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TO A TRADITION THAT WON'T GO AWAY  

CHARLIE MCCORMICK 

Growing up in Snyder, Texas, my friends and I spent our Friday and Satur-
day nights cruising—what we referred to as "making the drag." We drove 
down College Avenue-Snyder's main strip, turning around in the Bar-H-Bar 
parking lot on one end of our circuit and at the Sonic Drive-In on the other 
end. Were I able to go back and interview myself as I was then, I think I 
would describe those hours I spent on the drag as being "really cool." 
Whatever the phrase lacks in articulateness, its connotation is unmistakable. 
Cruising was important to me. It was important for lots of reasons but 
especially because of how it changed me: it made me feel tougher while I 
was out there commanding a few thousand pounds of metal to drive me 
around; it made me feel older than my years sneaking smokes and sipping 
beer from a can; it made me feel like I had sexual potential as me and my car 
full of male friends imagined—incorrectly as it turned out that the young 
women out cruising found us desirable and sexy; and it made me feel 
connected to something larger than myself since I knew from hearing them 
recount their own experiences on College Avenue that my older sisters, 
cousins, and parents had made the drag when they were in high school. 
"Really cool," indeed. 

These days, my interests in cruising are much less experiential than they 
are intellectual, but I still find cruising "pretty cool." Apparently, some 
towns and cities across the U.S. do too since cruising remains as traditional 
today as it has been for the last fifty years in these places. I have been 
surprised, however, to find that in an increasing majority of locales around 
the nation, this folk performance has come to be regarded by many adults as 
the scourge of their community.1 I explain these differing adult perceptions 
of adolescent cruising by arguing that as adolescent cruising-one of the 
traditional and informal performances of white middleclass adolescents due 
to its socialization and enculturation potential (McCormick)-became 
appropriated by those outside the target audience (i.e. ethnic minorities and 
those presumed to be in the lower class) its legitimacy was attacked. 
Therefore, when cruising the mall emerged as a new means of facilitating 
socio-cultural reproduction among middle-class adolescents, many 
communities had voices calling for the criminalization of the performance 
and its performers. Ultimately, then, these differing perceptions of 
adolescent cruising—as traditional activity and as criminal activity—have 
much less to do with the performance's changing nature and much more to 
do with the fear of middle-class adults that they will be 



 

McCORMICK 

unable to make the adolescents for which they are responsible grow up to be 
middle-class adults. 

In explanation of this position, let me briefly sketch the relevant datain 
this case a sequence of events which traces the development of adolescent 
cruising on the strip—on which I base my argument.2 Cruising's golden days 
began in the mid-1950s due—in large part-to the entertainment industry's 
strategic use of the hot rod culture as a marketing tool. A flood of movies like 
Rebel Without a Cause, Drag Strip Girl, Hot Rod Gang, and Ghost of Drag 
Strip Hollow; songs like I Get Around, Little Old Lady from Pasadena, Little 
Deuce Coupe, and Mustang Sally; and even texts like the Hot Rod Happy 
comic strips all exploited the taboo of the hot rod culture in the hopes of 
attracting a newly emerging and potentially powerful market segment: baby 
boom teenagers. In doing so, the idea of a tripartite performance of 
adolescents, automobiles, and commercial strip was aggressively marketed to 
these teenagers. It became so attractive, in fact, that by the mid-1960s 
adolescent cruising on the commercial strip had become an increasingly 
traditional way for adolescents to spend some of their non-institutional time. 
By about 1975 (though I don't mean for any of these dates to be precise, 
they're meant to be touchstones which give the historical sequence a rough 
placement in time3), adolescent cruising on the commercial strip began to be 
transformed. The oil embargo and the rise of the regional shopping mall were 
two economic reasons for this transformation, but social and cultural 
forces—which I will address momentarily—were also at work. By 1985, the 
future of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip was no longer just in 
jeopardy, it was being actively dismantled in newspapers and local political 
meetings around the nation. None of this is to say that cruising is dead or 
dying, because it certainly isn't. In fact, adolescent cruising was reborn in the 
shopping mall. Interestingly, cruising the mall seems to have followed the 
same sort of development as cruising on the commercial strip. It was 
accepted by the middle-class—if not eagerly than at least willing—as an 
appropriate way and place for their teens to hang out, it was traditionalized, 
and very recently, cruising the mall has begun to show signs of having its 
legitimacy challenged by voices in the local community. 

