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Friday, May 3, 1991 / University Daily Kansan
Notorious cruisers' haven lies quiet and still today
The Associated Press
MODESTO, Calif. — The main drag celebrated as a teen-ager's cruising paradise in the movie *Fifty Shift!* has been quiet for a year now.
When the good-natured tradition popularized in the 1950s gave way to 1990s-style vandalism, fights and drunkenness, city officials outlawed cruising along McHenry Avenue downtown. The decade that followed, film director George Lucas showed to the world with his 1973 movie had come to an end.
Following the plot of the movie, high school seniors 16 years ago established "Grafift Night" on the first Saturday after graduation.
the blare of music and the shouts of teen-agers. This year will be no exception.
But one Saturday night each June, the drag comes alive again with the roar of engines, the honking of horns.
City officials agreed to exempt "Graffiti Night" when they banned cruising in March 1990. Last year, an estimated 70,000 people made the sidewalks as prone to gridlock as the avenue.
"We don't have all the fights now." Cheesman said. "We don't have all the drinking. The major thing is the vandalism is gone — no more gangsters chasing people and beating up anyone they saw."
But the street is busier during the 5 p.m. rush hour for the rest of the year, patrol officer A.L. Cheeseman said.
ban, which imposed fines for loitering on foot and driving past certain checkpoints more than once.
Cruising has a long history in this San Joaquin Valley farming center, 90 miles southeast of San Francisco. Jeff Goodwin said his father
Jeff Goodwin said his father cruised McHenry in the 1950s.
"American Graffiti" told a tale of crusading on prom night in 1962, when Lucas was a senior at Modesto's Downey High School.
The kids called it dragging them. They would circle Burges' Drive in downtown, then drag over to Al's Drive-in. Sometimes, they would stop
for a hamburger and milk shake delivered by a car hop on a metal tray that attached to the car door.
The film by Lucas, who went on to make the "Star Wars" trilogy, was a slice of nostalgia about growing up in a more innocent time before President Kennedy's assassination, Vietnam and Watergate.
Goodwin, 22, is sad that the next generation won't know the fun of cruising McHenry.
"There really might have been a lot of trouble, but nothing serious."
enough to stop it," he said. "Now there's nothing to do."
Tina Rico said she wondered whether teen-agers would get into more serious trouble because they could be let off to let their youthful euphoria
"I got in trouble too," said Rico, 23.
"I got my tickets, but it's history. It makes Modesto."
But the people who live near McHenry are relieved that the noise, vandalism and trash are gone.
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