Last Stand of the Cruiser
Last Stand of the Cruiser
American teen car culture reached its peak in the 1960s and early 1970s with the era of the muscle car, cheap gas, and well-paying factory jobs awaiting high school graduates. This story (at least the white part of it) is romanticized in American Graffiti, celebrating the end of a presumed golden age of the cruise in the early 1960s. Nevertheless, the cruise culture went on, only to begin its decline in the mid-1970s with the high fuel costs of the oil crisis of 1973 and 1979 and the subsequent downturn in the American manufacturing economy, especially the American auto industry. But there was also a little recognized trend: law enforcement was beginning to crack down on cruising and kids and their cars intruding on public space, resulting in the eclipse of cruising by the end of the 1980s. The story is part of the decline of the white largely working class greaser and is also about the clash of race and age, an assault on the Latino low rider, and a reversal of the permissive attitude of adults toward autonomous youth.
Keywords: teen car culture, 1960s, 1970s, American Graffiti, cruising, law enforcement, youth, autonomy
Chicago Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
