RonsGS

So I was watching American Graffitti the other night and started thinking to myself how I really miss the days of just driving down a street and seeing all types of fast, wild, cool looking cars just cruising around. I know I'm going to sound old, which I really am, but the younger guys don't seem to enjoy cars as much as I (we) do.
When you go to a cruise night, it's like looking in a mirror, everybody is around your age. You pull in a spot (if you can find one ) pull out a chair (unless your Brad) and just sit and talk to the guys next to you.
Quite a few times the guy next to you has an attitude because your driving a car that you didn't build youself.
I'm still waiting for a carhop to show up to take an order but that very rarely ,if ever, happens

Oh well,maybe I'll watch Hollywood Knights tonight. That will bring back the time of real cruise nights and more memories.
Here's a pic of a real cruise night circa 1966.

johnnyvettes

the good old days Ron .............Skips ! was the cool spot for me ...........the ricer's will ruin the cruise seen . A few more years and it will be all over as we die off . muscle cars are on the decline the street rod culture is all but gone .

Quick Silver Z

slolane

Thats why you guys should come to South Haven the car show is full of old muscle and some new. You get the chance to go on a nice cruise and lunch with some of the nicest car guys and gals in the world Jus sayin Just be sure you have your chairs when you leave I will not be responsible for what happens to them if you leave them

Sunset-C6

Nah............the cars of today are much nicer, safer, more comfortable, & FASTER...............for example: Ford 5 Liter V8 (302 Cu.in.) over 400HP & 25MPG........gotta love it................ I cruised Woodward in the 60's.........Come to the Woodward Dream Cruise in August.

RonsGS

Could have been North ave....



RIP......

blazer427X3

Come and visit Ohio sometime ... no vehicle emissions inspections in all but a few counties makes for some interesting "street" cars. There is some serious horsepower prowling the streets in Columbus and Cleveland. During the warm months you can find a cruise, car show or guys hanging out with their cars on most weekends.

Vetteman Jack

Man, I know how you feel. Back in the early 70's and heck, around here even into the early 80's there were a lot of very nice cars out there on the street that had been modded beyond belief. Just don't see that anymore and I really miss those times.

tommyn

Duke's in Bridgeview was packed saturday night. The fastest street car in the us was there along with many 8-9 second street cars.
http://www.dukesitalianbeef.com/history.shtml
Friday 7/20 @ Gus's there are already 70 cars signed up for the show again 8-9 second street cars.
http://www.gussdrivein.com/index.php
I was a regular @ Fluky's on Milwaukee & Greenwood in Niles.
My Father raced on the Edens from the Piepan on Cicero and Peterson in Chicago.
There are still better events than cruise nights you just have to dig.

Mopar Jimmy

Yes Ron the GOOD OLD DAYS as you knew it, with Skips, etc., and all the street racing as depicted in movies like American Graffiti are pretty much done now with all the harsh laws, that gets you arrested and your car taken away if caught drag racing, etc.

But as others like Tommy has pointed out there is still a ton of cool old school car places and cruise nights to hit, that keeps the old Amercian muscle car seen still going strong.

Try downtown Downers Grove on a friday (get there by 4 pm) or downtown Lombard on a Saturday for instance.

Plainfield, IL, also has a rocking cruise night on Tuesday and 31st and Wolf Road on Monday nights, which will usually pull in about 250 cars (3/4 of them old school) on a nice summer night. I wanted to go tonight but the 97 degree temps just were not cutting it (as there is no shade at the Westchester cruise nigt.

Johnny does bring up an interesting issue that I have also pondered in the past. Once the current guys like you and I, Tommy, Johnny, Bob (Quicksilver), etc., who love old school American Muscle Cars are gone, will the next next generations of hot rodders carry on the passion for the 1960s and early 1970s muscle cars?

My thought is yes, but not as much as how it is right now (with a good number of old school American Muscle Car enthusiats still out there).

DevilDog II

I miss the times we had in the 60's, but I don't miss the cars. The cars today are better built and faster. We had a 70ish Chevrolet pick up truck at the shop the other day and I commented on the build quality. The body moldings were off 1/2" in places and the door gaps were huge.

