In late September 1980, there was an article in the newspaper that said the Mesa City Council would be proposing a parking ban on Main Street to curb cruising, and that the City Council would be hearing from citizens on the subject at the next Council meeting. I called a friend of mine and asked him to join me at the meeting to express our displeasure at this idea of stopping something that we had enjoyed for years.

On August 4, 1980, Mike Long joined me at this meeting and spoke, along with Cary Rast, a former schoolmate, Bill Rice and also speaking that evening was Pastor Howard Hahn. I listened to everyone speak, and when it was my turn, I pleaded with the council to give those of us who were there a chance to go down on Main and talk with all the cruisers and get them to act civilly and not ruin something that we all enjoyed. The council was impressed enough with all the speakers that they “shelved” the idea and decided to give us the rope to hang ourselves.

After the meeting, I was interviewed by the Mesa Tribune, as was Pastor Hahn. Howard, as his friends call him, came up to me and invited me to his church to discuss what action we should take to begin our crusade to keep cruising alive. I was 19, single, liked to party every weekend, and most days in between, didn’t attend church, cussed like a sailor and the last thing I wanted was to sit down with a Pastor at a church and discuss cruising. I mean let’s get real!! I’m going to talk to a Pastor about going down on Main Street to meet and pick up girls? I called Mike again and pleaded with him to join me at this meeting because I knew Mike was a little more open-minded than I was about church and things. I was waiting for us to go to this church and discuss how we could help people pray about keeping the cruise open and try to be converted. Man was I wrong!!

We met with Pastor Hahn for the first time the following Monday, and he made it perfectly clear to us that he was there to discuss cruising and only cruising. If I remember correctly, and my memory isn’t what it used to be, he didn’t even have is clerical collar on that night. I made a friend that night, and my ignorance was relieved and closed mind opened up. We spent several hours discussing the problems surrounding cruising, came up with the idea of Cruisin’ News, decided on a parade with me riding in a coffin with a sign proclaiming, “Cruising, RIP”.

The following weekend, Cary, Mike, Bill, Pastor Hahn and myself went down to Main Street armed with several hundred invitations to an open meeting at the church where we were going to discuss cruising and invite people to join us in our efforts. Our reception on Main that weekend was mostly warm, although I remember several teenagers telling Pastor Hahn they didn’t want to be preached to. He just smiled, handed them a newsletter, and told them he was there to help them save cruising, not their souls. I remember him telling one guy, “I’m down here on your street to talk about cruising. If you want to talk about God, then come down to MY street on Sunday morning.”
The guy smiled and took the newsletter and he was at the meeting at the church.

Our first open public was a little bit of a stage show, with me coming out of a coffin at the beginning of the meeting, and then several of us talking to a group of about 50-75 people about what they needed to do to help us help them. About 10 or 15 of them decided they wanted to be directly involved and joined our group and attended our weekly meetings. Sometimes they brought friends and our group continued to grow.
My friendship with Howard continued to grow, and I remember many times going to the church to meet with him just to talk about other things, not just cruising.

Over time, Marc and Rick Hobe, Bill Rice, Mike and Dodie Rowe, Larry Vela, Diane and Shane McCord, “X” and Sue Gonzales, Doug 'Wiz" Goss, Rich “The Kook” Lucas, Tanya Bowman, Tracy Inman, and many others that time has allowed my memory to misplace their names all joined us. Recently, while looking back through many of the articles and Cruisin’ News, I remember Judy Barry coming on board as an advisor, and her two daughters joining us.

From August 1980 until April 1982, the Concerned Cruisers went to Main Street every weekend, and every Monday we met at the church to plan the next weeks activities. In the meantime, Bill Rice began contacting Dave Ellis from Car Craft Magazine about our cruise, and he was relentless.  In March 1981, Car Craft presented a full article on Main Street and the Concerned Cruisers and how our battle was going with the city to keep cruising alive. Dave Ellis, from Car Craft, said we had the best cruise in the country, because of the way Main Street was laid out at the time. We could park on the side of the street and watch the cars and girls go by, and then dive into the back of a truck or car if necessary.