Given this data, adolescent cruising on the strip appears to have de-
volved unidirectionally through time. In fact, letters, editorials, and articles in 
newspapers from around the country seem to indicate that, in today's 
performance of adolescent cruising on the commercial strip, kids hurt each 
other—even kill each other—and property is damaged. The seemingly level-
headed response to these charges would be to keep adolescent cruising from 
occurring. But the level-headedness of this response can be challenged by 
correlating the perception of cruising's increasingly dark 

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A FEAR OF ADOLESCENT CRUISING 

menace with its shifting demographics: from a performance which was 
controlled primarily by white, middle-class adolescents to a performance 
which is increasingly being adopted by those outside the white middleclass. 
Examining cruising's receptions in their historical context suggests that as 
adolescent cruising becomes increasingly performed by those outside the 
white middle-class, the white middle-class apparently finds adolescent 
cruising less effective at reproducing its target population, and it therefore 
has no reason to perpetuate the performance. 

Make no mistake, I understand that it seems like I am, at best, making an 
argument that is purely academic or, at worst, naive. Cruising, after all, has 
been and is the venue for fearful activities: assault, rape, homicide, drug 
abuse, and property damage. This is all well documented (if, I believe, 
exaggerated in terms of its epidemic proportions and endemic nature). But 
my reading of the performance suggests that cruising has always had the 
specter of menace hovering around it.4 The significance of this menace-
whether it is seen as pranksterism or as criminal—I believe, is contingent on 
whether or not the performance is perceived as achieving its reproductive 
potential. 

In Paul Lyons' book, Class of '66, the perception of white, middle-class 
adolescent menace as pranksterism in a white, middle-class town in New 
Jersey is evident. He reports these memories from a middle-age, middle-class 
informant: 

".We hung the assistant principal in effigy the first week he was at school. . 
. . He was a real nice guy, Mr. Turner; it was just that we disliked the idea 
of having an assistant principal. About two weeks after he arrived, we 
passed the word that we were packing guns, and within two or three days, 
they did a complete search of the whole school building—we didn't have 
any guns." Dave, roaring with laughter, tells of boyish pranks: "We did a 
mock shooting on the steps of the local diner. Davy Hunter had a '57 
Chevy; he pulled up in front of the diner and got out, and we had these cap 
guns, but they were real loud; [Davy] pulled it out, pulled up in front of the 
diner, shot this guy on the steps, ketchup packets all over, picked him up off 
the steps—this was Saturday night, busiest night of the week," he interjects, 
"threw him in the trunk of this car, and sped off. . . we drove [the cops] 
crazy." (46) 

Even more relevant to my argument, Howard and Barbara Myerhoff reported 
on the way in which the menace of adolescent cruising—menace as 
pranksterism—was handled by the authorities in early 1960s California. 
They wrote that 

[t]here is a mischievous, often amusing overtone to all these incidents; they 
are not the kind likely to be malicious or violent. Rather, they are 

57 



 

MCCORMICK 

spontaneous and gratuitous, proving nothing but providing "kicks." An 
incident was observed in which a boy was picked up for drinking and 
curfew violation. In the patrol car he expressed his concern lest the occasion 
jeopardize his chances for entering college. The officer, who had until that 
point been rather surly, hastened to reassure the boy that such a possibility 
was quite unlikely, and implied that nothing would come of the visit to the 
station. (285-86) 

In these examples, the menace of adolescents—while frustrating to adults—
is finally laughable—even capable of evoking nostalgic remembrance some-
time later—because it appears to be developmental: it was simply what kids 
did when growing up. Therefore, adolescent menace was considered 
pranksterism rather than criminal behavior. 

