NEW YORK STREET RACING 60'S & 70'S ~ story found

Yeah,chase trucks,one of my friends drove one,I had so many accidents that I'd get towed home for free!Heard the cops would hit you with a 10k fine if you ran with police scanners,think that's why they're gone.Or it could be because of the accidents they caused getting to the accidents! And Astoria Park,man that was beautiful.If you go there now,its all different.I still see a guy with an early '60's vette sitting down there,and anytime I'm down there I cruise the park,but no more rods(at least when I'm there)

 

After reading previous posts on here about street racing I thought this thread would be packed with holyer than thou rants about it being illegall/irresponsible/immoral/nonPC, etc. What a nice surprise. A great read too. It brings back some great memories. Thanks!

 

For shits & giggles i thought i'd bring this back up one last time.

 

Brooklyn Heavy IS RIGHT !....He'd buy old Sox& Martin Cars ...even remember one of Ronald Lyles Hemi cars made it to the NY street scene. Painted em black to hide in the dark. Many a northern street racer would trek to N.C. and bring back a "Mountain Motored" car for the street action.

 

Anyone of u remember a 58 Edsel with a 427 Sideoiler and 4 Speed? The car was as i heard a really quick street car in the 70's. The reason i ask is that i know a guy here in Sweden that bought the Edsel in 82 or 83 and now has it stored in a garage since then. Only thing he done with it is painting it in Red candy with Silver roof. Got some pics if someones interested?? The car was from California touch and not NY. All info would be great!!

 

I know what you mean. I can't speak for anywhere else but at least when we street raced it was out in the undeveloped Orange groves in the county, and we made sure spectators stood behind the cars. If someone were to lose it all they'd hit were Orange tree's and not people,houses,or parked cars! The one car i couldn't beat in my neck of the woods was a low 12 second 65 Falcon that ran a 351 Cleveland/C6/9" . I'll never forget, The rear panel said "Just Falcon around".

 

Funny, the quote in my signature, the whole quote, mentions the Connecting Highway. I can never type quite fast enough when they play the promo spot that uses the whole thing, to get it into writing to use it all.

 

Anyone remember my friend Peter Barris, a student from Jackson Heights in the mid 60's
He street raced a dark blue '58 Impala convertible, glass nose, rolled and pleated interior and a white top.
It ran a Rochester injected 327, 4 speed and 456's in the rear.
It was silly fast!
He also rode in a matching colored "58 Impala coupe with a 348 that was knocked out to 401 with a 3 speed on the floor and 411 posi.
A real torque monster.
He ran around at night with Massachusetts plates on them
He and I would race every Wed. and Saturday night.
In summer time when classes let out we would do the same deal up here in the Boston area.
Richards Drive In at Wellington Circle and the Big Burger in Cambridge were our hangouts.
Any good street racer must remember R.T.T.A. in the Boston area.
I still cary my little red card.
Peter was a good kid, he raced fast but died too young.
Crashed into Long Island Sound in a student plane with a bunch of our other friends.
Weird was'nt it?

 

On a much smaller scale, I went to the "Saturday Night Drags" in western PA. Mostly muscle cars. The bad cat of the Mountain was a Hemi powered Plymouth, "The Green Monster". The pit area was behind the local Tastee Freeze. Everything was cool until a few guys decided to rip the "bubble" off a state troopers car while he was enjoying his midnight meal!!! That ended the RT40 Dragway near Uniontown, PA. Fun, exciting, but dangerous as hell.

 

I have really been inspired by some of the stories that I have been reading in this thread. That coupled with my own car enthusiasm, I have begun development of a story board for a documentary film about this monumental era in car history. I am trying to gather names, places, special cars, special memories, anything you feel defined this period of auto revolution. Drop me a line with a story!

http://web.me.com/drota/Site/TCH_Doc.html

 

For the NYC peepz, anyone remember a short guy named John Rauber who might have raced a 66/67 Ford GT/GTA Fairline, he was my old boss 10-13 years ago and told me he used to race it. Had a 427ci side oiler he said. He also talked about racing a hemi Cuda, one of the cars threw a driveshaft and killed someone?

 

i remeber another sox and martin road runner running around the streets of staten island. used to be plenty of places to go out there. out the end of hylan blvd, the west shore expressway ,richmond parkway

 

I was at Harrell’s shop in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com</st1:City>Kansas City the night a large African American gentleman from NYC took delivery of a special prepared 427 Camaro. His girl friend had flown in on a different flight; she had a brief case, we found out later it was full of cash. One of the guys inquired about the cash, he said something about owning several car washes on the East Coast? The camaro was going to be used only for street racing, they unload at one off ramp take the car hauler to the next ramp, race another car, exit at the next ramp back unto the hauler and gone in seconds. He indicated there was "Big Money" in ramp to ramp racing in NYC!

 

Axle ...I started a previous thread not here to jack this ..just a lot of good info & pics

History Brooklyn, NY Infamous Street Racers Back in the Day&#8207;

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=280240&highlight=brooklyn+heavy

 

I had painted the original start/finish lines on NY231 in North Babylon. Used a couple of 2 x 4s as a guide. It was concrete and fast, going south it was fairly level, going north it was downhill. We gave up on it quickly, too many cops. I lived close by and would walk over to watch the races after the bars closed. We'd pull up some lawn chairs in the woods next to it, drink beer and enjoy some of those hand-rolled smokes. Some spectators did get hurt there with out of control cars, I saw one car get rearended by a civilian and the gas tank exploded.

