VEGAS 2000
by Cole Coonce
I was getting my hair cut from the old Italian guy in downtown Los
Angeles and maybe it was the smog but the conversation was deader than
last month's IPO. To break the silence, Dago Joe the Barber asked me
what I had planned for the weekend. I told him that this town was
giving me cabin fever--the city walls were closing in like a dark
star--and that I was going to Vegas with a friend of mine, Cuz'n Roy,
for a drag race on a brand new drag strip owned by a entrepreneur named
Bruton Smith. "The drive will do me good," I told him.
"The drive through that desert is duller than watching spaghetti boil,"
Joe countered, bemusedly. "It'll be one big parking lot from Pasadena
to Barstow. Traffic's even worse when you get to the Strip."
"Not if you leave at midnight," I replied. "We're gonna' burn out here
at midnight, between Victorville and Barstow we'll stop and look at the
constellations and catch a couple of hours of mild rapid eye movement
before the sun comes up. We'll slip through Vegas in the morning while
the tourists,the locals and the highway patrol are still sleeping off
last night's karmic flotsam. We won't hit any traffic."
"They ruined that town you know," Joe muttered. Joe is an older guy and
his hands sometimes twitch like a divining rod, but he will trim your
hair for less dinero than the price of a cheese steak and a shaved ice.
And you get a lessons in both History and Philosophy, gratis with each
hair cut.
"Well, I don't know what there is to ruin, Joe. That town was built on
a wet dream of a mirage in the first place," I told him. "But I do know
what you mean: after the mob took Vegas away from the Mormons, Kirk
Kerkorian and those Hollywood cum Wall Street-types turned the bizarre
most gaudy and depraved city in America into just another theme park
and 'fun for the whole family.' Vegas is bullshit."
"Kerkorian didn't ruin Vegas," Joe shrugged. "I don't know anything
about this Bruton Smith fellow, but he didn't ruin it either. Howard
Hughes did. That town has been cooked ever since that froot loop
started buying up all the casinos."
"Howard Hughes ruined Vegas?" My head was spinning like the candy
striped pole outside Joe's shop as I flipped Joe a couple of fins for
his services.
"Howard Hughes and his henchman, a guy named Mayhew, were the ones
bought a bunch of property and then insisted that the hotels had to pay
for themselves," Joe explained as he shook the hair off of the white
smock. "Before that, the hotels just skimmed on the drop and you didn't
have to pay for booze--or parking. You could catch Red Skelton's act in
the lounge for under a buck."
"Those were different times," I nodded. "And as sure as Elvis died with
his pants down around his ankles, Vegas is going to be mother of all
ghosts towns one of these days."
"Enjoy your drive," Joe said.
We didn't leave until nearly 1 AM Friday night/Saturday morning, the
only break from ballin' the jack was taking time (as promised) to stop
to look at the stars just past the lights of Barstow. We drank a beer
and I told Cuz'n Roy about my conversation with Dago Joe; we talked
about the inevitability of change and how drag racing is in a state of
flux and how its fortunes may hinge on the success of Bruton Smith's
new speedway, a facility in North Vegas that he picked up for a damn
near a quarter of a billion dollars a little over a year ago and then
spruced up. We also riffed about Smith's attempt to buy the NHRA
outright, a deal that some say was queered because of complications
from the NHRA's "non-profit" status...
Roy started singing, "A fortune is won and lost on every deal, all you
need is a strong heart and nerves of steel" and I couldn't help but
think about Elvis and his pants around his ankles.
Although the gameplan was to recline the seats and saw some logs, we
were both wound up from the drive and were worried about being hassled
by state troopers for sleeping on the side of the road, something we
had experienced a couple of years ago on a country road outside of the
drag strip in Sonoma. Roy wondered if there were any freedoms left in
this country and I assured him there were as long as you didn't pay
attention too much attention to the rules, stayed flexible and just did
what felt right in your heart, not unlike this trip to the drag races:
Get in and get out and try not to sweat the machinations of the
bureaucracy.
The solution was to keep driving. We knew lodging was sold out in Vegas
and North Vegas because of not only the drag races, but also because of
a Parent Teacher Association Convention that was also in town, a
setting so incongruous for such a gathering that even Howard Hughes'
ghost must have felt uneasy. We made it to an industrial park next to
the track at about 5:45, pitched our sleeping bags by some concrete
buildings that served as shade trees from the rising sun and tried to
catch some winks.
The industrial park is where some Nascar and Indy Car guys store and
maintain their racecars, and there was some activity in the garages
that interrupted our intermittent slumber. Through our fitful sleep we
could hear the roundy-round pit guys discuss the audacity of the nitro
bums/transients sleeping on concrete next to a Japanese car outside the
racecar stalls...
We woke up about 9:30 to the sounds of racecars making laps on the
roundy-round track, did a hobo shower and shave as we could hear
blown-on-alcohol and injected nitro dragsters made some qualifying runs
on the drag strip. Once packed up we began looking for an AC receptacle
to plug in a portable espresso machine and brew some grounds (never
leave home without it has been my experience--most coffee shops serve
coffee that is red in color, and the hipster corporate coffee klatchs
based out of Seattle insist you listen to their new age fuzak while
scoring an overpriced cup of grinds...)
We bought some ice for six bucks at a general store/restaurant called
the RaceCar Cafe and was able to liberate use of the cafe's alternating
current... in exchange, I made the proprietor's wife a proper cup of
coffee as we engaged the cafe owner in a discussion about his IRL car
and his experiences at the Indy 500 with Jim Guthrie driving.
