Riverside Red X cruise night combines neat cars with a bizarre, but fun, shopping experience

The Red X store in Riverside, Mo., held a car cruise on Friday night, and they couldn't have had a better night for it. With temperatures hovering in the '70s, a beautiful sunset, and a lot full of car nuts, you couldn't have asked for a better place to start the long Labor Day weekend.

The Riverside Red X is kind of a fascinating place to go regardless. It's hard to really describe the store in two words, like "department store," or "liquor store," or "grocery store." It's a little bit of all of them. Really, the place is kind of strange, but in a good way. You just have to go there to understand what I mean.

There are also a bunch of unusual collectables in there that you can look at while you're shopping. The founder was somewhat of an eccentric, and amassed everything from antique Chinese bells to glass eyeballs. For the gearheads, there's even an old bullnose Chevy fire truck. The place is certainly more interesting than your run-of-the-mill K-Mart.

Another side note is that the Red X is literally in the same area that the old Riverside Stadium dirt track used to sit. The track has been long gone since the late 1980s, but the Red X still remains. Sometimes people would actually park in the very lot where this car cruise was to attend the races. I know we did that a few times.

The cruise was pretty much winding down by the time we made it, so the car selection was a little weak. But that's not the fault of the cruise--we were just really late. Still, there were a few nice Mustangs, SSR's and other fun stuff to hold your attention. As I was taking the pictures, I was saving an '84 Monte Carlo SS for last because I liked it and it looked like a nice, stock car, but by the time I got around to it, it was gone. Dang the bad luck.

At any rate, here is a small sample of the cars that were at the Red X cruise. And these are the folks that deserve to be featured in the photo gallery, because they're the ones that stuck it out to the very end!

There is one more Riverside Red X cruise this year on Friday night, October 1. So if you want to check out some nice cars at a historic, unusual location, make your way north of the River when the calendar flips.