Okay, we've done the January through December drag racing nostalgia bit of Lookin' Back, and I can't make it stretch another year, so let's try and come up with something a little different and with a twist of interest for y'all. One of the best things about having made the NHRA tours is that I've conversed and partied and played with a lot of the locals over the years. You learn about the area, you form opinions, you get opinions, you find about different perspectives on our sport. That's what this space will deal with. A view from the bleachers; some of my favorite venues and their crowds. Some of these things can be experienced currently, some of them have been demolished. I will change the names to protect the "innocent" when necessary, but overall, I'll be up here on Front St. with you, darling. Here is an "El Warp-o" travelogue from the depths of Hell.

THE OTHER SIDE SUCKS

Of all the race tracks I've been to, my favorite crowd is probably the group at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park in Englishtown, N.J. I have a lot of experience in regard to seat time at major and minor NHRA facilities and have a reasonable grip on what counts as a "good crowd." Unlike my compatriots at NHRA (and this is not a knock), I thought it was incumbent on me to get a feel for the kind of people who read our stuff at National DRAGSTER and so, during my years at NHRA, I would spend the first two days at a four-day event in the seats watching the races and imbibing with the local crews.

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My first non-California race with NHRA was the 1975 Summernationals, and for a laid-back, trail mix hippie/radical, it was like celebrating Ramadan in Iran. I didn't know what to expect when I went there. I sorta fell for the Hollywood media rep of the East Coast that I'd run into a lot of "dese and dem" kind-of-broken-noses, but oh how wrong I was. I thought I'd wind up like a Granola salesman at the Ravenswood Club on Mott St. There was that element (and it was cool), but oh so much more.

For instance the words, "The Other Side Sucks."

At Englishtown, I'd never seen (or heard) such a logical and natural response by a crowd to things like oildown clean-ups. Nobody who goes to the drags like 'em. You sit and watch a truck-load of tired guys lay down rice-hull ash a quarter-mile in length and then go to and fro, cleaning it up, often taking 20 minutes or more to complete ... and you get bored. Your hard-earned track admission winging its way to oblivion. Nothing to do. Not enough time to go to the pits or wait in the hot dog line and barely enough to take a leak. Who wouldn't get bent out of shape?

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