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Cruising returns to LA's historic Van Nuys Blvd.
Richard Rowlands drives his 1960 Ford Starliner during Van Nuys Cruise Night in the Van Nuys section of Los Angeles, Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)LOS ANGELES—As tricked-out old cars rumbled past on Van Nuys Boulevard, Reid Stolz still had trouble believing what he'd done.
But much has changed here in the land of cars since then. The cruisers left long ago, driven away by police. In the years since, they and their gas-guzzling cars were replaced by the big worries of global warming and $3-a-gallon gasoline.
Today, just as the decades-old American love affair with cruising seemed to be ebbing, the 52-year-old mechanic is all but single-handedly bringing it back to Van Nuys, giving thousands of car lovers a place again to transform it into a rolling ode to the 20th century.
"That first night, there were about 600," Stolz says as he leans back on the hood of his 1972 candy-apple red Corvette. "Then it just grew."
On this night, there's a little 1923 Ford T-bucket replica here, a hulking 1969 Camaro with its thundering V-8 engine there, and any number of 1970s Pontiac