This Is Not a Fashion Photograph. Rick McCloskey
For those of us who never had a car to cruise around in, movies are a constant reminder of what we missed–or were smart to
Rick McCloskey’s book, Van Nuys Blvd. 1972 (Sturm & Drang), touches on all these things, including the police, who make an unwelcome appearance toward the end. But McCloskey, who grew up in Van Nuys just a block away from that boulevard, reminds us that cruising was mostly a mating game. For teenagers still living at home, dating usually involved meeting up in cars with friends and driving around, going nowhere except maybe Bob’s Big Boy, now a burger joint legend. In Van Nuys, a Los Angeles neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, the long, broad boulevard had been the place to cruise and hang out since the 1950s. McCloskey remembers watching the passing parade of souped-up automobiles long before he had a driver’s licence. “It was a terrific place to both see and be seen,” he writes in his afterword to the book, “and to show off your ride as well.”
A photograph by Rick McCloskey from his book “Van Nuys Blvd. 1972” (Sturm & Drang).
© RICK MCCLOSKEY/STURM & DRANG
He was 26 when he went back to the street with a camera, not much older than most of his subjects and still just as fascinated by the scene. “Gas was cheap,” he writes, “times were great, and the boulevard hummed with life during the evenings... There were ‘tribes’ of van kids–surfers mostly–low riders, muscle cars, street racers, Volkswagen owners...and, of course, thousands of young people.”
Those young people are his main focus, but they’re never far from their vehicles, which get plenty of attention on their own. McCloskey devotes doting shots and most of a paragraph to the most popular makes–the Ford Mustang, the Pontiac GTO, the Chevy Camaro–and notes that a Chevrolet assembly line was busy 24 hours a day just up the boulevard, in North Van Nuys.
He could probably name all the makes and models in the photograph above, but it’s the hairdos and the outfits that excite me. If these girls aren’t on their way to a party, they’re making their own soiree right here–lighting up, hanging out, looking Van Nuys fabulous.
Vince Aletti is a photography critic and curator. He has been living and working in New York since 1967. A contributor to “Aperture”, “Artforum”, “Apartamento” and “Photograph”, he co-wrote “Avedon Fashion 1944-2000”, published by Harry N. Abrams in 2009, and is the author of “Issues: A History of Photography in Fashion Magazines”, published by Phaidon in 2019.