Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

Pretty good piece from Car and Driver:

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The End of Cruising

Cities are rapidly outlawing an American rite of passage almost as old as the automobile itself.
BY STEVE GOFMAN
April 2004


Looking in his rearview mirror one warm summer night in 1990, 18-year-old Kevin Scheunemann saw the unwelcome sight of a police car's flashing lights. Scheunemann, an ambitious assistant manager at the Dairy Queen on North Main Street in West Bend, Wisconsin, had been on his way to pick up an ice-cream cake at a second Dairy Queen, on South Main.

As Scheunemann waited for the officer to approach his car, he wondered what he could have done wrong. He wasn't speeding and as far as he knew hadn't broken any other traffic laws.

The officer informed Scheunemann that he'd violated West Bend's "cruising ordinance."
Scheunemann had no idea of the ordinance's existence.

To understand why Scheunemann was pulled over, it's necessary to retrace his steps. Less than two hours before, he had driven from the North Main Dairy Queen to the South Main Dairy Queen to pick up some cups and cones for the North Main store. He then returned to the North Main store but realized he'd forgotten to pick up an ice-cream cake at the South Main shop. So he drove back to get it. Before he got there, he was pulled over.

Scheunemann's three trips down Main Street that night may have seemed entirely innocent, but to the officer, his behavior amounted to cruising.

Defining cruising as "unnecessary, repetitive driving," the West Bend cruising ordinance could be enforced whenever the police saw someone driving past a traffic-control point, designated anywhere on Main Street, three or more times in any two-hour period during the evening hours, as Scheunemann had. The whole thing was enforced at the whim of the witnessing officer.

The cruising ordinance specifically exempted anyone driving for a business reason. Yet despite the fact that Scheunemann was wearing his Dairy Queen uniform and swore to the officer he was on the job, the cop was skeptical. It didn't help that Scheunemann fit the stereotypical cruiser's age demographic.

"The officer's attitude was that I was trying to con him," said Scheunemann, remembering the incident nearly 14 years later. "He couldn't believe an 18-year-old was a manager at a Dairy Queen."

Ultimately, the officer let him go without a citation. But the 20-minute delay cost Scheunemann a reprimand from his boss.

More significant, what happened changed Scheunemann's attitudes and convictions. He was not a cruiser, he was apolitical, yet seeing the kind of power the cruising ordinance gave the police—the power to decide whether a driver's explanation for repetitive driving was legitimate or not—bothered Scheunemann deeply.

"There were laws on the books already that addressed the problems of cruising—noise, disorderly conduct, urinating on people's lawns," said Scheunemann. "It pissed me off."

Today, the popularity of cruising seems greater than ever. Yet it may soon be legislated out of existence. Even cities and towns whose reputations have benefited from their cruising traditions have banned cruising.

The most telling examples are Pasadena, California, made famous by Jan and Dean's song "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena," and Modesto, California, the setting for 1973's American Graffiti and an oasis for cruisers and drag racers. In both cities, cruising is now illegal.

All across America, cities and towns have criminalized cruising at an alarming rate.

To people like Kevin Scheunemann, the anti-cruising trend signals nothing less than an assault on the fundamental right of Americans to freely move about the streets.

Scheunemann initially attempted to fight the West Bend cruising ban through the political process. First, he appealed to the city council. When that didn't work, he ran for election to the council (he lost). But real progress came in 1991, when he organized a mobile rally of cars and pedestrians on Main Street attended by 2000 protesters, many of them noncruisers. The police issued 100 citations for cruising at the rally, including two to Scheunemann. That gave him the legal grounds to challenge the cruising ordinance in court, along with four of his friends who were also cited.

Fortunately for Scheunemann and the four others, Bill Pangman, a constitutional rights attorney in Waukesha who believed in their cause, was willing to represent them pro bono.

"My concern with the cruising laws is the inroads they make turning us into a police state," said Pangman. "Now we have to account for our whereabouts to the police."

The case was heard by a municipal judge in West Bend. He threw out the tickets. That took care of the defendants' personal legal problems, but neither Scheunemann nor the city was content to rest there.

West Bend rewrote its cruising ordinance to require that anyone ticketed had to have shown an intent to cruise, which could be demonstrated by conversing with or hailing other drivers, arm waving, horn blowing, or entering or exiting a car directly from another. The revised ordinance also required that the police allow stopped motorists an opportunity to give a legitimate explanation for driving back and forth.

Theoretically, that protected noncruisers from being ticketed. Nevertheless, Pangman brought a new lawsuit on behalf of Scheunemann, challenging the rewritten ordinance. Pangman argued that it still violated Scheunemann's constitutional right to travel and was therefore invalid. The judges hearing the new lawsuit disagreed, however, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court refused to hear a further appeal, so the law stood.

"The judges were stodgy and unlikely to overturn anything," said Scheunemann, lamenting the outcome. "Their culture was 'Don't rock the boat.'"

Scheunemann, who today sits on the village board of nearby Kewaskum, Wisconsin, and owns five Dairy Queens, including one in West Bend, asked rhetorically, "Is it okay for the government to pull you over and keep you there for 20 minutes while you justify a lawful activity? Is your purpose going to be valid enough? If you're driving back and forth because you enjoy the scenery, is that necessary? Who's to say what is a 'necessary activity'? Is cruising necessary? Letting a cop decide that is very Orwellian."

