard.

In Ralph’s parking lot, 4&20, the Mobil station, and all along VNB north of Burbank to Oxnard, there was an enormous and enthusiastic collection of car lovers and their cars.

Culturally, these events may be nothing more than big car love-ins. But one could not help but notice the American flags, the overwhelmingly white faces, the fat and freckled faced ladies in the lawn chairs, the crew cuts and blue eyes, the NRA, POW, McCain/Palin and Marine insignias, the smiling LAPD officers… the subconscious nostalgia for a San Fernando Valley that exists no more. This was on the night that Obama spoke his big speech on health care, and one wonders who in this crowd might be grumbling dark thoughts about the coffee complexioned leader of the free world.

But all that is nonsense. Pure speculation. This is all about having fun, isn’t it?

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