BROOKINGS – One man has brought back an old Brookings tradition and adapted it for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cruise Against Corona is Travis Bortnem’s answer to social distancing from the coronavirus while still being able to get out of the house. 

The first Cruise Against Corona event was last Saturday night in the downtown area. 

“I spent a lot of time cruising in my day, and I’ve never seen that many cars,” Bortnem admitted. “We brought back a lot of memories and a lot of fun times.”

Weather permitting, the next ones are set for 7 p.m. tonight and Saturday night in the downtown area.

Depending on where you’re from or the time you remember, it’s gone by different names – cruising, making the loop, dragging Main – but it’s a simple concept: you pile into a vehicle and slowly drive down a main street for a few blocks, checking to see who’s out and about, what’s happening, and yell at your friends who don’t have cars while you show off your ride. When you get to a designated spot, you turn around and do it all over again. 

Bringing cruising back

The idea to bring back cruising was sparked by Facebook.

“There’s a pastor from Embrace Church in Tea; (he) mentioned on Facebook, wouldn’t it be nice amongst all this quarantining, social distancing, if we could just go cruise the loop in Sioux Falls again,” Bortnem said. 

A member of Embrace set up the event in Tea a couple of weeks ago and they posted it to Facebook Live.

“It was just kind of a fun deal,” Bortnem said. “I was like, you know what, if you guys can do this in Tea, I can do this in Brookings.”

He invited everyone on his online contact list and so did his kids.

“I told everybody I just want it to be clean, stay in your cars. Let’s do this as safe as possible,” Bortnem said. 

Drawing a crowd

The idea caught on fast.

“Just exploded,” Bortnem said. “Within the first day, I had like 50 people coming.”

Word spread far and wide.

“I had a lot of people that weren’t from Brookings, so they were like, where’s this cruise going to be?” Bortnem said.

“It’s so simple,” he explained. “It’s gonna be three blocks long and that’s it.”

The “loop” starts at the Goodwill parking lot – “or Red Owl, depending on how old you are,” joked Bortnem. 

From the Goodwill, cars go south through the downtown business district, turn east by Hometown Tire and go past the City & County Government Center “and back on Third Street up to Main again,” he said.

Any kind of vehicles are welcome.

“Run what you brung. Any vehicle you got,” Bortnem said.

In fact, on Saturday, they had some he wasn’t expecting.

“I don’t know how the fire trucks ever got involved. I heard partway through the week that fire trucks were coming. I was like, ‘absolutely, awesome,’” he said.

“They had three fire trucks … so they led it off and they probably cruised for a half hour, which was kind of a cool thing,” Bortnem said.

“We had a tow truck (which) was up there from Madison. I don’t know how it got here. We saw a couple BATA buses out there. Kind of cool,” Bortnem said.

People were taking videos on their phones. Bortnem has a Facebook Live video. The Brookings Convention & Visitors Bureau and Downtown Brookings have photos on their Facebook pages. 

“It was solid cars both ways for probably an hour, hour and a half,” Bortnem said, estimating there were 150-175 vehicles involved. 

And those vehicles were full.

“I had like four people in my car,” Bortnem said. So did others.

“Definitely all ages. … I know we had 80-year-olds down there, 80-plus cruising Main, down to little kids in the cars. It was a fun event for everybody.

“They were having a good time. I know my nieces and nephews had a great time with their parents showing them what it was like when we were kids,” Bortnem said.

“It was bumper to bumper those three blocks. The only time you didn’t have somebody five feet in front of you is when you went down and turned around on the south end. 

“It frustrated a few people that are used to just driving through, don’t expect any cars and they’re coming through like east and west, trying to get through Main street and it was blocked. I mean, there was no getting through,” Bortnem said.

If you needed to take a break and refuel, that was covered, too.

Michael Johnson, head chef at The Pheasant Restaurant and Lounge, asked if he could “hijack this cruise of yours” and offered to do a car hop service. Bortnem was immediately on board.

“Anything good that we can do to help the small businesses in town (at) this time looks good,” Bortnem said.

Folks who want food can call The Pheasant to order, pre-pay and then pull up and pop the trunk; Johnson’s crew will “just drop it in there” so there’s no contact.

Bortnem said he heard there were chili cheese dogs, nachos and “they came up with their own frozen Coke-type Slurpee.” There are new menu options for this weekend.

Keep it safe

Bortnem is “absolutely happy” with the way the event turned out.

“It was a good clean event, so I was pretty pleased with it and I’ve got a lot of comments, … ‘When can we do it again?’” Bortnem said. 

He plans for the event to continue for the foreseeable future. 

Bortnem has been working with Ashley Biggar, director of Downtown Brookings, to get the word out.

They’ve already decided to make it two days instead of just one.

“That’s what we used to do anyways. No sense limiting it to one day, I guess,” Bortnem said, especially when it works better for blended families who only have kids one of the days, or couples who want to reserve one night for “date night.”

Bortnem thinks the cruising can continue, as long as people observe safety guidelines: keep it alcohol free, drive safely, and maintain social distance so no one gets COVID-19.

“It was amazing to get that many people out and about,” he said, adding he was “very impressed” with the way people conducted themselves.

“We didn’t have the junk and stuff in the parking lots, so that was good,” he said. “I remember when I was young, it was never an alcohol-free event, but we gotta be smarter now and it’s good to show the kids that you can get out and do something fun.”

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.