NIGHT CRUISING

WHEN THE SUN DEPARTS AND THE STREET LIGHTS FLICKER ON, BEACH HOP GAINS A WHOLE NEW DIMENSION. WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF THE ICONIC BEACH HOP NIGHT CRUISE!

Ask anyone who’s taken a car to Beach Hop what one of the most unique parts of the festival is, and, along with defining features such as the location, the people, the cars, and the atmosphere, they’re probably also going to mention the nightlife. When you’ve got an entire town filled with cool cars, they’re going to get out and about, and this is made clear after dark as Whangamata’s main stretch of Port Road becomes the best traffic jam in the world — one set to a V8 soundtrack, with plenty of uncapped headers, the odd Dixie or ‘oogah’ horn, and the yellowish tint of old-school headlights. Families heading out to town for a bit of dinner can easily spend an unplanned extra hour soaking it all up, and it is one of the best places to meet new people, with plentiful invitations to hop into a new mate’s car for a slow-speed cruise. However, it’s just as good from the outside, and people know it! You’ll find cars parked in prime locations from early in the evening so that their owners can set up camping chairs or utes with sofas on the tray to watch the show happen. It’s the things like this that make Beach Hop what it is, and we’re so glad that this can happen year after year — it doesn’t get much better than that!

When most people think of Beach Hop, they rightly think of sun and sand — the summery memories that remain when the festival is a few months passed. It’s for this reason we’ve run bright and sunny shots on the cover of past issues, but for this year’s NZV8 Beach Hop Annual, we wanted to take a different approach, emphasizing one of the festival’s most iconic aspects. It isn’t an official part of the programme, but the after-dark cruising may as well be. Night cruising is as Beach Hop as it gets — that goes without saying. Thinking along the lines of an American Graffiti vibe, we set out to capture ‘the shot’ with a few different ideas in mind. This clean and simple photo of Ian and Iqbal Taylor’s ’32 Ford roadster was one we considered for its pure nostalgia charm