Today, however, cruising and the menace which surrounds it is not 
viewed as pranksterism; instead, it is perceived as a much darker and more 
dangerous sort of threat. Adolescent cruising on Salt Lake City's State Street 
provides an example of adolescent cruising having its menace transformed 
into criminal behavior. Reporter Rebecca Walsh described the cruising on 
State Street in 1999 as 

a night club on asphalt. Site of a mating dance of sorts, punctuated 
by stops for drinks at the Chevron, where tailing is flirting, and two 
drivers exchanging phone numbers can reduce traffic to gridlock. 
It's a social, at times violent, tradition Salt Lake City police want to 
end. Using two murders in two years as a catalyst, city police claim 
cruising State has spun out of control. Decades of harmless fun has 
taken on a sinister cast. ("Tracking taillights . . . ") 

Shortly after her report, the Salt Lake City City Council passed a ban on 
cruising State Street (Egan 1999: Online). Reading the newspaper accounts 
leading up to, during, and following the elimination of adolescent cruising on 
State Street, it becomes clear that the cruising menace which was once 
pranksterism had become criminalized. Assistant Police Chief Roy Wasden 
described his changing perception of the activity like this: "[Cruising has] 
changed a lot in 25 years. . . . There's just a lot more of everything: more 
traffic, more weapons, more violence" (Walsh, "Tracking taillights. . . "). Salt 
Lake City resident Don Steiner, in his public forum letter in the Salt Lake 
Tribune, supported this position as well. He asserts that State Street cruising 
"was not American Graffiti, where cute little kids honk at each other for 
attention; it had become a continual crime scene on weekends. I applaud Salt 
Lake City for its efforts to make State Street once again safe 

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A FEAR OF ADOLESCENT CRUISING 

for all citizens" (Steiner). Because of cruising's transformation into a criminal 
menace, it seemed self-evident that the performance had to be abolished. 
Therefore, when Salt Lake City decriminalized many traffic violations, it left 
cruising State Street—along with drunken driving, excessive speeding, and 
reckless driving—"a  more serious criminal offense" (Kennedy). 

The logic of cruising's criminalization, however, has been challenged by 
individuals who fear that criminalizing cruising only appears to be an 
appropriate response to cruising's menace. In Salt Lake City, it was among 
others—ACLU Legal Director Stephen Clark who urged City Council 
members to proceed cautiously with criminalizing cruising. He argued, "I'm 
very concerned about how the cruising ordinance will be implemented and 
enforced. It's one more opportunity for people who are marginalized in our 
community to be targeted and harassed" (Walsh "New SLC Law . . . "). And 
in Denver, for instance, it was Hispanic voices who noted in an article in La 
Voz that "[ w]hat the media failed to see, but what was clearly evident to 
anyone on Federal [Street] over the weekend, was in its so-called "random" 
stopping of vehicles, the DPD [Denver Police Department] systematically 
pulled over and impounded vehicles driven by people who were young and 
brown or who displayed Mexican flags. Anglos drove by untouched" 
("Crusade for Justice. . . "). 

These voices of dissent argue that it seems to be part of human nature to 
fear that which is different and that is what is driving the criminalization of 
cruising. Researcher Doreen Massey concurs with the general principle: 
"Attempts to forbid behaviour which is different have always been part of the 
armoury of those who insist on establishing their own behaviour as 'normal' 
and 'natural', and therefore by some leap of logic to be conformed to by 
everyone" (127). The implication would be, then, that if cruising's performers 
were homogeneous they would not elicit the same sort of fear that a 
heterogeneous group of cruising performers would. According to this 
reasoning, cruising should have been much more homogenous when its 
menace evoked, at best, frustration than it is now when its menace evokes 
fear. James Bradley's 1971 master's thesis in sociology on a relatively 
unthreatening performance of adolescent cruising in San Leandro, California, 
seems to confirm this condition. In San Leandro, for instance, there were 
"few Mexican-Americans" (51) and no Blacks (49-50) who cruised. In other 
words, a lack of difference correlated with a lack of threatening menace. 
According to this theory, then, as cruising becomes a more diverse activity 
(as it had on Salt Lake City's State Street), fears would begin to surface. Tim 
Lucas unpacks the process through which the white middle-class fear of 
cruising becomes a public policy which criminalizes cruising. First, he 
argues, the word "gang" becomes confused 

