Woodward Dream Cruise

Submitted by Wigwam Jones on Sun, 08/19/2007 - 17:38

Just a few miles from the Wigster's hootch in Detroit, lurks the mighty road known as "Woodward." Imagine Detroit as the center of a wagon wheel, and a number of spoke radiating out from that hub (well, not into the water, but otherwise). Woodward is one of those spokes, going straight as a string from Detroit to Pontiac, and cutting through many of the original small towns which became 'white flight' suburbs after the riots of 1967.

Woodward is apparently a 'cruisers' haven and has been for decades. The 'Dream Cruise' starts at 8 Mile (yes, that 'Eminem' 8 Mile) and continues northwest through the towns of Ferndale, Royal Oak, Berkley and Birmingham. This is a once-a-year event, which is not only tolerated by the police but officially sponsored by the cities involved. It gets bigger every year. This year, they were expecting 40,000 hot rods. That's a lot of hot rods. One gets very weary of yet ANOTHER hemi-powered 1932 Ford roadster with giant slicks and human skulls for headlamps and an atomic beer cooler in the back. Oh, it has an 8-track tape player? OK, that's different. I'd better get a photo.

I drove out to 14 Mile and parked my car in a residential area, getting glares from the people whose house I parked in front of. I have been reliably informed that people who live on the west side of the Detroit area despise the Dream Cruise, since it means hopped-up drunks hot-rodding up and down their streets and debauching their daughters and peeing in their houseplants for the entire week leading up the cruise, and then of course on the day of the Cruise itself, they can't really leave their houses, since it is nearly impossible to get anywhere. East siders seem to find the whole thing worth a drive over to tick off the west siders.

I walked the half-mile or so out to Woodward, since the whole strip is pretty well impassable once the thing starts.

The street is more or less impossible to get across by car, but you can walk across if you walk down to one of the 'mile' street cross-sections. A fair amount of latitude seems to be given to what a 'hot rod' is. Some are more-or-less classic American Muscle Cars (tm).

Others, not so much.

Some cars, you think "OK, there's something you don't see every day."

After wandering around for awhile, I took myself back to my car and then drove down to 9 Mile, where I did more or less the same thing I had done on 14 Mile. I found the faces becoming more interesting than the cars, and on the whole, a bit more on the funky side.