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

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back in the day, it seemed like every week somewhere in binghamton there was a race - either the brandywine hwy, airport rd, or the light to light runs....here are a couple of cars that ran often - mine is the 1970 402 4 spd nova...my friend john had the 1968 r/t with 440 and psychedelic paint ...we would race up and back 10 times just for fun!...til the sirens came......boooooo

 

was or did u ever see a orange hemi 68 roadrunner

 

I know that station and I remember when those things happened ,but I remember hearing it was a camaro that got cut up, don't know if that's true but that was the story that came to me from friends of mine and the owner of that station

 

Does anyone else remember a GTO professionally lettered "King of the Connecting Highway" on the sides ... ?

 

Was this particular station owned by Eddy and Freddy Leyte?

 

http://www.connectinghighway.com/

 

Earlier in this post there was a mention of "Big Willie". Big Willie and Brooklyn Heavy are not the same people. Big Willie was a big time street racer from the west coast. He tried to organize street racing and tried working with politicos in various cities to make street racing safe. Somewhere around here I have a great article on Big Willie. If I find it I'll scan and post it up. As for Brooklyn Heavy i saw that hemi powered Colt that he got from "Rapid Ronnie Lyles' run either on the the Conduit or the Connecting back in the 70's. This was the same car I saw Ronnie run at National Speedway in a match race with Bill Jenkins, Paul Blevens and Sox and Martin.

We used to hit 231 then the BK on Hempstead Turnpike then head over the hot spots in Brooklyn. Those were the days.

 

My friend had a 69 Chevelle convertible "White Lightning" and he used to race at connecting hwy as well.. don't hit the exit ramp too fast or you'll eat guardrail.
We would sometimes go over by the Junk yards near Shea stadium and watch the Datsun 210's with open exhaust and Nitrous race all night... That was alot of fun when we go chased from there we would go over to Fountain avenue in Brooklyn to catch a few late races cars vs bikes or LIE exit 49 to catch some high $ races..... Great memories thanks to all for the posts and the links.

 

I got my license with just enough time to run a few times at Westhampton dragway before they shut it down to build big shitty condos.

I've met quite a few people on Friday nights at the Bellmore train station shows with old gassers and stripped down cars they pull out once and a while, who have some INSANE stories about racing in Queens, BK, and NYC. I had a teacher when I went to school for GM out here who would tell us stories about the Belt Pkwy and Queens Blvd back in the 70's. You drive through the city now and can't even believe the stories.

Deer Park Avenue, Belt Parkway, eastern Sunrise and a few other spots are still pretty big for street racing. I haven't messed with that kind of stuff in a good ten years though.

 

we use to race on central ave. albany,ny. as long as you were cool and had some order the cops would sort of look the other way. the rule was no racing tri,fri or sat, nights they were shopping nights for the citizens...but man tues. nights were wild....coupes,roadsters,thunderbolts,hemis,409s........

 

Keep it coming, love this stuff!

 

Was at terminal island the day mayor bradley and darth vador showed up and remember an old guy telling me of drug deals and machine guns at the street races, to dangerous for me if true. Any truth to that?

 

Someone else has probably already said this, but Seymour Balz was Phil Engeldrum. GREAT name though.

 

Back in "the day" cruising and street racing was what we did. It was just like American Graffiti. There were no NSRA, Goodguy or HAMB events to go to. On weekends we would go to Westhampton, Montgomery County and the East Islip drag strips. Nights we would cruise ice cream stands, drive ins and diners looking for street races. We spent many nights on Cross Bay Blvd and the Connecting Highway. Anyone ever raced for Impala Flags?

 

What a great article!

I used to own a 83 Mustang when I was 17. Being from the UK, a 2.3 turbo with a vent on the hood was considered amazing. It wasn't that fast, but it would beat all the boy-racers' little 1.4L cars with big exhausts.

I joined this forum as to tap into your knowledge about the older racers. I am writing a short story for an anthology. The main bulk of this tale flashes back to 65. The kid featured gets given the family car, a 56 Chevy Nova V6. What I really wanted to know, was, what do you guys do to the average car to make it quicker? I guess stripping it out and making it lighter? What did you do mechanically to enhance the HP?

