Into The Night: Cars, Teens And Hormones

It was hard to pinpoint when the night’s cruising truly commenced.

A few minutes after 9 o’clock Saturday, the evening sky was darkening up above the street lights on Riverside. Multiple carloads of teenagers tested the waters. Tunes thumped with too much bass. Heads turned with comical nonchalance.

One guy in a primer-coated pickup, perhaps going for self-parody or a personal tribute to the ‘50s, had his neck pressed back against the top of his seat as an arm dangled out the open window. Somebody inside a car full of baby-faced boys in ball caps kept flicking on the dome light. And two girls in a blue-green convertible made lazy laps while perfecting expressions of ice-queen boredom.

But it was too early. People coming out of Rock City could still jaywalk across Riverside at a leisurely pace. Adults, the definition of irrelevance, were still driving on the street for the annoying purpose of getting from here to there. And so, seeing that things just weren’t happening yet and not wanting to be stigmatized as early arrivals, most kids turned onto side streets with a defiant snap of the wheel. Then they hovered nearby like an army massing along a border.

At about 9:30, it looked like a cruising scene just wasn’t going to develop. Score it: Energy Conservation 1, Tribal Rites 0.

Then somebody down the street revved an engine with guttural, window-rattling gusto. And like high-octane magic, traffic picked up.

It wouldn’t be one of those bumper-to-bumper weekend nights. That much was clear. But at least a few players had come out to accept cruising’s time-honored invitation to adventure and romance.

Realistic expectations have nothing to do with it.

At 10:07 at Riverside and Stevens, the driver of a pickup with four guys sitting in the back honked at the girls in the blue-green convertible. And a few minutes later, two guys who had their car stereos blaring tried yelling at each other over the music.

The show had started.

At 10:20, two teenage girls walked up to the corner of Riverside and Stevens and assumed spectators’ positions, one taking a seat on a Good Paper box. “Ain’t nobody gonna tell me how to dress,” one said. “That’s just not how it is.”

At 11 o’clock, a guy by himself in a Honda CRX made his umpteenth circuit. Somebody else’s sound system pumped out Van Morrison’s “Moon Dance.”

And in the back of a pickup, a boy in a Goldilocks wig had an idea. “Let’s go to the park,” he said.

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that looks at gatherings in the Inland Northwest.