![NASCAR brings its rebellious past and money-driven present to Chicago| Keynote USA NASCAR brings its rebellious past and money-driven present to Chicago| Keynote USA](https://cst.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/661a1b1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3426x1956+0+328/resize/1461x834!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Ffe%2F69%2F171e9d4b42e997a9e1c14fa96472%2F1510154624.jpg)
When I think of NASCAR in Chicago, I think of a couple of things.
The most important thing is the idea of fast cars as a symbol of everything good, bad and crazy about this nation.
NASCAR stands for National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, which means that you, the average Joe, could theoretically roll your “stock” car out of your garage, head out to the track, and let it race.
The word stock originally meant a car that had not been modified from its original factory configuration. But this is America, folks. Do you think Junior Johnson cared about the rules when he was racing through the woods of “Caroline” with a trunk full of moonshine?
NASCAR had its origins during Prohibition, when alcohol was illegal and country boys made corn mush by moonlight in the Appalachians. Young daredevils raced the “white lightning” in cars that drivers had tricked out to outrun police and “infernal tax collectors.”
All those Fords, Chevys and Plymouths with their big V-8 engines were modified, bored out and stripped down for the onslaught. Naturally, moonshine-making racers soon wanted to race each other, starting in cow pastures and cornfields, moving on to dirt tracks, county fairs and eventually the flat sands of Daytona Beach. That’s where Bill France Sr. organized NASCAR in 1947.
Today, NASCAR is 100 percent corporate, but it owes its soul to those early backwoods illegal race winners: Curtis Turner, Tim Flock and, of course, the legendary Junior Johnson. That old boy’s shield is still proudly displayed at the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Author Tom Wolfe once described Johnson as “the lead-footed chicken farmer from Ronda.” But Johnson was no idiot when it came to elite driving and revving engines. The things he and the moonshiners did with their engines and car chassis in the early days were precursors to what NASCAR mechanics do today and the ways they cleverly push the engine rules to the limit and beyond.
Going fast was a necessity for drunk drivers, not a selfish project.
“Moonshine makers put more time, energy, thought and love into their cars than any racer,” Johnson, who died in 2019, once said. “If you lose on the track, you go home. If you lose with a bunch of whiskey, you go to jail.”
That rebellious spirit, so hard to keep alive in this age of digital speed, is what still precariously underlies NASCAR. The drivers may be millionaires and the cars they use may be as similar to “production” vehicles as SpaceX’s tubes are to bottlenecked rockets, but speed is still the game.
The fact that the NASCAR street race in Chicago on Saturday and Sunday has cars flying through the heart of our city, on the lakefront, rather than around a distant oval (or, for that matter, Farmer Brown’s racetrack) is a sign of the times. Let’s bring the spectacle to millions of people. Let’s follow the revenue. Let’s shut down everything that makes a profit.
Which brings me to the second part of my thoughts on NASCAR in Chicago. A significant portion of the city has been taken over by private enterprise and politicians, starting with former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and then Mayor Brandon Johnson, to be exploited not for the benefit of citizens, but for money.
This is only the second year of what NASCAR describes as an “annual” race. The numbers out there show it’s a moneymaker: One study says Chicago got a “$109 million economic impact from the (2023) event … plus an estimated $24 million in advertising.” But at what cost?
This is where it gets tricky. What price do you put on having major streets and thoroughfares like DuSable Lake Shore Drive blocked off? Sure, that’s fine if you’re coming to Iowa to have fun. But what if you live and work downtown? If you’re a commuter?
And what about the noise, the park closures, the relocation of the beloved Taste of Chicago until after Labor Day, when it normally falls around the Fourth of July? And you wonder what will happen to all those packed hotel rooms and restaurants. Isn’t it possible that many of those places would be packed without NASCAR? It is tourist season, after all.
“For us, the priority was an iconic location,” Julie Giese, the NASCAR executive in charge of the race, said last year.
Yes, Chicago is beautiful in July, with a spectacular skyline.
So, like it or not, racing cars are back. And with a touch of rebel spirit. Motivated, of course, by money.
Keynote USA
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