Cruising

The cultural practice known as “cruising”—defined by Phil Patton as “to drive without purpose”—is largely a post-World War II phenomenon, the consequence of several factors, among them, the automobile industry’s promotion of the automobile as a symbolic form of cultural capital, particularly of individuality; making the car radio standard equipment; the installation of sumptuous interiors; increased interior leg room, especially in the back seat; and, of course, inexpensive fuel. Iconic motor vehicles, such as James Dean’s Porsche 550 Spyder, Elvis’s pink Cadillac, Kerouac’s ’49 Hudson, and the Big Bopper’s ’59 white Eldorado, collectively contributed to American teenagers’ fascination with the powerful automobile. Patton writes:

To drive without purpose—to “cruise”—is the central trope not only of Kerouac but of a hundred popular songs, in country music and rock and roll. Just driving without goal or purpose, surrendering the mind totally to the mechanical functions of steering wheel and gas pedal, figures in such songs as solace. (Open Road, 250)

Suspended in space and time—an effect of motion—cruising links thought with mechanical function. Cruising is an attempt to defamiliarize one’s perception of an all-too-familiar geography. It represents an attempt to introduce disequilibrium (“novelty”) into a stable system, to set oneself free—to get “unstuck”—from boredom. In other words, again to quote from Patton, “The open road . . . [ministers] to the American flight from self.” As it turns out, songs about cruising (the automobile, the road, and subjective interiority) are much more heterogeneous than it might seem:

To drive without purpose (no particular place to go):
The Beach Boys – I Get Around
Chuck Berry – No Particular Place to Go

Motion as speed, speed as conducive to hyper-suggestibility:
The Doobie Brothers – Rockin’ Down The Highway
Golden Earring – Radar Love
Sniff ‘n’ the Tears – Driver’s Seat

Motion as ever-shifting space, as magical space of possibilities:
The Modern Lovers – Roadrunner

Acute hermetic isolation, car as despotic comfort:
Gary Numan – Cars

“Baby Boom” growth and the cementing over of the landscape:
Joni Mitchell – Big Yellow Taxi
The Pretenders – My City Was Gone

The mysterious stranger:
David Allan Coe – The Ride
The Ides of March – Vehicle

The hitchhiker, Kerouac’s and Cassady’s “open road”:
Kris Kristofferson – Me and Bobby McGee
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Sweet Hitch-Hiker

Vehicular isolation as meditative space, knowing (certainty) reduced to feeling:
Patty Loveless – Nothing But the Wheel

The road as a means of flight or escape:
The Eagles - Take It Easy

Recommended reading:
Phil Patton, Open Road: A Celebration of the American Highway (Simon and Schuster, 1986).
Ronald Primeau, Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway (Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1996).