USMstang wrote:Cruisin is basically fall break for serious Hot Rodders young and old. The best rolling classic/antique car show around. And plenty of street rods. Bridge to bridge for 7 days, each city has a "day" where they block off streets and let cruisers park and/or parade the cars. Pretty cool and been going on about 20 years, very well organized as well.
10 or 15 years ago I had an office on the 3rd floor of the Mississippi Power building in Gulfport, with a window facing US90. I used to love watching the classic cars roll by all day during Cruisin' the Coast. It'd pretty quickly reach the point where the Cruisin' cars outnumbered the newer cars by a pretty substantial margin. People brought some pretty amazing hardware down there to show off.
Big, late 60s muscle cars like 442s and GTOs restored to near-showroom condition were probably the most numerous, but you saw all sorts of shit. There were lots of 427cid Shelby Cobras, and all sorts of Mustangs and Camaros from every era. I'd even see shit like this:
You've probably seen cars like that in pictures, but if you've never seen one rolling down US90 dwarfing the Camrys and Accords, you don't know just how substantial and imposing that kind of car is.
Saw a couple of these every year, too:
Don't know if they were the real deal, or if they'd at least been built from a lesser Corvette to be the real deal, but neither would surprise me.
Anyhow, I have very fond memories of Cruisin' the Coast, and of living on the Coast in the late 1990s / early 2000s in general. That was a fun, fun time and place to be alive. Watch Cruisin' all week at work, go to the dragstrip after work and meet all the old rich dudes with nice cars, and then head on up to Hattiesburg for some football on Saturday. Nothing quite like rolling into the dust bowl 10 minutes before game time and watching USM beat OK State or Illinois. Some very, very credible football was played back then.
Even when it wasn't Cruisin' week, Gulfport Dragway was oh so fun. It's right in the middle of a trailer park, and the residents would all come out on Wednesday night to watch us race. I used to love going there and beating up my car, and then, after I got eliminated from the 9PM tournament, I'd grab a couple of beers and watch the last couple rounds.
Around March 2003, some changes came that tore it all apart, for me at least. If something's good, enjoy it while it lasts. I'd give anything to go back to those days. If there's a heaven, it resembles that. I do miss that place, that time, and those friends. Gulfport/Biloxi was a 24-hour town full of party people and fun shit to do. Very underrated place.