Giving Cruising a Bruising: Efforts Slow Car-Culture Ritual

Saturday night cruising in Jean Patton’s Balboa Peninsula neighborhood used to be so bad that a trip to the grocery store meant getting out her old three-speed bicycle and pedaling alongside the rows of idling cars that clogged Balboa Boulevard.

“I could never get my car through that gridlock. It would take an hour to go five blocks,” Patton said. “The cruising was terrible. You had all these kids in their cars honking horns, shouting, cranking up the music. . . . It was the summer ritual.”

Not anymore. After a community outcry five years ago, police in Newport Beach and other cities began to crack down on cruising, the legendary weekend custom that had come to symbolize Southern California’s post-World War II car culture.

In Newport Beach, city officials are so convinced they have the problem licked that they recently began removing some of the barricades and “No Cruising” signs along Balboa Boulevard. Anaheim and Santa Ana have had similar success in combating the gridlock.

“We sent a clear message to people that cruising is not permitted in this county,” Santa Ana Police Lt. Michael Foote said. He attributes the turnaround to an aggressive anti-cruising strategy devised in the late 1980s by law enforcement agencies.

Santa Ana used an elaborate computerized checkpoint system and street barricades to deter drivers along South Bristol Street, a popular youth zone that has been the site of more than a dozen deaths and 100 assaults since 1991.

Because of the crackdown, police say, the cruising scene has now moved to outlying areas such as Riverside, San Bernardino and Chula Vista.

But others see a disturbing side effect. They contend that young people have simply turned their attention to an even more troubling activity: drag racing.

“Nobody cruises anymore. The laws are too strict. You can’t drive anywhere without the police pulling you over,” said Chris Tran, co-owner of Speed Image, a high-performance body shop in Santa Ana. “Drag racing has taken over.”

The decline of cruising may mark the end of an era. Through the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, thoroughfares such as Whittier Boulevard, State College Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway drew teenagers in search of fun and fast food to neon-lit drive-in restaurants.

But, like 10-cent hamburgers and sodas, the carefree atmosphere began to disappear. In some cruising hot spots, such as Bristol Street in Santa Ana, violence became an increasing problem on Sunday nights, with as many as 8,000 vehicles streaming by.

“You’d have one car pass another and start shooting. That’s when you have the innocent victims, because bullets go everywhere,” said Alberta Christy, a leader of Santa Ana’s Valley High Neighborhood Assn. “People were afraid. They couldn’t shop at night for milk and bread.”

The city adopted an anti-cruising ordinance in 1989, and police later unveiled an ambitious enforcement program.

Officers established traffic checkpoints along Bristol, stopping each car and taking down the license number and driver’s name. The information was then fed into a computer.

If the car showed up at other checkpoints later in the evening, police were be able to prove that the driver was cruising. Those caught cruising received traffic citations and in some cases were arrested and had their cars impounded.

The city also closed off several side streets and asked some shopping center owners to close their parking lots to discourage cruisers from congregating there.

“We put cruising on our own terms,” Foote said.

The effort required more than 100 officers a night, but it worked. Cruising on Bristol is down dramatically, Foote said, and the word is out that Santa Ana is off limits to cruisers.

“The community had to stand up, but we can enjoy our neighborhood again,” Christy said. “You have the enjoyment of going shopping at night or going to a restaurant.”

Newport Beach, Anaheim and other cities report a similar decline. In Huntington Beach, weekend cruising along Main Street remains an occasional problem, but officials said they have seen less of it since the police began periodic enforcement efforts.

What remains unclear is whether the decline in cruising has resulted in an upswing in street racing. Santa Ana police officials say they have not noticed an increase in racing incidents over the past year.

But Tran and others say that racing is more popular than ever. Last year, several serious accidents attributed to the activity drew widespread attention, including one Fountain Valley case in which a 17-year-old girl died.

Some car buffs are pushing for more organized driving courses where racers can challenge each other safely and legally. Otherwise, Tran said, some young people who are determined to race will do so in industrial areas at night.

“They don’t have the police there waiting for them,” he said.