The best places to run in Suffolk county were the Robert Moses Causeway, Ocean parkway and Sunrise Hwy late at night. They still run on Sunrise once in a while. Cars roll off trailers, they stage and go. Usually around 3 AM or so. They use "blocker" cars to slow down or stop the traffic behind the action. of course it draws a big crowd and I'm sure big grudge bucks are at stake. I was watching it one summer night when the cops showed up, everyone beat feet, it was pretty amusing.

Bob

 

<P>I was too young for the&nbsp; 60's &amp;70's , but i was around for the late 80's till present . I use hang around Fairway auto in elmont ,long island home of some serious street racers , Fairay vette , nova , chevelle , camaros . I use to sneek out of the house when i was about 12&nbsp;and go hang with the guys and go to Fountain ave, south conduit , connecting hwy, mt vernon for all the big money races( guys like 10 speed,Freddy Brown,Joe the moe ,Fat Joe,&nbsp;Vinny Carvel all legends on the street and friends of mine).I could remember nights on fountain until the sun came up , fill up and go to atco on sat stay over night and race e-town on sunday crazy times and it's still goin down on the street here in NY . I was blessed to be round some of the heavy hitters and learned alot from them&nbsp;.I just progressed into this hot rod world and i love it and my friends really can't understand but you should see them run on the street ! </P>
<P>&nbsp;</P>
<P>here's a good friend of mine (small block spray 10 inch tire full interior ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFtK5Nvq8vs</P>

 

We where from staten island we ran Brooklyn Heavy on the connecting in the 70 and took 15,000 from him in his black dart.And mitchells was on 86th street

 

How about racing on the Palisades Parkway from bridge to bridge, we'd meet at Don & Lens Plaza Diner across from where the Nanuet Mall is now. Also Ghost town up past Sloatsburg near where International Paper had or has offices, another good place was Pals Diner on Rte.17 in Mahwah, we'd race in view of the toll booths for the N.Y.S. Thruway at Suffern, those were the days,,,,,,,untill some poor dumb sumbitch got killed on the Garden State while spectating, Peace,,,Moosie

 

"my friends bought wally booths camaro and the first nite made a money run ,broke an axle fliped it and killed a guy,,we rolled in onto the trailer upside down,,,"

Wally Booth's 1969 Camaro is still around. As far as I know, it was never flipped.

So it must be this one that your friend bought...



...and flipped?

Damn shame!!

"another time i was called at 2 am to get to the shop and cut up the motown missle that made its first pass with just
spray paint over the name,it killed three people that got to close"

Which Motown Missile? From what I understand the 1970-71 Challenger is being restored from this less-than-professional
restored 'state.'



The 1972 Motown Missile 'Cuda last seen wasting away (outside!) somewhere in Canada.



"As of 2004, the Plymouth Barracuda was sitting under a tarp in Ottawa, where it had been for at least ten years. Dick Oldfield visited in 2003 and, after shoveling around three feet of snow off the car, was able to verify that it is indeed the &#8217;Cuda. It was in pretty bad shape."

To the best of my understanding the other Missiles are alive and well.







I'm not questioning your integrity...just trying to get the "straight scoop."

Pete

 

Where did this happen?
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Sounds like he's hiding the GTO for a good reason. Maybe he's hiding it from the cops, waiting for the statute of limitation to run out...

Very cool story though, the mystery of it all has my curiosity piqued.
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What an interesting article. Thanks for posting.

 

Jeez I miss Jan...!

Not quite New York but just as exciting to me...!

Waukesha Wisconsin was my racetrack but I mostly raced the "Scrimas Pizza" delivery cars until they broke!

Then the owners would force me to drive my own car which was a 66 Chevelle Convertible as a daily and a 34 coupe under construction!

But my most memorable race of my life was against 2 other "Pizza" delivery cars!!!!

We lined up on a "One Way" street... three abreast My "SCRIMAS PIZZA" 72 Dart slant 6, "RICH's PIZZA's" Gremlin, and "JIMMY's GROTTO's" VW Bug and waited for the light...

The light turned "Green"... the VW jumped out in front with superior traction and then the Gremlin and the My Dart started pulling away...!

As we passed a policeman on the beat... I was about a 1/2 a car length ahead of the Gremlin which was 1/2 car length ahead of the VW...!

When I arrived back to the store... my boss (the owner) met me at the door and asked me if I won the race...?

And I told him that I wasn't racing...!

He smiled and said that the Policeman positively ID'd three cars racing down Main St. Waukesha at 10:15 P.M. According to the advertising painted across the sides of the cars as One "SCRIMAS, One "Rich's" and one "Jimmy's Grotto" pizza delivery cars!!!!

"No Big Buck or High performance" race... But it was the most exciting street race of my young life!!!

I didn't get a ticket or reprimanded that night but I knew that we were being watched!!!

 

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A few more items from ..............

 

Cross Bay Blvd is still the same as the 60's / 70's down along the stretch that the racing actually occurred. There is still a long mile between the North Channel Bridge and the first houses of Broad Channel. It is part of Gateways National Wildlife Sanctuary. There was a spot that a lot of match races occurred on the Bruckner Expressway in the Bronx just off the Throgg's Neck Bridge. That was an adventure. Spectators would block off the highway by gradually slowing down 3 abreast and stopping the traffic. The police couldnt get up to the front and it would be bumper to bumper for a mile. They would pull up on the elevated service road and watch with everyone else.

 

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There was a Big Willie that ran a Hemi Daytona out on the west coast. Willie Robenson I think was his name, his girlfriend/wife had a similar car. He tried to get organized street racing off the street and onto thr track back in early 70's

 

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