Way back in the day, your author made hundreds of laps on this very asphalt – it’s less than half a mile from the house where I spent the majority of my life and the very same road where I learned to street-race (shhh…don’t tell my mom!) during some very late-night sessions with some close friends, who shall remain nameless.

Back then you could fill your tank for twenty bucks and cruise all night to look for other speed-freaks doing the same thing, maybe engaging in a roll race or five in the process. The road is called Roosevelt Boulevard and is actually part of US1, the first trans-continental highway.

The Roosevelt Boulevard portion is six lanes wide in each direction for almost the entire stretch – nearly twelve miles in all, with express and local lanes and even a number of underpasses at critical intersections. Back in 2001 it was actually named one of the most dangerous roads in the entire country by State Farm Insurance, with two of the three worst intersections in the country less than a mile apart.

Here in Philadelphia, the car culture is relatively strong, and at this show last summer some of the locals decided to give the pavement a workout on their way out of the show. There’s something for nearly everyone here, from cars to bikes to grandpas sittin’ in lawn chairs – even a donked-out late-’70’s Caprice Classic that can’t even muster up the power to spin the hides.

There’s only one thing that seems to be completely missing – the po-po! As the afternoon wears on and the shadows lengthen, it appears as if many of the show-goers lose their inhibitions, as they start encroaching on the asphalt real estate. One of the things we’ve never understood is why people would want to risk their life the way some of these spectators do, but that’s not for us to decide – Darwin shall get those who deserve it. For the rest of us, there are burnouts!