We got to the drag strip, drove through the fueler pits, passed Camp
Super Comp and parked the rice burner against the fence in the shut
down area. As they ran Pro Stock, we watched as they got on the chutes
where the concussion is pretty intense. We were situated directly
across from Sunrise Mountain, a crag-like mountain where Vietnam-era
fighter pilots from Nellis AFB stuffed a half a dozen or so F-111
Aardvarks while haplessly r & d'ing the plane's "automatic"
horizontal correction and "terrain following radar."
Top Fuel dragsters were up next and Roy and I popped the tabs on a
couple of free range open containers and just grooved on watching the
sleek machines as they roared off the pad, wound up to maximum velocity
and then unspooled and coasted with the chutes out.
There was no p.a. up there and we could not make out who was who until
they reached about half track. We never got a bead on what speeds any
of the cars turned, but the sightlines were excellent. Perhaps because
of the well-stocked cooler, Roy made pals with some other top end
freaks and Super Gas-types who were hanging on the fence until their
class was called to the lanes. I didn't need conversation, just the
racecar sounds were what I wanted to hear, so I moved even further up
the big end to catch the shut down sounds a cappella.
From Nellis, which is located no more than a tossed blower belt from
the burnout box, an over-the-top impromptu air show manifested itself
in thin air and made the whole event seem like some sorta' Teutonic
game of 3D checkers, particularly from the top end vantage point... I
mean fuelers would be backing up from their burnouts with smoke wisping
towards the heavens as three B1 bombers would circle and frolic and
poke through the smoke of the dragsters' burnouts; a couple of pairs
later and four F-16s would buzz Sunrise Mountain in a delta formation
over the cheap seats on the east side of the drag strip and then blaze
fullburner over the staging lanes. "Man, this is a bizarre town," I
said to Roy. It was like that for most of the day, perhaps the most
graceful meta-exhibition of Go! Fever I ever witnessed.
The fuelers gave way to the Funny Cars--28 of 'em--and after a couple
of pairs coasted through I made my way to half track to watch the
floppers from perspective closer to the the flight paths of the fighter
planes and the bombers. About that time Dale Creasy, Jr. came through
with fire licking from the underside of the car and as Creasy slowed
the fire grew and grew, like the intensity of the oil fire was
inversely proportional to the speed of the funny car.
As Creasy sashayed through the traps, the fire was of Irwin Allen
caliber and became even more orange and intense as Creasy continued to
scrub off speed. Not unlike the driver himself who was in danger of
asphyxiation and toxic smoke inhalation, the crowd held its collective
breath until Creasy finally climbed out of the capsule like a stunt man
in an industrial disaster movie. When the session ended, a cursory trip
to Creasy's pit area revealed that the block was split like an apple,
the rods, bearings and main caps intact.
After making my way through the big rigs and hospitality tents, I
caught up with Cuz'n Roy in Arley Langlo's pit area. Arley was shoeing
Jay Roach's low buck Titan Xpress fueler and was beaming with
amour-propre as he shared his joy about his entry being the first Top
Fuel dragster driver to parade down Bruton Smith's new palatial drag
strip.
"There is one thing that they can't ever take away from us is that we
were the first Top Fuel car," Arley said and smiled. "That is an honor
and distinction that will live on forever. I figured that would have
been a grand occasion, maybe Bernstein and Scelzi, side-by-side as the
first fuel cars down a brand new track. (Instead) here is some donkey
going down there for the first time in a fuel car. We got a little
piece of history that they will never be able to take away from us."
I asked him what happened on that most auspicious occasion. He said,
"The fuel hose blew off the barrel valve at 1000' and it went
lean-bang."
Even so, history will show that even with 19 cars entered in
competition in Top Fuel, as Arley put it, "We were number one qualifier
until the next set of cars ran."
Roy and I watched the last session of qualifying under the shade of the
corporate and media suites. I am not sure if we were supposed to be
there, but security was kinda' lax and we just snagged some empty seats
(there weren't many) perpendicular to the 60' cone. The sightlines were
most excellent there also.
When that session finished we were faced with a decision: To try find
accomodations and watch eliminations tomorrow or burn back to LA. The
only lodging vacancy to be had was at the Nellis Inn on N. Vegas
Boulevard, a motel where you have to give up your car keys as
collateral if you want to borrow the toilet plunger. Roy wanted to
pitch camp in the sleeping bags out by the adjacent dirt track where
the sprint cars run. I said it had been a superlative trip; nobody gave
a shit where we sat or whose beer we drank and in the interest of both
hygiene and keeping a clear head the best thing we could do was 180
back to LA before things got weird as tomorrow's security was sure to
be more draconian.
So, in the parlance of the high rollers, we cut any potential losses
and after I found an AC receptacle above a phone terminal outside of a
Circle K on N. Vegas Boulevard and brewed a proper demitasse of joe we
began our burn back to Smogtown, discussing what a groovy experience
this race had been as we passed a casino marquee with dragster driver
Tony Schumacher's name in lights bigger than Red Skelton's ever was.
We pulled into my driveway at about 1'o clock in the morning, 24 hours
after we left. The next day I read on the internet where independent
Top Fuel driver "Techno Tim" Gibson had been disqualified for running a
fuel mix of 90.4 nitromethane after beating Schumacher. And Arley
Langlo, who had ended up as the 2nd alternate on the 16-car Top Fuel
ladder, drove home to Santa Barbara without getting paid, unaware that
the NHRA pays out to 18 positions nowadays. At the end of the day
Bruton Smith posed with showgirls, probably from the casino that Kirk
kerkorian and his investors own.
I'm actually looking forward to my next haircut. Dago Joe and I have a lot to talk about.--fini
CLUTCH DUST VAPORIZES INTO THE ETHER: THE COLE COONCE READER