Night car cruising in the Black Country - WTF??

[Mr vertical]

It's basically youfs driving round in the evening usually in tarted up small engined cars. Been going on for many years. Cannock suffered first in my memory. Goes back to the days of Merry Hill centre opening. They used to race round there then cruise the carriageways to and from it. That was why the gates were installed to keep them off at night.

I used to go to this - Early 90s with RS Turbos and 808 State on the stereo instead of what's cool now. It was just a meetup ending with the cops issuing producers. You'd get people driving from Manchester and Notts just to sit in a DFS carpark. It took the authorities around six weeks to put some gates on. Very little actual racing compared with now.

[Derek Hardballs]

Cruising sounds all lovely but in reality it’s a bunch of chav’s driving at ludicrous speeds down public roads, blaring out shit music and acting like complete pricks to communities who happen to live by them.

[Offside]

I remember as a 17 year old, racing a mate into Brum in my Ford Anglia along the Hagley Road one Saturday night.

The car in front of me was getting in my way so I cut it up and roared past it to the next set of lights at the Ivy Bush, which were on red.

The car I had just carved up pulled up behind me. The annoyed driver, all six foot six of him, got out, opened my door and grabbed me warmly by the throat.

I was just able to gasp "hello dad" before he shook the shit out of me.

[Baggiejacko]

It's basically youfs driving round in the evening usually in tarted up small engined cars. Been going on for many years. Cannock suffered first in my memory. Goes back to the days of Merry Hill centre opening. They used to race round there then cruise the carriageways to and from it. That was why the gates were installed to keep them off at night.

I used to go to this - Early 90s with RS Turbos and 808 State on the stereo instead of what's cool now. It was just a meetup ending with the cops issuing producers. You'd get people driving from Manchester and Notts just to sit in a DFS carpark. It took the authorities around six weeks to put some gates on. Very little actual racing compared with now.

Spot on Mon but it ended up with the ring road being a race circuit in later years.

[fuzzbox]

Like all rebellious youth cultures, they get confiscated and then diluted by the mainstream. Skate parks in the UK today have become a hub for middle-class toffs being closely watched by their paranoid parents. Vans are more likely to be worn by the school bully than the 'grebo'.

I assume there's still a 'lowriding' culture amongst young Latinos.  In the mid-2000s I worked on la frontera whilst volunteering with no mas muertes and some of the contraptions local youths drove were batshit crazy.

Wow. It sounds like you actually DID the stuff I was DEFINITELY GOING TO DO after I'd had a few drinks and wanted to make the world a better place. Until I woke up the next day...

Did you ever meet Luis Urrea? He was associated with them wasn't he?

[WWHO]

Like all rebellious youth cultures, they get confiscated and then diluted by the mainstream. Skate parks in the UK today have become a hub for middle-class toffs being closely watched by their paranoid parents. Vans are more likely to be worn by the school bully than the 'grebo'.

I assume there's still a 'lowriding' culture amongst young Latinos.  In the mid-2000s I worked on la frontera whilst volunteering with no mas muertes and some of the contraptions local youths drove were batshit crazy.

Wow. It sounds like you actually DID the stuff I was DEFINITELY GOING TO DO after I'd had a few drinks and wanted to make the world a better place. Until I woke up the next day...

Did you ever meet Luis Urrea? He was associated with them wasn't he?

I did meet him a couple of times in Phoenix/Tuscon.  I was part of a group protesting Bush's Secure Fence Act (another populist politician pandering to right wing conservatives by promising a wall) and he was a keen advocate of our work.  I'd already read the brilliant yet disturbing A Devil's Highway and had had the misfortune of stumbling on the bodies of two indocumentados whilst filling up water tanks in the Naco sector with Humane Borders.  It's tough place, both sides of the divide.

[fuzzbox]

Wow. It sounds like you actually DID the stuff I was DEFINITELY GOING TO DO after I'd had a few drinks and wanted to make the world a better place. Until I woke up the next day...

Did you ever meet Luis Urrea? He was associated with them wasn't he?

I did meet him a couple of times in Phoenix/Tuscon.  I was part of a group protesting Bush's Secure Fence Act (another populist politician pandering to right wing conservatives by promising a wall) and he was a keen advocate of our work.  I'd already read the brilliant yet disturbing A Devil's Highway and had had the misfortune of stumbling on the bodies of two indocumentados whilst filling up water tanks in the Naco sector with Humane Borders.  It's tough place, both sides of the divide.

