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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

Posted on 06/06/2021 9:59:22 AM PDT by 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.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: History; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: 1972; california; cars; cruising
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To: Bonemaker
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.


21 posted on 06/06/2021 10:22:45 AM PDT by xp38
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To: LibFreeUSA

Same here.


22 posted on 06/06/2021 10:23:23 AM PDT by MrHead
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To: Jim W N

Ronnie and the Daytonas


23 posted on 06/06/2021 10:24:39 AM PDT by Daveinyork
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To: eyeamok
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.

24 posted on 06/06/2021 10:24:44 AM PDT by corkoman
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To: ImJustAnotherOkie; LibFreeUSA

Me three.


25 posted on 06/06/2021 10:30:39 AM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: Bonemaker
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.

26 posted on 06/06/2021 10:31:41 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Bonemaker

California was still The Golden State. Miss those days.


27 posted on 06/06/2021 10:32:17 AM PDT by Menehune56 ("Let them hate so long as they fear" (Oderint Dum Metuant), Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC))
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To: Daveinyork

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


28 posted on 06/06/2021 10:32:27 AM PDT by Jim W N (MAGA by restoring the Gospel of the Grace of Christ (Jude 3) and our Free Constitutional Republic!)
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To: neverevergiveup

“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.


29 posted on 06/06/2021 10:32:48 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Bonemaker

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


30 posted on 06/06/2021 10:34:05 AM PDT by BobL (I shop at Walmart and eat at McDonald's, I just don't tell anyone, like most here.)
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To: Pollard

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


31 posted on 06/06/2021 10:36:25 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: fidelis

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


32 posted on 06/06/2021 10:37:20 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: rktman

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


33 posted on 06/06/2021 10:38:16 AM PDT by Renegade
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To: neverevergiveup

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.


34 posted on 06/06/2021 10:38:25 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: Bonemaker

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.


35 posted on 06/06/2021 10:44:09 AM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: dfwgator

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


36 posted on 06/06/2021 10:45:06 AM PDT by LibertyWoman ("Where there is no law, there is no liberty." Benjamin Rush)
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To: BradyLS

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,


37 posted on 06/06/2021 10:45:10 AM PDT by hardspunned (former GOP globalist stooge)
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To: Bonemaker

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


38 posted on 06/06/2021 10:46:25 AM PDT by Nea Wood (Satan was the first liberal.)
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To: dragnet2

“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.


39 posted on 06/06/2021 10:46:32 AM PDT by Regulator (It's Fraud, Jim)
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To: basalt

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


40 posted on 06/06/2021 10:46:55 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar ((Democrats have declared us to be THE OBSOLETE MAN in the Twilight Zone.))
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