I'm a high school teacher. The majority of my students see cars as transportation. Cruising is old school. Gas is too expensive to idly burn up. Living in Houston, the city is too spread out to have an "official" cruising spot. Years ago cruising Richmond Ave was the thing to do, but the cops, constant traffic congestion on secondary streets, & price of gas has negated it. Also, all the buttheads that show up drunk or stoned trying to get on the local news have put the squash on cruising. I'm always surprised by how many of my students either don't own a car or even a driver's license. Kids today don't get as hepped up about owning a car as I did in my youth. The few students that I have that are gearheads just talk about making their 5000 lb truck run faster, or they are posers w/ their v6 bowties & ovals or import cars w/ obnoxious exhaust systems.

Lots of people who used to go cruising later were part of the anti-cruising brigade (later to be spun off as the anti-saggy pants brigade).

Now we have Cars & Coffee and other similar things so it's still there, just different.

At around $2.50 / gal, I'd say the price of gas is not the issue.
Cars are not the social objects they used to be. Blame the internet, blame mobile phones.

My 2 sons (17 & 20), cruise their smallblock, manual 5 spd musclecars every fri night.
They run down to Woodward and meet up with friends.
We have dedicated weekends of organized cruising......on Woodward, Gratiot, Fort st, Telegragh. All different dates.
Cruising is not dead in Detroit.
There's even a few fb pages that are dedicated to it.

There are different kinds of cruising in my area. There is a huge love of muscle cars and sports cars in pierce county WA. You can't drive anywhere here without seeing multiple on the road. In the summer, down on Ruston way, the hip hop culture dominates the style of cars that cruise but everyone still loves muscle cars there too. In other cities in the county, kids still get together with their cars and hang out

This is really popular with the younger crowd out here. We also have a sunday night event downtown which is supposed to be really good.

Cruising with the teenage crowd still exists, its just gone about differently. While there is not as much pride in cars as there once was, any car seems to be adequate. My daughter seems to "cruise" from place to place with visiting her friends working at various locations; fast food, starbucks, grocery store, etc.

Is the Weds. night PIR event still going?? Used to be really large?/ Granted, not cruising but .......

The Wed. Night cruise-in at PIR is the first Wednesday in June, and usually goes until the end of September. They have extended it in October when the weather behaves. It's still a massive event - two years ago, we had well over 1500 cars on the opening evening. Last year, the count seemed just as impressive.

Used to cruise Gratiot in Roseville and East Detroit in my teens (early 2000's). There was a lot of people and some very nice cars. Roseville started to come down on it and I have no idea if people do it anymore. Got a couple of loitering tickets as trophies.

Around here you will find the tuners meet at Walmart parking lot 10-15 cars. Park and hang out, occasionally I will go with my son in the road runner. Most all the kids are well mannered, ask me questions about my 71. But it's not crusing per say.
It is NOTHING like when or where I grew up in Ft. Lauderdale during the 79' to about 86' when I moved away; Nebas Roast Beef had 75 to 100 1st rate cars every Friday and Saturday night with continually shuffling of cars, as well as continual crusing 2 miles away on Ft. Lauderdale beach.
It was car heaven!

Do the kids cruise like back in the day...No. Different worlds.

After reading all thee above thread I feel sorry for some of you guys in other parts of the country...and I mean that sincerely. It seems like it is feast or famine. Either lots of enthusiasm and Events or lots of Elites/Regulations/Bad Apples etc killing the Events/Cruising.

Here in Central Kentucky though, cruising and car shows are bursting at the seams. It might look like shameless self promotion, but go check out my website...www.thecruisenightpage.com....and go to the calendar and Galleries. You can still see all of the 2016 Events Posted and all the pictures that My Staff and I take.

From April-May on you will see there are 2-3 cruises/Shows per day on the Weekends..Friday-Saturday-Sunday. Then Katie bar the door the rest of the summer. It jumps to 4-5 per weekend dayday. There are some August and September Saturdays that have 15 events.

Granted, some National Events are listed too, but if you push it you can make 3 or 4 in night if you just want to cruise in, grab a dash plaque. Pick a direction and you will most likely find an event.

All that being said it is a few late 30's through 40's. A lot of 50's and 60's and a sprinkling of 70's. We even had an D-Day vet that cruised with us pass a year or two ago and one Pacific Theatre Vet that still is with us driving a 45 Willys jeep.

The 16-25 Crowd keeps to themselves and cruises...or rather..parks in a lot down town Lexington known as the pit. Same references as above. Tuners, a few Mustangs, Covettes, etc. Mostly not interested in the older people or older cars. The Street Outlaw shows are going to get some of these kids or other people hurt. Just what being a kid is about I suppose.

Anyway, for us Old Geezers, The 50's Drive in is called the Parkette Drive-in. 4th Friday I have a cruise in there and we fill the place up with New/Old Classics/Originals/Traditional Hot Rods/Rat Rods/Vettes/Mustangs/Challengers/Everything. Get a Dash plaque , Draw for a Door prize and Get a Poor Boy and Fries. You can't beat it or the really nice people who cruise in. Good times.

This was longer than I started it to be, but even you guys in cruising oppressed parts of the country can get some Cruise-In's going. Yeah, it's not the same as rolling all night like back in the day, but it is really good excuse to it out and ride for a while. Maybe hit two or three??

Get a place..Like Parktte...Sonic....Hardee's or Wherever the old Hang out used to be and see if they will let you have a cruise. If they will sponsor it, great. If not, just see they wouldn't mind. I bet when they look at the receipts at the end of the night they will ask you back. Like I said before, we literally have too many. Not a Bad problem to have in the summer.

Where I live, there a large groups of cruisers,
groups as large as 100, mostly tuner cars.

If you want to fit in, get an import, speak Spanish,
hang one of these from your rear view.

Yesterday and today I was in my home town visiting my folks. I went up and down the old strip and it was dead. Granted I did it around 7pm and that was kinda early, but nada.

I may have to take the old Charger up there and cruise it once again, just for nostalgia sake. Maybe, I'll do an impromptu cruise-in announcement. I'm sure some old geezers like me still have hot rods squirreled away.

I wonder what the best way to get the word out would be? Nobody reads newspapers anymore, so that's out. Maybe a city Facebook page or something? I know one of the people at the chamber of commerce, maybe I'll run the idea by them.