Far, far too tough for me. It's a completely different mentality. The closest i'll go is San Diego! I always thought I'd be braver when I 'grew up', but I never was. As I get older, I know I never will be. I support similar causes, do a bit of lobbying and work on the legal side for various organisations, but it's all a bit weak - and I know it. What made you get involved in it?

[WWHO]

Wow. It sounds like you actually DID the stuff I was DEFINITELY GOING TO DO after I'd had a few drinks and wanted to make the world a better place. Until I woke up the next day...

Did you ever meet Luis Urrea? He was associated with them wasn't he?

I did meet him a couple of times in Phoenix/Tuscon.  I was part of a group protesting Bush's Secure Fence Act (another populist politician pandering to right wing conservatives by promising a wall) and he was a keen advocate of our work.  I'd already read the brilliant yet disturbing A Devil's Highway and had had the misfortune of stumbling on the bodies of two indocumentados whilst filling up water tanks in the Naco sector with Humane Borders.  It's tough place, both sides of the divide.

Far, far too tough for me. It's a completely different mentality. The closest i'll go is San Diego! I always thought I'd be braver when I 'grew up', but I never was. As I get older, I know I never will be. I support similar causes, do a bit of lobbying and work on the legal side for various organisations, but it's all a bit weak - and I know it. What made you get involved in it?

Yeah, it's a curious place that attracts peculiar people.  I must admit I loved living in Tuscon and Nogales.

Well, all advocacy/social movements require a multi-dimensional, horses for courses approach.  As you well know, political lobbying in the corridors of power works in some circumstances, other times direct action is required.  One isn't more effective than the other, per se.

As for me, I studied for a MA in Area Studies at Uni of Liverpool, which had a significant focus on the Americas.  I originally moved to Oaxaca in Mexico to research the leaders of the People's Popular Assembly (APPO).  Let's just say things got a little hot so I travelled north with a group of indocumentados and settled in the border regions. I wrote my thesis on the history of anti-immigration protest groups on la frontera, volunteering with the infamous Minutemen.  I found their leaders incredibly unsavoury (they had links with David Duke and John Tanton, the puppet master), so focused on the rank and file volunteers and found many of them were blue collar, small town Americans who had been left behind by unfettered neoliberalism (brexit anyone?).

Ended up leaving the borderlands after my research and moved to Hazleton in NEPA, which became the next battle in the greater war on 'illegal immigration'.

I do miss America.  Everyone had a story, especially the nut jobs.

[Tom Joad]

Cruising sounds all lovely but in reality it’s a bunch of chav’s driving at ludicrous speeds down public roads, blaring out shit music and acting like complete pricks to communities who happen to live by them.

…..is all you need to know.

Except, it is making a comeback in the current lockdown.
I don't like this culture and it shouldn't be confused with anything American. Genuine petrolheads, or petrolyeds in this case, soon give them a wide berth. There is a huge difference between the types, those posing around a car park in a car they are genuinely proud of, have paid for themselves and perhaps modified themselves. All a bit pointless to me but it doesnt do a great deal of harm.  Then those that buy something so fast they can barely (and not always) handle, and race around dual carriageways putting everyones life at risk, often with fatalities occurring. One on the B'ham New Rd,Wolvo recently, another round the corner on Parkfields Rd and another infamous one on the Brum middle ring rd in the underpass. All those involved fatalities.

[fuzzbox]

Yeah, it's a curious place that attracts peculiar people.  I must admit I loved living in Tuscon and Nogales.

Well, all advocacy/social movements require a multi-dimensional, horses for courses approach.  As you well know, political lobbying in the corridors of power works in some circumstances, other times direct action is required.  One isn't more effective than the other, per se.

As for me, I studied for a MA in Area Studies at Uni of Liverpool, which had a significant focus on the Americas.  I originally moved to Oaxaca in Mexico to research the leaders of t......

I do miss America.  Everyone had a story, especially the nut jobs.

I'd like to think that's why I chose that approach, but I know that it was because I didn't have the balls for other.

You joined the minutemen?? Is that the way you were originally leaning or was it 'undercover'? I'm amazed they let you in. I would have thought they would be careful. Weren't they wary with your background (If my assumptions are correct about your 'background') 

One thing that's always intrigued me about the direct approach is how do you give it up? I would have thought you have to buy into it heart and soul and your social circle becomes entrenched, so leaving must be a wrench.