When the baby boomers got their driver's license en masse in the 1960s, the American automotive industry realized that there was a lucrative market there. With the booming baby boomer as the target group, new car models saw the light. 'Muscle cars' such as the Ford Mustang, the Chevrolet Camaro, the Pontiac GTO and the Chevrolet Chevelle. For the smaller purse there was the second-hand market. The cars of father and mother, who bought a newer model themselves, were sprayed in striking colors, with painted flames, lowered on the suspension, fitted with profileless tires or otherwise pimped and personalised. Not always 'street legal'. But the most common car was the Volkswagen Beetle.
Those who were teenagers in those years, had a car and lived in the San Fernando Valley went to Van Nuys Boulevard on Wednesday evenings. Every Wednesday night was Cruise Night in the San Fernando Valley, a suburb of Los Angeles. Bumper to bumper, cars of aimlessly driving youths filled the six-lane, three-mile boulevard that runs from Ventura Boulevard to Sherman Way.
Gasoline was cheap, there was not much other entertainment. Seeing and being seen, that's what it's all about. Even if you didn't have a car. The sidewalks were black with bystanders.
In the summer of 1972, Rick McCloskey (Los Angeles, 1946) - a recently graduated photographer from California State University in Northridge - went to Van Nuys Boulevard, near his parents' home. For twelve weeks he was there every Wednesday and sometimes Friday and Saturday evenings, photographing the aimlessly driving cars and their occupants. He was all about the cars, but his camera also waved at the public and the surrounding shops - whose owners were not happy with all that car traffic.
A year later, with the OPEC oil embargo in 1973, it was all over. Gasoline went on ration followed by a series of price hikes that made it four times more expensive. With that, the cruising was over.
Not that McCloskey had seen that coming. It was pure coincidence that he hung out there in the summer of 1972. His girlfriend had pointed it out to him. McCloskey's black-and-white photos of Van Nuys Boulevard 1972 provide a wonderful picture of American youth culture, of muscle cars, drag stars, hot rods, low riders, pick-ups, vans, RVs and motorcycles. Bruce Springsteen's 'Racing in the Streets' is about this quintessentially American phenomenon.
Today, McCloskey helps restore classic American station wagons ("Woodies").