West Michigan's answer to the Dream Cruise rolls down 28th Street
Metro Detroit doesn’t get to keep all the chrome. Since 2005, the 28th Street Metro Cruise has turned the great commercial strip through Wyoming and Kentwood into West Michigan’s biggest block party. Upwards of 15,000 classic cars, hot rods, and muscle machines cruise thirteen miles of 28th Street while a quarter-million people line the curbs. Rogers Plaza in Wyoming serves as headquarters, and show sites stretch east toward Woodland Mall. The weekend runs on dyno contests, concerts, food trucks, and the happy thunder of big V8s. It’s deliberately set one week after Woodward’s Dream Cruise, so nobody has to choose.
It suits these two cities, which grew up with the auto industry’s west-side outposts and remain Grand Rapids’ hardest-working neighbors. Wyoming has its factories-turned-fresh-starts and big public farmers market. Kentwood has one of the most internationally diverse populations in the state. One weekend a year, the whole region remembers that 28th Street isn’t just where you run errands. It’s a main street, thirteen miles long.
Where to see it
Thirteen miles of 28th Street the fourth weekend of August; Rogers Plaza in Wyoming is the headquarters, with major show sites toward Woodland Mall in Kentwood.