Good things come to the small crowd at the Riverside Red X Cruise

The Riverside Red X monthly cruise has the potential to be a pretty nice gathering.  Too bad more people don't attend it.

It seems like the eclectic shopping center has been trying to have a successful cruise for years.  Sometimes they get a few cars, but for the most part, attendance has been fairly spotty.  So instead of scheduling it in the evening like a normal cruise, this year they decided to try and have them on Saturday afternoons at 2:00.  The idea was to keep it from conflicting with other cruises in the area.

Unfortunately, that plan didn't work very well this month.  The KCI Cruise, which is one of the biggest of the year, was just a few miles down the road, and it started at 3:00.  And since everyone wants to get the primo parking pots at that one, people were heading out there at 2:00 or 2:30.  I literally saw cars driving past the Red X without stopping, only to see them at the KCI Cruise later.  The Red X didn't have a chance.

That's a shame, because they really do try hard at this one.  The moment we parked the truck, a Red X employee was standing at my window giving us free raffle tickets.  They have a little hole toss game for the kids, which is good for some neat little prizes for them.  They have people out there selling cheap pop and snacks.  The music is going on the sound system, and they have someone manning the microphone.  And they have all sorts of great door prizes right out of the Red Xs large inventory.

Even though they didn't have a lot of cars, everything there was worth looking at.  One guy had a pretty neat '49 Chevy fastback sedan with a hood ornament bolted on top of the hood ornament.  There was an original '67 Chevy dump truck that ensured I wasn't the only one trying to display an old truck with no paint on the hood.  There was a '78 Trans Am SE that looked like it was straight out of Smokey and the Bandit.  And there was a super nice '36 Plymouth coupe.

There was also a black '50 Packard that we see fairly regularly at car cruises around town.  When you stand off and look at that car, you wonder if anything will ever seem as exclusive and opulent as that car is 62 years from now.  I mean, the thing is so nice, and honestly, what is there in this day-and-age that even comes close to something like that?

But then I turned around, and the answer to that question seemed to be parked off over in the corner.  A guy showed up with a new Cadillac CTS-V coupe, and I could actually see some similarities.  Both are expensive, exclusive cars for their time.  Both showcase modern, radical styling.  Both are, um, black.  I can see that particular Cadillac drawing interest several decades down the road.

Of course, I was also heading off to the KCI Cruise, so I didn't stay very long either.  Maybe someone else showed up as the afternoon wore on.  I can say that most of the cars I saw at the Red X eventually made it to the KCI Cruise later in the evening.  I took a few pictures.  They're in the slideshow below.

A little better version of the slideshow is also at this link.