Inside the vanished world of SoCal's cruising scene when Camaros and Corvettes roared down Van Nuys Boulevard, gas was 33 cents, and barefoot blondes and brunettes sat on hoods during the summer of '72

Daily Mail ^ | 06/06/2021 | Mailonline Reporter

[Bonemaker]

In the summer of 1972, Alice Cooper and David Bowie blared from the radio as the country prepared itself for a presidential election later that year. (Incumbent Richard Nixon trounced George McGovern, the South Dakota Senator.) In the San Fernando Valley, teens and people in their early 20s were cruising up and down Van Nuys Boulevard, then they parked and hung out. Photographer Rick McCloskey, who grew up in the Valley, took his camera and chronicled the scene.

[xp38]

Well the movie addressing this theme was being made then and was released the next year. The success of this movie led directly to Star Wars.

[MrHead]

Same here.

[Daveinyork]

Ronnie and the Daytonas

[corkoman]

Notice that the streetlights were in triplicate - made VNB a brightly lit scene. Low riders, 57 Chevys with jacked-up in back. Bunches of teenagers in their parents cars. Just going north then south and around and around.

It was heaven. And then the oil embargo of 73 and they turned-off 2 of the three lights and it lost its aura. And you couldnt find gas.

Sigh.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Me three.

[dragnet2]

All that's long gone.

In fact, the only people ya see in these high end custom cars of days gone by, and gray haired old retired guys with money to blow...And those guys are now few and far between.

[Menehune56]

California was still The Golden State. Miss those days.

[Jim W N]

You’re right - thought it was Jan and Dean. Anyway, all 60’s before and aside form the grotesque hippie thing.

[Bonemaker]

“A lot of what we’re trying to work through now started back then.”

You are absolutely correct. I witnessed it all. My frame of reference is the 40s and 50s. As brutal as WW2 was and as hardened as it left people, there was a distinctly soft edge to life. Beginning in the mid-60’s that all went to hell the repercussions of which we feel to this very day.

[BobL]

I never knew that Alice Cooper was Asian. Learn something new every day!

[dfwgator]

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.”

[dfwgator]

“Dazed and Confused” was the American Graffiti for the 70s.

[Renegade]

Spent two to three weeks every summer in Manhattan Beach from 62-65.What an education for a guy from NE PA.

[dragnet2]

It’s no where near as bad as things are today. Today some misfit in Texas can bake her baby in a microwave oven and it barely makes news. So many mass shootings most people hardly pay attention. And this country has NEVER been this violently divided since the Civil War. This isn’t’ even debatable.

[dragnet2]

Last time I was in the San Fernando Valley I could not wait to get the hell out. It became an overcrowded seedy 3rd world, with millions of illegals and foreign nationals in every direction. It’s a flat out depressing place.

[LibertyWoman]

Absolutely...that movie hit it exactly for the 70s.

[hardspunned]

I had the feeling, before the Covid coup, that America was about to enter a 50s/60s renaissance. We were almost on top of the world again. Then the DS destroyed everything,

[Nea Wood]

Van Nuys Boulevard looks quite different today. You take your life in your hands walking down parts of it.

[Regulator]

“It became an overcrowded seedy 3rd world, with millions of illegals and foreign nationals in every direction. It’s a flat out depressing place”

Yup.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

1968. Similar to today except back then the cops were allowed to bust rioter’s heads.