This would be really helpful and much appreciated. I'd also find it fascinating because as a kid, all we could afford was to buy better tyres, air filters and a bigger exhaust.

Thanks and really cool stories in this forum.

Although we had smaller cars, the spirit of racing and beating local cars was the same.

 

Sorry, not a 56, a 62 mark I Chevy Nova. Got my cars mixed up!

 

We recently put up a doorslammer related photo gallery at Drag Racing Underground... And of course we had to include a still shot of the late great Rufus Boyd aka "BROOKLYN HEAVY" in the gallery. Here he is sittin' and chillin' in front of a Brooklyn NY bodega (take note of the sign behind him, what's on the menu, classic stuff)-- This is from the "Head Hunters" car club block party... "The Doc" (Celebrity Drag Racing Authority & Visionary)...


...And also, once again, here's a YouTube video featuring lots of drag racin' folks doin' I.D.'s for Drag Racing Underground, with "Brooklyn Heavy" at the very end of the clip...
<iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/3mJ1IP9_nkc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

I used to ride my bike (shwinn of course) down to Roy Rogers by the Hutch It was like a car show at 1am! Every now and then someone would let me jump in with them and go up on the highway to watch a race.

 

Axle'
Thats a pretty good read. I really appreciate your putting it up.

Thanks
benno

 

Awesome article I'll heading over to Motorbooks to get the book this evening.

 

cool thread. I like these old racing stories.

 

reading Cop without a Badge, about Kevin Maher, ran BB corvette featured in various vette mags. According to the book, was a legendary racer at the connecting highway, early 1980's. anyone confirm this?

 

Not NY but 8 miles west in NJ we used to race on RT 21 in the 70's. Here is an old video of us stopping traffic and making a quick run. I had a 66 427 Ford against my friends 68 440 Roadrunner.
http://<IFRAME height=315 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/L7HV8AGypDw" frameBorder=0 width=420 allowfullscreen></IFRAME>

 

Great memories, spent many nights down at connecting highway. For a while in the late 70's the worlds fair parking lot was another place to run.

 

The 80's all the heavy cars hung out at the end of Astoria Park.

There was a black early 70's Vette maybe blue striping with a tunnel ram if that is car above talking about.

I believe "White Lightning" was a cutlass and was in a couple mags in the day.

Everybody used to always talk at the chick with the orange 67-8? Camaro conv and the Greek guy with the maroon Malibu Barbra Anne???

Lot's of cool car wonder what happened to them all??

 

We need Tony DeFeo to post on this thread!

http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=545274

 

My dad used to tell me stories of running on the palisades parkway. He grew up in Nyack, and said they would run from one overpass to the other. Almost exactly a quarter mile. I wish I could have seen it! Had to be neat as hell

 

I grew up in Astoria but I was born about 20 years too late to see any real street dragracing. When I was a teenager (in the 90s) guys would fuck around on Shore Blvd (Astoria park) but its a little too narrow to race there, one night some douche bag almost put his Beemer in the East river. You can thank him for the speed bumps they put in down there. Every time I went down there during the day time there would be old guy with light blue early 60s Vette with 427 badges on it parked down there.
My buddys dad used to race a 67 Chevelle on Connecting highway every now and then in the 70s, nothing too radical just a high 11s street car. Every time we would get off the BQE onto Astoria Blvd he would point out the spot where a GTX slammed into the guardrail. The city finally killed off all the illegal racing on the connector by having the fire dept hose down the roadway, then the action moved to the parking lots at Shea stadium.
If you drive down Crossbay Blvd through the bird sanctuary almost every tree along the roadway has a scar on it. About 10 years ago the cops in Ozone Park had a 5.0 mustang with a real lopey cam in it that they confiscated for street racing, they painted it up just like an NYC police car and on the bottoms of the doors it said "this vehical was confiscated for illegal street dragracing".