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MCCORMICK 

with "race" (146-47). Next, the media creates a moral panic around "gangs" 
(that is, "minority youth") so as to titillate an audience which assumes it is 
being informed (152). Finally, Lucas argues that this moral panic leads to the 
"terrifying visions of white suburbanites. . . of the migration of drive-by-
shooting gangbangers in South-Central (LA) to the more prosperous (white) 
peripheral neighbourhoods" (152). To stop this migration, cruising becomes 
outlawed. 

Compelling as this explanation of the adult fear of cruising which is 
characterized by its difference is at first glance, cruising seems less about the 
performance of difference than it is about different people coming together 
to perform the same thing. In fact, cruising is arguably much more about 
assimilation than differentiation. Certainly, there are good reasons for those 
adolescents outside the white middle-class to want to participate not only in 
cruising but in all sorts of middle-class leisure activities. As Regina Austin 
argues in an article on governmental restraints on black leisure in Southern 
California Law Review, the appropriation of middle-class leisure spaces and 
practices results in the creation of "real and symbolic capital" by those non-
middle-class adolescents who appropriate them. 

But assuming assimilation is trying to be achieved, the question remains 
why adults—and white, middle-class adults in particular—would criminalize 
cruising if difference was not heightened but diminished during the 
performance. Barbara Ehrenreich suggests an answer when she argues that the 
middle-class (she claims an interest in the "professional" middle-class alone, 
but I think her argument applies to a greater or a lesser extent to the middle-
class generally) is not concerned with those who are different per se but about 
losing its own status. She writes that the middleclass is "insecure and deeply 
anxious. . . . It is afraid, like any class below the most securely wealthy, of 
misfortunes that might lead to a downward slide. . . . Whether the middle class 
looks down towards the realm of less, or up toward the realm of more, there is 
the fear, always, of falling" (15). If cruising is one of the traditional 
mechanisms for reproducing middle-class behaviors and values, then when 
this mechanism runs the risk of becoming either "clogged" by too many users 
or too effective at moving others into the middle-class (which results in either 
kicking others out or limiting the participation of all those involved), the 
mechanism itself comes under attack. Don Merten offers a brilliant case study 
of how this process is initiated when a burnout becomes a cheerleader. He 
argues that 

having a burnout as a cheerleader was so problematic. . . . [because] it 
violated an implicit assumption that the hierarchies of status categories and 
activities were congruent. But at a far more fundamental level, sta- 

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A FEAR OF ADOLESCENT CRUISING 

tus categories and activities not only identified types of people but also 
separated types of people. Since status categories and activities were 
expected to be hierarchically congruent, people who were near the bottom 
of the status hierarchy were not supposed to be in high-prestige activities. 
Having a burnout as a cheerleader was not just an isolated violation of this 
expectation but rather, like a taboo violation, threatened the integrity of 
these two categorical systems and their assumed congruence. . . . In other 
words, if a burnout could be a cheerleader, was there any limit as to what 
could happen; were any expectations valid? (65) 

Likewise, when cruising became perceived as inefficiently socializing and 
enculturating middle-class adolescents, it became feared, criminalized, and 
dismantled. 

Still, though, the need to socialize and enculturate middle-class ado-
lescents remained; therefore, new mechanisms were constructed to achieve 
these ends. Enter cruising the shopping mall, a landscape which serves as an 
escape from and defense against intrusions from outsiders—just as the 
commercial strip once did. I suspect that the recent challenge to cruising the 
mall's legitimacy as a middle-class leisure activity is a result of middleclass 
fears over the efficacy of the performance's ability to reproduce middle-class 
values and behaviors within the target population. 

Given what I've learned about adolescent cruising, I don't think this will 
be the blow that finally destroys the performance. As much as middle-class 
adults fear cruising's menace, they also seem to fear the loss of its 
reproductive potential. Cruising, after all, changes people. I know that from 
personal experience. This is precisely why middle-class adults have a 
love/hate relationship with the performance. And because of the power in 
this traditional performance, people change cruising. 

