The Reluctant Adventurer: Adventures in Intimacy II—The Drag Races

Monday, May 11, 2015

Courtenay Hameister, GoLocalPDX Contributor

Red Cap Garage Drag Race photo courtesy of Byron Beck

If someone had asked me to go to the drag races a year ago, this is what I would’ve assumed they meant:

For years, Red Cap Garage hosted a weekly live version of RuPaul’s Drag Race with local drag queens and celebrity judges. It was fabulous.

But when I was asked to go to the Drag Races last week, I knew there was very little chance I’d see sequins and advanced facial contouring.

Because it was the one with cars and stuff.

Yeah, I didn’t know we had those either.

But sometimes we’re introduced to a subculture that we may not fully understand or relate to, and when we do, it’s important to keep an open mind.

Apparently, back in the 60's, Portland International Raceway began running sanctioned drag races with professional drivers while illegal races were still running on the same streets.

In 2000, due to some fatalities in those illegal races, PIR started running "late night drags" on Friday and Saturday nights as a safe alternative to illegal street racing. For just $30, anyone with a valid driver’s license can come in and race against other drivers as long as their car passes tech inspection.

Known as E.T. racing, two cars "of varying performance levels" race on a quarter- or eighth-mile track against a short alien in the basket of a bicycle, with the slower car receiving a head start based on its anticipated elapsed time.

No. Sorry. They race against EACH OTHER. There's no alien involved at all. I’m just learning here.

Why am I learning?

Because of that thing that happens when you’re dating someone and he’s gone to a bunch of shit you’re performing in and accompanied you to a freaking cat café and even allowed himself to be locked in a room for 60 minutes with five strangers so you can write about it and you’ve done approximately zero of his things, so you tell him that you’ll do whatever he wants.

And he wants to go to the drag races.

(The one with cars.)

So you go.

Because you like him.

Also, you’re hoping you might get a hotdog out of it.

Because if there were ever an event where hotdogs were served, I’d assume it would be the drag races.

We arrived after 9 p.m., with my date assuming things might be winding down. He’d taken me to The Gorge to watch the sunset immediately prior because he’s smart and he knows if you’re going to take a lady to the drag races, you butter her up first with the most gorgeous sunset in the world before her vision is blurred with the smoke from tire burnouts.

Nice burnout, dude.

What’s a burnout? I’m glad you asked. Because I learned.

Y’know how before a drag race, you’ll see a car standing still at the starting line, but spinning the living crap out of the back wheels, causing a giant smoke cloud behind it? Well, that’s not just the driver’s testosterone pressing down on the gas. This action actually has a practical purpose.

In racing, tires perform best at higher temperatures because they’re “stickier” and have better traction. A burnout is the fastest way to raise the temperature of the tires, clear them of debris, and make the driver seem like a total badass.

See? I learned something. It was something I never thought I’d want to learn, but it makes things a lot more interesting if you know stuff.

Also, I like to kiss the person who was talking about burnouts, which oftentimes makes things that would otherwise not be of interest to you, of interest to you.

This might explain the success of jai alai. Or men who ask their girlfriends who’s mad at whom on this week’s “Real Housewives of Atlanta.” (Cynthia and Kandi are both mad at Phaedra, NeNe's mad at Kenya, and everyone's mad at NeNe, as usual).

There were probably 50 cars at the track that night, all amateur drivers who had lovingly souped up their Mustang, Corvette, or their Nissan 240sx with a drift handbrake, and brought them for, as PIR puts it, “Grudge racing all night long.”

If only we could all bring our grudges to PIR to set them free. Because I remember EXACTLY what Jennifer Childress said about my corduroy knickers in 7th grade, and Jennifer? My Civic has been running pretty smooth lately. I should get the oil changed. And the starter is temperamental. And the “check engine” light comes on most of the time. But still. I WILL PROBABLY BEAT OR TIE YOU OR POSSIBLY COME IN AFTER YOU.

Turbocharged Nissan 240sx. So fast. So furious. About what, we’ll never know.

You can see a lot of the cars waiting to race in the parking lot, many of them with their hoods up so spectators can admire the handiwork of the owners. Car after car, mostly new-ish sportscars, line up and wait their turn to race behind the starting line. If you like, you can keep racing and getting back in line all night long, just like we used to do on the rollercoaster on a slow day at Six Flags when we were kids. But probably with less vomiting.

The star of the night? This old Nissan truck. I KNOW. The entire audience was as surprised as you are.

If I were a better journalist, you would be able to see that the owner has put a turbocharged 5.0 Liter Mustang engine into it. You could hear a few chuckles in the audience as the truck sat at the starting line next to a brand new Mustang.

The tortoise.

But the chuckling ceased when the Christmas tree (the series of lights at the starting line) hit green and the cars took off. The truck flew out of the gate, leaving the Mustang immediately in a humiliating burnout cloud and continuing to dominate all the way down to the finish line, 1/8th mile down the track.

It was like the tortoise and the hare, but with cars, and if the tortoise had trained for months with an Olympic track coach and hidden his newly lithe and nimble body under his beat-up shell until the starting gun.

So, not like the tortoise and the hare at all, really.

But a good lesson in not judging a book by its cover, nonetheless, which isn’t really the lesson I would’ve expected at the drag races.

At least not these drag races.

The PIR Late Night Drags
Friday and Saturday nights, March 6-October 31 (check online calendar as some weekends don’t have late night drags)
$9 admission

RECOMMENDED FOR: NASCAR fans, nacho aficionados, people with grudges that can only be settled by driving cars at a fast rate of speed.

NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: People who like a nice merlot and some Debussy on a Saturday night, those who don’t like the smell or concept of burning rubber, those who are simply furious without skill or desire to also be fast.

Courtenay Hameister is the Head Writer and Co-Producer of Live Wire Radio, a syndicated radio variety show distributed by Public Radio International. She is currently working on a book that will be released through Audible.com in 2015. Follow Courtenay on Twitter at @wisenheimer.