50 years ago, high gas prices put a crimp on cruising in downtown SLO
American mythology is intertwined with car culture, from the Model T to “American Graffiti,” Hollywood’s famed salute to cruising.
But that culture can take a hit when prices at the pump soar to unexpected heights.
Today, we are seeing prices spike above the $5 a gallon level as demand returns to the market after oil consumption plunged in the wake of the pandemic lockdown that at one point in April 2020 left dozens of oil tankers anchored off the California Coast.
One benchmark crude oil price collapsed below $0 that month as supply far exceeded demand.
But somehow the price at the pump never fell that far.
In previous decades, other market forces wreaked havoc on gas prices.
In 1973, the Arab oil embargo was a rude awakening to the vulnerability of supply interruptions.
One local price at the pump from 1974 was as high as 55-3/10 cents per gallon.
Mechanical gas pumps at the time could only crank prices up to 99.9 cents a gallon, but who could imagine that extra pricing room would be needed?
The oil crises of the 1970s bent but did not break the cruising culture in SLO County, which at its peak filled downtown San Luis Obispo with circling vehicles for hours on Thursday nights.
It wasn’t until 1980 that Farmers Market shut the tradition down in San Luis Obispo, though there was a brief revival during the COVID lockdown.
On Dec. 8, 1973, Jim Hayes wrote about the impact of rising gas prices on cruising downtown during the first embargo by Arab oil exporters:
If you can’t cruise … where will it all be happening?
The twin threats of gasoline rationing and dollar-a-gallon prices at the pump may put the brakes on cruising — the No. 1 night time sport of millions of young middle-class Americans in thousands of small towns across the nation.
But it’s doubtful that even an outright ban on automobile travel would stifle the determination of some young cruisers to see and be seen “dragging the main” in San Luis Obispo.
“If they can’t get enough gas for their cars,” says San Luis Obispo Police chief Ervin L. Rodgers, “They’ll switch to motorcycles.”
“If there isn’t enough gas for motorcycles, they’ll ride bicycles. You just can’t keep them away from downtown on Thursday nights.”
Echos a young printer who’s done his share of cruising downtown in the past five years:
“The cruisers who find gas, don’t worry about that. Money talks and you can get anything you want if you have the price. So what if the gas does run out? They’ve probably got cars right now that will run off the solar system.”
Talking is 20-year-old, wiry tough Mark Preuss. He’s on his lunch break, standing in front of his father’s commercial printing plant on Broad Street on San Luis Obispo’s southside. He’s wearing a tee shirt and Levis. If he put on a black vinyl jacket, he’d be in full cruiser regalia.
Half a block away is his “ride” a 1955 Chevy, its body painted an off-mustard yellow, hardtop a funeral black. Mark says he paid $400 for the car — all cash. He says he’s put another $600 under its hood and in the transmission, a bored out 283 engine, a four-speed Munsey box.
Mark’s car isn’t a “low rider,” he’s quick to point out. Unlike many San Luis Obispo County cruisers, it hasn’t been drastically lowered by tinkering with the suspension, nor is it “jacked up,” raised in the rear with special springs and shocks.
His car, capable of speeds well over 100, cruises at more like 10 miles an hour when he’s making the downtown circuit “just checking on where it’s happening.”
At that speed, on a two-mile route downtown that has 19 stoplights and considerable night time traffic congestion, Mark’s 18-year-old car gulps gasoline at a five-mile-per-gallon-rate.
And in the course of a single Thursday night — which begins shortly after 6 p.m. and may last until the downtown stores shut up at 9 p.m. — there may be more than 100 cars like Mark’s making the scene.
At nearly 50 cents a gallon, that’s a lot of expensive gasoline.
The downtown route — and the social conventions that surround it — are almost as formalized as the evening promenade in a Mexican village, where the young men walk around in the plaza in a clockwise direction and the senoritas and their duenas stroll counter-clockwise. (In both exercises there are some overtones of the mating dance.)
If they gas up at Ski’s Shell between Higuera and Monterey on Santa Rosa, the route runs down Monterey past two theaters, across Chorro to Higuera, down that three lane street to an alley (watch the concrete hump in the pavement) between the post office and the Pizza Pantry, back up Marsh past the Safeway to Johnson, across to three-lane Higuera and south again.
There are certain ritual stops and formalities along the way.
Most of the long-time cruisers like Mark (who started on a motorcycle when he was in junior high and owned three cars before the Chevy) know each other on sight.
“Where’s it happening?” they may shout at one of six chicks jammed into a Volkswagen.
Or, if they’re super, super, super cool, the greeting may be only a quick backward bob of the head — a reverse nod.
Where it’s happening may be in the deserted parking lot of the San Luis Obispo National Bank.
What’s happening may be — to the adult eye at least — very little.
It may be a six-pack of Coors. Cruisers in the know say that the no-liquor-under-21 law does little to impede the flow of beer and wine to any youngster who has the price of a can or bottle.
It may be a joint of marijuana, passed communally — but still furtively — in the back of a van parked away from the street lights.
The cruisers, most of whom went to school together in San Luis Obispo, recognize several social classes in the Thursday night milieu. Explains one 18-year-old veteran of the circuit:
“First there’s us. Then there’s the Poly aggies; they drive pickups like El Caminos with a shepherd dog in the back and a sticker that says ‘Cowboys Do It All.’ Then there’s the freaks; they just walk and stare — or maybe drive vans.”
“The cops are a group too. We call their cars Cherry Bombs.”
“The cops don’t hassle cruisers much,” says another high school dropout working as box boy in a supermarket to support his habit — a flashy Pontiac GTO.
“If you stay in one lane and don’t smoke it (spin the rear wheels of your car with sudden acceleration), the cops really don’t pay much attention you.
As for booze and pot — man, that’s everywhere. I can’t afford to drink much though; this damn car drinks up my money.”
The box boy lives with his mother, whom he calls “Mom.”
He sends four hours a day and cruises every Thursday night with a 13-year-old San Luis Obispo Junior High girl he refers to as “my old woman.”
He and his car are often spotted by patrolmen.
Says one young officer, himself only five years away from the cruising syndrome.
“I’ve seen him at 4 a.m., still making the circuit. The streets are empty, except for me and him, and he’s still going around and around.”
“If you’re too young to go into a bar and live in San Luis Obispo, there isn’t anything else to do. There used to be dances, like Surf’s Up and the Grange, but now they’ve even taken the pinballs out of the bowling alley.
“They’ve shooed the kids out of just about everywhere. But it’s the pure truth, there’s no way they’re going to stop ‘em from cruising.
“No way.”