CABRINI COLLEGE  
RADNOR,  PENNSYLVANIA 

NOTES 

1. For example, I was surprised to find that in Abilene, Texas—my fieldsite—
cruising has begun to come under attack. This, in fact, was what originally caused me 
to look to other attacks on cruising around the nation so as to understand the 
motivations for this attack. 

2. This is not to suggest that cruising exists as some sort of transcendent, 
universal (or national) tradition. Rather, adolescent cruising is always localized from 
popular culture representations even as these localizations build the popular culture 
representations. This does not, however, preclude me from making general 
statements about the phenomenon. 

3. For example, in my fieldsite of Abilene, Texas, it is only now—in the late 
1990s—that this transformation to the tradition of adolescent cruising is becom- 

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MCCORMICK 

ing manifest in the local government as it considers whether to enact adolescent 
curfews on the weekend. 

4. This inherent menace is a result, at least in part, of the inherent menace in 
adolescent themselves. As ambiguous figures, adolescents pose a threat to the 
normative order, and their activities—however tame they may actually be—have at 
least the specter of this menace hovering around them. 

WORKS CITED 

Austin, Regina. "'Not Just for the Fun of it!' Governmental Restraints on Black 
 Leisure, Social Inequality, and Privatization of Public Space." Southern Cali- 
 fornia Law Review 71 (1998): Available Lexis-Nexis. 
Bradley, James P. Cruising the Strip: A Report on Youth. Thesis for M.A. in Soci- 
 ology at California State College, Hayward (1971). 
"Crusade for Justice Angered by Actions of Denver Police." La Voz May 14: 6, 
 Available Northern Light's Special Collection, 1997 
Egan, Rick. "Welcome to S.L., and No, You Can't." The Salt Lake Tribune June 
 1999, B1, Available Tribune Archive Online. 
Ehrenreich, Barbara. Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class. New 
 York: HarperPerennial, 1990. 
Kennedy, Kelly. "Gotten a Routine Traffic Ticket? You're no Longer a Criminal in 
 SLC." The Salt Lake Tribune (Final) Nov. 12 1999: B5. Available Tribune 
 Archive Online. 
Lucas, Tim. "Youth Gangs and Moral Panics in Santa Cruz, California." In Cool 
 Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, Eds. Tracey Skelton and Gill Valen- 
 tine. New York: Routledge, 1998. 145-60. 
Lyons, Paul. Class of  '66: Living in Suburban Middle America. Philadelphia: 
 Temple UP, 1994. 
Massey, Doreen. "The spatial construction of youth cultures." In Cool Places: 
 Geographies of Youth Cultures, Eds. Tracey Skelton and Gill Valentine. New 
 York: Routledge., 1998. 121-29. 
McCormick, Charlie. "The Origins of Adolescent Cruising: Reconciling Popular 
 Belief and Local History." Journal of the American Studies Association of 
 Texas 31 (2000): 64-81. 
Merten, Don E. "Burnout as Cheerleader: The Cultural Basis for Prestige and Privi- 
 lege in Junior High School." Anthropology & Education Quarterly 27.1 
 (1996): 51-70. 
Myerhoff, Howard L., and Barbara G. Myerhoff. "Field Observations of Middle 
 Class 'Gangs.'" In Juvenile Delinquency: A Book of Readings, 2nd Edition. 
 Ed. Rose Giallombardo. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1972.279-89. 
Steiner, Don. Public forum letter: "Cruising Law Needed." The Salt Lake Tribune 
 (Final) July 14, 1999: A12. Available Tribune Archive. 
Walsh, Rebecca. "New SLC Law Brings Tradition of Cruising to a Screeching 
 Halt." The Salt Lake Tribune June 9, 1999: DI. Available Tribune Archive. 

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______. "Tracking taillights on State Street, Cops to Discontinue Thrill Seekers on 
the Prowl, Cruising State Street Now Discouraged." The Salt Lake Tribune May 
23. 1999: C1. Available Tribune Archive. 

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