This page has been updated on    03/18/2008

Club History - Gen I

    Street Shakers Cruzin and Racing is based on the old school type of car club. The type of club where you know that you can count on one or all of your buddies to give you a hand with a problem.

    The Street Shakers was originally founded in 1977 .  At it's heyday the Street Shakers boasted over 200 members and was even sponsored (un-officially) by the Elmhurst Police Department.

    During the week we all would gather at either the local McDonalds (try that now a days), the north end car wash or at a friends house. Usually on Friday night we would gather together at Mickey D's and wait for other car clubs to come Cruzin thru and see who wanted to race.

    The club had every type and model of car you could think of. From Chevy's to Mopar's, from Fords to Pontiacs. Practically every make and model was represented. And the cars ranged from totally stock to fully customized.

    When a race was set up we would all head over to Rt.83 where we had a 1/4 mile marked off. A few guys would head north and south on 83 while a couple of others would head east and west all equipped with cb's to watch for the cops. As the cars that were going to race came up to the line, about 6 cars would block traffic from behind (83 was a divided 4 lane) so no one could try and come around. The rest of the spectators would line up on the exit ramp to I90 to watch.

    The race would go off and the participants after racing would continue on and head back to Mickey D's where the winner got his money. We would hang around usually till around 3 or 4am then head off back to our homes. The plan for Saturday night was usually the same with one major exception, after the races we would usually head off to Oswego Ill. where we would party till late, get some sleep and wake up usually first in line at Oswego Dragway. Or sometimes we would change up and head on out to US 30 dragstrip in Indiana.

    In 1981 with a few of the members getting married and or moving away, the club disbanded.

A NEW history - Gen II

    In 2001 a new Street Shakers was born, loosely based on the original club. The major change was that there was no street racing allowed. Because quite a few kids 16-18 were either getting killed or severely injured racing on the streets and curvy roads we wanted to follow  the example of Wally Parks.  His creation of the NHRA was to keep the kids "Off the Streets and on the Strips". This idea worked for about 1 year. A couple of the kids who refused to abide by the rules were kicked out and clic's started to form.

    The secretary of the club at the time (no names) came up with the idea of splitting the club into 2 separate groups, Street Shaker Cruzin and Street Shaker Racing. He took the reins of Street Shaker Cruzin and I took the reins of Street Shaker Racing. I had just a few of the kids and most of the adults while he took the majority of the kids.

    The Cruzin club lasted about 3 months, he split off to Florida with  a lot of debtors hot on his tail and he also split with both of the clubs funds in the bank. Yes, I was stupid enough not to take his name off of the club account.

A NEW "NEW" history - Gen III

    So here we are in 2007 and a new Street Shakers Cruzin and Racing club. We still want to uphold the principle of "Keeping the kids off the Streets and on the Strip" but we know from past experience that that is almost impossible. If a kid or and adult wants to race on the street, there isn't anything that we can do to stop them. So at the very least, we can teach them how to be safe at doing it by teaching them at the dragstrip. And now that we have a shop where we can work on our cars, we can teach the younger generations joining the club the "Old School" ways and techniques of working on cars and they can teach us the "New School" ways. We also have our paperwork in for being a (510c)3 not for profit organization.

Paul Williams

Chairman of the Board