Hundreds of vehicles converge on Salisbury for second annual downtown cruise-in

SALISBURY — Hundreds of vehicles parked on and along North Main Street in downtown Salisbury on Saturday as part of the second-annual cruise in being hosted by the Salisbury Downtown Cruisers.

Doug Ray, executive director of the nonprofit Salisbury Downtown Cruisers, said that local businesses from throughout the county donated door prizes for the event and there was a 50/50 raffle at the event, all of which raised money that would help the organization build up a financial platform to help host more events in the future.

“You have to be able to get the businesses behind you for something like this to be successful,” said Ray.

In the future, Ray hopes to be able to use events to provide funding to local charities and nonprofits. However, for now he said that they’re focusing on helping people relive the old days of cruising through downtown for a few hours.

“Salisbury has a rich history of car culture. It’s really been a Mecca of downtown cruising in the area,” said Ray.

During Saturday’s event classic cars, muscle cars, custom cars and everything in between filled up four parking lots and street-side parking all along North Main Street from Council Street down to Franklin Street.

Salisbury Downtown Cruisers itself was started as a Facebook group dedicated to the nostalgia surrounding the pastime of cruising downtown that many youths participated in from the 1950s through the 1980s, said Ray. During the COVID pandemic, a member of the group posted an invitation to bring their cars and meet up in downtown Salisbury to relive those days.

Eventually, the downtown cruise-ins were cemented as a weekly event on Saturday nights and in 2023 the organization started the “Don’t Hide ’em… Drive ’em” cruise-in event. In its first go-round, the event brought out approximately 350 cars and over 1,000 attendees, according to the organization’s website. This year, Ray estimated that the numbers ballooned to over 500 cars and over 2,500 attendees.

For this year’s event, the organization brought out two new pieces. One was a Hot Wheels give-away, which came from the estate of Jerry “JJ” Talbert Jr., who Ray said had been a member of the unofficial car club back when it was still based on the Facebook group. Talbert had built up an extensive collection of the die-cast cars before he passed away, and his family donated those to the Salisbury Downtown Cruisers to hand out to children who attended the event.

The second new attraction featured on Saturday was a pin-up contest, run by Albemarle-based photography and events company Pin-Ups and Pumps, an organization that aims to empower women by expressing themselves through the art of pin-up.

As part of the contest, each contestant answered separate questions, which ranged from what drew them to pin-up and how to manage stress to best pick-up lines and creating a new shade of lipstick.

“We are an all pin-up girl gang who works towards giving back to our community and making women fall in love with themselves all over again,” wrote founder Sara Huneycutt, also known as Mizz Rayzen Hell, on the company’s website.

The event, which officially ran from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., also included live music, a craft bazaar, an appearance by David Ankin from Velocity’s television show “Toymakerz” and trophies ranging from the “best in show” vehicle to best-in-class contests such as best hot rod and best antique vehicles.

The event featured tents set up by community organizations and vendors from throughout the area. One such tent held the Spencer Moose Lodge, who partnered with the Safe Surfin Foundation to provide equipment that took a child’s information, fingerprints and 360 degrees worth of photos of their heads. Ted Carmen, president of the lodge, said that the equipment allowed them to then put all of the information together onto a flashdrive, which could be presented to law enforcement if the child were to go missing.

By the end, Ray said that the day had been a blur with the amount of people and vehicles making their way to downtown Salisbury. The organization will continue hosting their weekly cruise-in events through November at 6 p.m. on Saturdays as well as joining the city’s Halloween Fun Fest event, held from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. for the first time this year.

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