Classic car lovers took to Riverside’s Quincy Street on Wednesday, July 15, for the village’s first cruise night of the year, where 22 cars drew hundreds of attendees between 6 and 9 p.m.
The event was organized as a collaboration between the village parks and recreation department and the Lions Club. Alex Gallegos, former Lions Club president and current village trustee, said the event raised several hundred dollars in donations for the storm-battered Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, community.
Gallegos said he was impressed by the turnout despite competition from concurrent cruise nights in LaGrange and Berwyn.
“We had some very good music that parks and recreation provided. You could hear it all the way from one edge to another, and some cars had their own stereos going,” Gallegos told the Landmark.
The cars included classics with model years as old as 1948 and vintage models as recent as 2001, just over the 25-year threshold, Gallegos said. He named a 1977 Lincoln Continental as his favorite classic car of the night.
“I was a kid in the ‘80s, and those huge cars, people couldn’t wait to get rid of them because they were considered boats,” he said. “I myself had a [Cadillac] Fleetwood Brougham. I do miss the old, big luxuries that we had back in the day.”
Ron Malchiodi, Riverside’s director of parks and recreation, said the village’s organization efforts began in earnest in March after staff had heard continuous pleas from residents to bring back the cruise nights, which used to happen more regularly throughout the summer when they were organized by Riverside Garage.
“We knew the community wanted it, and, also, Village President [Doug] Pollock tasked the department with [figuring out] how do we do these,” Malchiodi said. “We will get random feedback, especially in the months that it typically took place. People ask, ‘Are you doing cruise nights this year? Are those coming back?’ We’ve always had to say … ‘We’re trying to work that out,’ because we weren’t sure.”
Malchiodi said he worked with Gallegos and the Lions Club to get the word out to existing cruise night communities online to see if they could get a group of classic car owners to show up.
“The key to a lot of these car shows or cruise nights is the connections to the car owners, and you need a vehicle, pun intended, to get to those car owners. Social media helps, but it’s a lot of word of mouth, and it’s a lot of getting a hold of the right person,” he said. “We decided to go grassroots. We made a lot of posts. I had my email there and just said, ‘Hey, if you’re interested.’ Surprisingly, we got 15 responses right off the bat, and they were all local people, which was great, too.”
Malchiodi said village staff are looking to host another cruise night in the fall, leveraging the connections they made for Wednesday’s event to bring in even more classic car owners and attendees.
John Flaherty, the recorder for the local Knights of Columbus chapter that sold hot dogs and hamburgers at the cruise night, said the energy was high and the event was well attended.
“I thought it went alright. We’ve done a couple of these in the past. I don’t think it was as heavily attended as in years past,” Flaherty said. “I think everyone had a good time.”
Malchiodi said the best part of the cruise night for him and his team, like any parks and recreation event, is to see the heavy turnout from area residents.
“You see it come to fruition, and you see the end result. You see families walking through,” he said. “The payoff is seeing people enjoy the event and thanking us for bringing it back. Even the car people — you never know what their level of expectation is, because they participate in a lot of other cruise nights — they even said, ‘We really like this neighborhood, and this was a really laid-back cruise night. We’ll be back.’ Seeing the payoff from all of that behind-the-scenes work is great.”
