“Are you writing this up already?” they asked as I did some other busywork in the hotel room, the morning coming to a close in the hotel room the day after. “No, should I?” Tom from the Front Street drift crew offered a headline: “I went street drifting with the Front Street Crew and it fucking sucked.” To be fair, it did.
That sounds harsh written out like that. It was great and also it fucking sucked.
We met up at some meet spot somewhere in the midwest and then all stood around in the wind, slammed Lexus SCs R32 Skylines with underglow glimmering behind us all. Everyone pestered everyone else about going street drifting. Come with! Don’t go to sleep. You’re not tired. Wait who’s going? Where are we going? Let’s go! You’re not tired.
I have not had such vivid flashbacks to high school in years.
One of the locals entrusts us with another local, a guide for us, declaring what spots are where and what can get video’d and what can’t get posted. No pics at one spot at all. Nothing that showed signs in the other. No posting. No blowing up spots. “No internet,” he declares.
The first spot got four dirty runs in. Cars all over the place. People driving straight. People struggling to stay sideways, their cars either too fast or too slow for the one turn you could take. Then the cop who had—unbeknownst to us—been following everyone for the whole last run, pulled one of the crew over and everyone bailed.
We all waited at a side lot until the poor soul who got nabbed finally rolled back to us, overjoyed with a “squealing tires” ticket.
People quickly conferred to chip in to cover for it.
The next spot was worse. We waited for an hour trying to figure out if a cop waiting blocks away could see us. He’s pulling someone over! No he’s not, he’s just waiting with his lights on. Go check it out. You drive by him. He’s gone. He’s gone? He’s gone. Let’s go. No let’s just go home. You hyped us up all day for this and now you wanna go?
This continued for some time, then everyone did a one and done, and then agreed to do one more.
It was some of the best driving I had ever seen. Three people spun out, one, then another, then another guy dived past, only to spin out, too. How nobody crashed I do not know.
We all bailed. “Cops!”
A rod had broken on one guy’s car, and we all limped back to the hotel at 40 or 50 miles an hour, sometime around two.
“Last year was perfect,” everyone agreed the next morning, mystified at how much time was spent last night to do so little, all of which was trash. We all hung around, not eating breakfast for some reason, waiting for Josh to fix his car in the hotel parking lot. Tomorrow is the Super D Cup event at a racetrack five or six hours north of here, at the rollercoaster kart track known as US Air Motorsports in Shawano, WI.
“ShaWAAnoe,” everyone intones with New York accents.
“You’re not saying I spun out, did you? I never spin out. I haven’t spun out in two years,” Tom yelled, still narrating how everything went.
“Front Street Tom ruined the whole night,“ he continued. “Tom spun out and ruined the whole line at the only good spot.”
A pause.
“Wait are you actually saying I ruined the whole night?”
“After we came back from street drifting was the best time I think I had,” he said with a smile. “We got a Crave Box and just hung out outside.”
“Are you writing something up, really?” Mike Power, also on Front Street, asked walking by me.
“Well, I wasn’t, but then Tom started bugging me,” I said
“Wait,” Tom yelled back. “Don’t talk shit on me!”