It seems like life was so much simpler back then. There were no cell phones, computers, video games, etc. We entertained ourselves. Kids could be kids. A great day was taking a bag lunch and fishing at the creek. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have grown up in the 50's and 60's. We cruised at night and did a lot of street racing. Mention street racing today and you get chastised. Kids today have no idea what they missed.

Quick Silver Z

You old farts need to visit your optometrist, there are old and new cars and cruise nights every were you look. And this in an area that features winter.

Between the Velocity and Speed Channels you can watch auto related infotainment 48 hours a day. You have to seek out ricers if you want to see one, if anything THEY are dying out. Check out an auction to see money flying around and plenty of younger people getting involved. If anything the hobby and industry has never been stronger.

There is nothing stopping anyone from building a project car with a nephew or Grandkid, quit yer whinin’!

gtp'n

I will speak from a young point of view.

I am 35 and enjoy going to cruise nights and gatherings. The problem I have is time. I have a wife, a 3 year old and one on the way. I have a hard time jugling the time between work, family, and work around the house and then free time. So the times I get out a far and few between. I would love to spend a few nights a week out cruising around but that is not in the cards.

I also think a big contributing factor to old muscle cars is the price. I would love to have a prestine 70-73 camaro but since there are not that many on the road prices are high. There is no way I can justify spending 8-10 grand on a roller or complete car that needs a ton of work. The on top of that I would have to put another 5 to 10 in to it to make it the way I want it. Now a days I can take that same money or less and by a newer car (90's) and have a complete driver with 300hp and 25mpg for less money.

You also have to remember in the 70's these old muscle cars were just another car on the road back then.

DevilDog II

We had a new grandson arrive a few hours ago and guess what grandpa just bought him? A die cast '53 Corvette.

Quick Silver Z

Congrats, Grandpa! But yer supposta build it, NOT buy it...

ricefed

You don't even need to wait until August anymore. So far there have been tons of cars out there every weekend.

TOBASCO

I think the point that Ron is making, and I agree, is that the majority of people at car shows and cruises, etc, are well over 40 and 50. You just don't see as many younger people as older people. It's not that there aren't young turks, its just that it seems that "cool" muscle, whether it's old or new, still are owned by "old farts" like us. I'm just sayin'.....

Ron - thanks for the pic of Skips. I've been looking for a picture for years. This one is obviously just prior to demolition. Do you know of anyone that has a picture of when it was in its heyday?? Now THAT would bring back memories. They could have easily based American Graffiti on Skips!


And YES, I miss the old days,

...when customer service was REAL service

...when immigrants to the U.S. came here to live the American Dream and to BECOME a citizen

...when gas was .49 a gallon (and someone pumped it for you AND checked your oil AND cleaned your windshield)

...when you didn't have to use an area code to dial a friend

...when social media was sitting on the front porch talking or playing kick-the-can with neighbors

...feel free to continue....

ricefed

I think a lot of the problem is the older car crowd won't except new modern muscle cars. I've tried going to a few cruise ins and they have limits to what year cars can enter. I refuse to support those shows. I'm only 35 so maybe I'm just not old an grumpy enough lol.

Quick Silver Z

Been waiting to pull this out of the file...

"Who remembers Skip's Fiesta Drive-In in Melrose Park, IL?

I used to drag race there in my youth.

Picture teens hanging out, drag-racing, sipping on chocolate sodas and eating cheeseburgers -- like in the movies "American Graffiti" and "Grease." Now picture it happening every night in the otherwise quiet western Chicago suburbs from the 1940s to the 1970s.

That was Skip's.

"Life was more laid-back then, and fun was easily accessible. You didn't have to spend a lot of money or have a lot of fancy gadgets -- just your car," said Penny Pagor, who was 15 when she first put on the white blouse, black shorts, black fishnet stockings and majorette boots that were the Skip's uniform in the early 1960s. Waitresses in the years before her wore roller skates. After her, Skip's servers wore skimpy bunny suits with black fishnets.