His attorney, Bill Pangman, concurred. "The judges say we have a right to move about, but it's restricted to moving about for purposes the judges don't find offensive," said Pangman. "The purposes of cruising—associating with others, showing off artistically—are not valued by judges."

For their part, politicians blame cruising for a host of problems, some of which are the natural outcome of having too many cars driving the same street at the same time: congestion, moving violations, lack of access for emergency vehicles, loss of business by local merchants, pollution, danger to pedestrians, and noise from car exhausts and loud stereos. Other problems are more serious, including violent crime, prostitution, and gang activity.

Article continues

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

heh

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In 2000, Utah became the next staging ground for a cruising-law challenge, this time from an even more unlikely "cruiser." Official legislative records identifying the side effects of cruising in Salt Lake City's downtown State Street district included assaults (900 in the two years before Salt Lake City would enact a cruising ban), disturbing the peace, and two murders, one of them involving the stabbing of a 15-year-old boy when two cruiser groups challenged each other. Such facts formed the basis for the city's decision to write an anti-cruising law.

In July 2000, 57-year-old Ken Larsen, a University of Utah medical research professor and well-known local libertarian, got a ticket for cruising on the very night the city's anti-cruising law went into effect.

Larsen's intent was clear—to test the law. He was cited after driving past a traffic-control point five times in a red 1979 Ford Thunderbird, yelling out the window at police and all but begging for a ticket with signs plastered all over his car reading, "End the Police State Street Brutality."

"It's silly to make something illegal the third time you do it, but perfectly legal the first two," said Larsen of the cruising ordinance.

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Registered: Mar 2004
Location: kansas.
Posts: 346

quote:

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For their part, politicians blame cruising for a host of problems... including... prostitution

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Registered: Aug 2001
Location: Hilbert Space
Posts: 35656

It is difficult to make traffic less, assuming that you don't knock down houses and business premises to make more roads. Rules like this seem somewhat bizarre, though; is 'cruising' really the main non-essential cause of traffic problems? I'd have thought that cruising in traffic jams wasn't a great deal of fun anyhow.

In the UK, the schoolrun is the single most avoidable cause of heavy traffic; the difference in traffic during school holidays is really quite remarkable and a lot of those kids don't have to be driven to school by their parents.

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Registered: Feb 2004
Location: south afrika
Posts: 16791

i thought this thread was about homosexuals....

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Registered: Dec 2003
Location: Raleigh, NC
Posts: 294

quote:

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Originally posted by Smug Git

In the UK, the schoolrun is the single most avoidable cause of heavy traffic; the difference in traffic during school holidays is really quite remarkable and a lot of those kids don't have to be driven to school by their parents.

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Last edited by Earthsick on 04-05-2004 at 03:20 PM

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Registered: Jul 2000
Location: zanzibar
Posts: 10477

I thought the CHiPses might get a kick out of Libertarians who saw laws enacted in their communities that are punitive to young people who are, for the most part, out to have some harmless fun (and also were being zealously enforced against people are going about legitimate business) and decided to do something about it. The print version of this article had a picture of Scheunemann next to his van, which is covered with Libertarian bumper stickers.

It reminded me of a time during the summer when some friends and I decided to go play a game of tackle football on a field near our high school. We did not have equipment or anything (besides a ball) so it was probably more like rugby. Anyways, a man pulled up in a car and tried to throw us off the field. He said he was a soccer coach and we were playing on the school's soccer field. It was not soccer season, there were no nets, no lines, nothing. He then told us he was a lawyer and gave us his card and that we were going to be in trouble. One of my friends tore up his card and asked him if he wanted us to go sell drugs or something. It also reminds me of skateboarding when they don't try to work something out with the kids that enjoy doing it.

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Registered: Sep 2000
Location: Kansas City
Posts: 7504

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Originally posted by DevilMoon
I thought the CHiPses might get a kick out of Libertarians who saw laws enacted in their communities that are punitive to young people who are, for the most part, out to have some harmless fun (and also were being zealously enforced against people are going about legitimate business) and decided to do something about it. The print version of this article had a picture of Scheunemann next to his van, which is covered with Libertarian bumper stickers.

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Kick gotten.

Libertarians do serve a useful community purpose, believe it or not, in that we serve as a bulwark against anti-cruising laws, teen curfews, and other ridiculous usurpations of rights. As a rule, we can be counted on to raise a stink at any attempt to legislate in this direction. There are enough of us that very few laws of this sort make it to the rulebooks unopposed, and a lot of them get stopped, because it's just not worth the trouble of having to deal with us at city council meetings.

Of course, the Libertarian concept of appropriate teen behavor often also includes promiscuous sex, drug use, and random gunplay, often at the same time. So perhaps it's a good thing that there's non-Libertarians around to rein us in.

Just because I believe wholeheartedly in the creation of a fully Libertarian America doesn't mean I don't wet my pants in terror at the thought of it actually coming to pass.

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