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In Review: 4th Annual 28th Street Metro Cruise
By Dan Phillips

Gearheads unite! The 4th Annual 28th Street Metro Cruise was a blast, a very special weekend when hot rides from all over the West Michigan area converged to cruise from one end of 28th Street to the other.

Put on jointly by the Kentwood and Wyoming chambers of commerce, the event always begins on a Friday afternoon and continues until about 9:00 Saturday evening. The parking lots in front of Centerpointe Mall in Kentwood and Rogers Plaza in Wyoming serve as the event’s dual focal points, providing roped-off parking areas, entertainment, and food booths. Participants can park their special car in one of these areas for $10 on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no automotive discrimination at this event. Cars of all kinds populate the parking lots, with proud owners usually sitting in lawn chairs next to their prized beauties, ready to answer any questions you might have. Many have professionally-made signs or other displays or tropies, showing off just how cool and unique their cars are.

The main event is an ‘unofficial’ cruise of 28th Street, starting each day at about 5:00 pm. There is no real organization to this part of the event, as individual motorists cruise the street on their own terms, showing off their chrome, their pipes, their polished fenders, gawking at the others at the same time.

This is a really great event that could be called the Woodward of West Michigan. Cars of all kinds are on display and cruising around, with a universal acceptance of each other, drivers temporarily bonded by the common ground of automotive lust. Guys in Porsches giving the thumbs-up to old muscle cars. Teenagers and grown men alike sitting on curbs or in lawn chairs all along 28th Street shouting “Light ‘em up!” to every hot car that passes by. A 19th-century stagecoach mounted on a Ford Model-A frame, with an LED 3rd-brake light that spells “WHOA”. Dogs and cats living together. It’s madness. It’s great fun. I can’t wait for next year.

However, this year at the Rogers Plaza site, the event was terminated with extreme prejudice just after 9:00 pm by a massive force of State, Kent County, Grand Rapids, and Wyoming police. At first, one would think that the 15 to 20 officers on motorcycles from all four branches in the center turn lane in front of Rogers Plaza was a matter of participation in the event by the police, in the way that fire trucks might be shined up and shown off at the county fair. This quickly turned into some sort of menacing oppression as officers completely blocked off 28th Street, basically forcing people out of the area. It created confusion and fear, and arguably created more problems than it solved. This could have been handled better by actual participation in the event, notification (like a “thanks for coming, drive home safely”) over a loudspeaker, and some officers walking through the crowds shaking hands, but instead they chose the Tiananmen Square method. The extremely rude behavior of a few Wyoming officers was the cherry on top of it all. The completely unnecessary show of force by the police really soured the tail end of a nice community event.

Makes me want to do a smokey burnout the next time I’m in Wyoming…