Skip's was founded by William Nielsen after a conversation around the kitchen table one night. There was no Skip -- just Nielsen, who liked to invent hamburger recipes in his mother's kitchen and decided to open a business offering good food, his relatives told the Tribune in 1983.

Because of its location -- on a stretch of North Avenue surrounded by forest preserves and few traffic lights -- Skip's was a magnet for teens who drove Thunderbirds, Mustangs, Galaxies and other cars that looked extra good in the drive-in setting.

"I went there to show off the car, as many did," e-mailed Bob Mattern, 65, who grew up in Oak Park. He started with a 1966 Chevelle SS 396, traded it in for a new SS 396 and wound up with an air-conditioned 1968 model that "was unacceptable in the teen world -- how can you blast a radio with the windows up?"

The soundtrack in Mattern's mind from that era includes "Summer in the City," "Wild Thing" and "Louie, Louie."

Bill Grossi, 56, remembers how when he was a kid his father got angry one time when he was trying to drive his family home from Kiddieland but got stuck in traffic. Teens had closed down the road for a drag race.

"It was amazing, truly amazing. The inmates were running the asylum," Grossi said laughing, adding that years later when he was a teenager, Skip's was still the place to be for him and his friends.

The non-stop crowds made for busy work shifts for Pagor and other waitresses, who were assigned a number each night and given a stack of thick plastic cards with that number to place on their customers' windshields. If a customer drove off with a number, waitresses were charged 50 cents for the loss. Stolen trays cost servers $1.50 apiece -- a hefty penalty for waitresses paid 10 cents a car plus tips, Pagor said.

She remembers management at Skip's being so strict that waitresses were not allowed to use the restroom before midnight. If waitresses were even five minutes late for a shift, managers would confiscate their paychecks, Pagor said.

Still, she thinks fondly of her three years of waiting on 200 cars a night at the popular hangout.

"I still remember this little boy who was in the back seat of a car. He kept popping up saying, 'My dad says you girls is tomatoes,' " Pagor said. "And the dad kept saying, 'Sit down and be quiet.' "

Although fans of Skip's remember the restaurant's heyday well, few can pinpoint its closing. Nielsen, its founder, died March 7, 1972. Business already had slowed, Pagor said, because drive-ins weren't as popular.

Not long after it closed, Skip's already was being memorialized. Pagor attended a Skip's reunion at the Kane County Fairgrounds in 1973, wearing her full uniform. Years after, Skip's regulars still drove in caravans to the McDonald's that replaced it, sometimes circling the drive-through without ordering anything, just to honor their old hangout.

The McDonald's manager who was able to talk when things calmed down said she'd never seen a caravan of Skip's fans in her seven years of working there. But if people did come back to remember, she said, she probably wouldn't know anyway.

"I don't live around here, I live in the city. I just drive here and go right back," she said.

Librarians at the Melrose Park Public Library do see fans of Skip's. At least once a month, someone comes in looking for a photo or newspaper clipping or anything to remind them of that time, said Barb Giordano, library director.

"Some of the older people, they just like to relive their youth and just remember times gone by, when life was a little easier," Giordano said"

Mopar Jimmy

Brad,

The main reason in my opinion is because only us old farts can afford to own a nice classic American Muscle Car (which is true luxury item where there is no need for), and the 20 and 30 year olds are barely making their car payments on their V6 Mustangs or Rice Machines which are their daily drivers.

There is no way the Majority of them can afford to add a classic muscle car to their stable next to their V6 Mustang or Honda with large fart can.

Heck, I have been to a TON of cruise nights over the last 12 years and even guys our age (that I have met) who can afford a classic muscle car don't go out and buy one, b/c the wife won't let them, or they just can't justify it will little Joey going to college next year, etc. Its a true luxury item (where there is no need) and the youngsters are trying to find out how to make their next apartment and daily driver rent payment. A majority of the younger guys can only afford a rice burner and that is why they end up with them say over a Mustang GT, or Challenger RT (with the smaller 5.7 hemi) and they certainly can't afford a second car (that will serve as toy/hobby only).