28th Street Metro Cruise 2011
By Scott Strenzel, aka Scooter from Scooter’s Garage

WOW! The gigantic foremost 28th Street Metro Cruise was awesome, again, this year.

OK. You have a clean, family oriented, decent sized city in Grand Rapids, Michigan.Then you toss in a five lane street about 12 to 15 miles in length. Fill it with every brand and color of muscle car, street rod, antique car, old truck, Rat Rod, lead sled custom, and anything in between! This becomes a SERIOUS party for anyone of any age! Weather or not they are vintage car people or just are fun people in general. A very successful promoter once told old Scooter: “The best way to promote ANY event? Is to have a party going on and that particular event just happens to pass by or go thru the party! By doing this, you have it all! People, cars, food, music and heck, just good old fun! Who could want more with this all around them? The chambers of both Kentwood and Wyoming, along with Foremost Insurance, Grandville and Cascade group up and are TOTALLY behind this happening each August. Check it out on line or just goggle it for next year. There are so many more contributing sponsors and supporters it would take a separate article just to list them. Suffice to say this area ROCKS! Or rather, Cruises to the MAX!

It begins on Friday, a sock hop, a pin up contest, cruising, setting a round, making new friends, talking cars or gee maybe turtle races or stamp collecting. Ha ha! Or you can run up and down 28th Street to any number of other locations and catch food vendors, buy official apparel, try the NASCAR simulator, listen to a DJ doing cool music, etc. I even found and stopped at Meijer in Cascade and sampled Meijer brand foods and did some Wii gaming, and watched the HP photo creation area. You can even attend the swap meet and car corral at another location, plus any number of official car clubs has reserved spaces at Rogers Plaza, H&R Block, the old Classic Chevy lot and so many more lots and places you’ll have to grab a program to be able to de-code the fun times so you won’t miss anything. I saw the Penski Indy Car, a NASCAR stock car, the GM Futurliner, and there was even a judged car show at the Sears area. I also saw numbers matching 70′s Hemi’s, a 1967 Vette coupe with a 427 and factory AC, a 1200, correct 1200 HP Firebird, a half a dozen car magazine cover cars, some of the far out Rat Rods, some nostalgia old skool custom cars and a raft of stock restored vehicles.

Besides, I like so many other mint cars and an equal number of “in the process cars”. . . I literally can’t recall all of them now. I experienced some guys & and gals that swore to me that next year they’d have an old car to join in the event. You don’t even have to be driving a vintage car, but it’s more fun with one. Just grab a lawn chair, some food money and find a place, any place right along the side of the road, and set up your personal fun area. A WARNING HERE! This is a VERY BIG EVENT! Get there early! Bring what you need to stay longer than you had planned! Also be sure that if you have a built up engine or AC, that your car will be able to with stand lots of slow cruising and stop and go driving. Getting around can be done in some areas via Vintage balloon tire and low rider bicycles as well as those powered coolers and bar stools.

Talk to the car guys and gals, take pictures, eat some good food, do “stuff” or as Scooter does, get HIGH at these things from just the way it is and the way it was! I’m talking ……this year the numbers were like this, over 15,000 old cars, plus 1000′s more “civilian” cars. Over 300,000 spectators! You have to be there if you live any where near Michigan.

Originally posted on Tuesday, February 14th, 2012 at 11:34 am
Category:  Auto Round-Up News