We tested laws that were outdated and antiquated, or being enforced just for the sake of showing the taxpayers of Mesa how their money was being spent. I stood in the road behind my car for an hour and a half before I got my ticket  for “Walking Upon the Roadway”, when in fact I wasn’t walking, I was standing. The ticket was thrown out. I even remember having policemen whom I went to high school with come up to me while I was drinking a beer out of a fast-food cup, and “hassle” me about drinking in public. I wasn’t getting drunk, but I would drink a few beers in a 4-5 hour period while standing on the corner of Center and Main. I remember one instance they smelled my beer, looked at my beer, then poured it on the ground to watch it foam and said, “Yep, it’s beer!”, but they couldn’t do anything because I was smart enough not to drink from the “original container”. While they stood there laughing at me, I opened the trunk of my car, got in the cooler and opened another beer and poured it into my cup, threw the empty beer can back in the cooler, closed the truck and walked back up to them, lifted my beer filled glass and said, “Cheers! You officers have a great night!”

These types of “harassment” on cruisers was common, and the police were getting tired of smart ass kids, so the more irritated they got, the more tickets they wrote. Whether there was an actual directive given the police who patrolled Main Street to “crack down” and write tickets for anything and everything is unknown, but I do know for a fact that there were several “conspiracies” to get rid of our group, to get rid of cruisers, and to even get rid of our advisor, Pastor Hahn.

The city had passed a parking ban full time on Main Street, and I even got myself arrested that night trying to let the city know that we wouldn’t be bullied.
This activity continued, and the city did it’s best to show what an unruly bunch we were until we finally agreed to disband as an official organization, because of the threatened consequences of the Concerned Cruisers staying organized. Larry Vela, who was the 3rd and last President of the group, made the decision along with Pastor Hahn and V.P. Marc Hobe to disband to protect those of us involved. It was the wise move.

The March 1982 issue of Car Craft gave an update on us disbanding, and to be honest, didn’t paint the prettiest picture of the political machine of Mesa. CC tried to put a good light on the city, but if you read the article closely, you’ll see.

Our group re-formed as the Tri-City Street Association, with several members dissenting on the change. I can’t and don’t blame them. What we had started and fought so hard for for almost 3 full years was quashed by a group of citizens that did and didn’t hold office.
The “perceived leadership” of the city, many of them private citizens holding no office, had their puppets shut us down, move us out and kick us to the curb.

To show the city what a group of unfit, rude and unruly group we are, we have now unofficially reorganized as a social group, but with cruising events now occurring on Main Street, we will still visit and we are even planning on putting out “Commemorative Editions” of Cruisin’ News.
I want to point out to those that thought of us as unfit, and a bunch of low-life’s, that our cruising club generated many great friendships that continue to this day. In fact, there were at least 5 marriages that came from that club, and 3 of them have passed or come close to their 25th anniversary.

I moved away from Mesa in 1991, and moved back in January 2006, and things have changed dramatically. In March, while my wife and I were having dinner at a restaurant with my parents, I got a call on my cell phone to tell me that there was a huge cruise happening that night and that the old group of Concerned Cruisers would be there. We cut our visit short with my parents, and they understood because I hadn’t seen most of them for at least 25 years. On the way downtown, I felt a sense of loss, because when I moved back to Mesa, I was told that Pastor Hahn had passed away several years earlier.
When we arrived on Main, we say many old friends and passed out hugs all around and shook many hands. Then, after about an hour, I saw an old friend walking towards me with his clerical collar and a camera around his neck. Before I could even approach him, he had his camera up and took a picture. Pastor Hahn, excuse me, Howard, is alive and well, and we talked and reminisced.
I have gone to his house and had several talks with him since then and he’s still got a mind like a steel trap. One of the first things he said to me when I told him we were going to have another cruise was, “OK, let’s get a Cruisin’ News put together!” He and I still think the same in a lot of ways, and when the next cruise happens, look for Pastor Hahn, the greatest advocate for cruising this city has ever had. He’ll be on the street passing out Cruisin’ News, and “preaching” safe, sane, sober cruising.

The next chapter has just begun…

Mark M. “Ski” Kwiatkowski