Porch Notes
West Michigan's answer to the Dream Cruise rolls down 28th Street
History and culture
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 cruising thirteen miles of 28th Street while a quarter-million people line the curbs. Rogers Plaza in Wyoming serves as headquarters, show sites stretch east toward Woodland Mall, and the weekend runs on dyno contests, concerts, food trucks, and the happy thunder of big V8s — deliberately scheduled 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 with its factories-turned-fresh-starts and big public farmers market, Kentwood with 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.