Tonight, tonight, the strip's just right
I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats
Calling out around the world
We're going racing in the streets . .
Bruce Springsteen
A young man who called himself "The Rabbi" volunteered to be the flagman. He stretched and waved his arms.
"Whoo-hoo!" he shouted, doing a little dance as the cars pulled up on either side of him. "Are you ready to par-tay?"
Jay pulled out his video camera. The Rabbi took a call from a friend standing near a stop sign about a quarter of a mile away.
"Yo, someone's coming."
Headlights of a pickup truck leaving one of the businesses shined in the distance. The spectators ducked under the trees. The racers pulled their cars to the side of the road and let the truck pass.
Jay, The Rabbi, and the dozens of others had gotten the word to meet at "Chunk's Boulevard," a straight piece of roadway in an industrial park named for the street racer who found it.
A long stream of cars pulled off the highway into the industrial park in southeastern Massachusetts that Saturday night in late summer, driving past block-like nondescript buildings on tree-lined boulevards.
The friends and girlfriends parked in a lot near the "finish line" -- that stop sign at a T-intersection. They stood on the edge of the road, close enough to watch the race, and close enough to duck under the trees.
The racers drove to the "starting line," where they stopped to figure out who was going to duel.
JAY AND THE RABBI talked again on the phone. All clear. The racers got back in line.
Exhaust puffed around the cars. "OK, who's next?" Jay yelled.
He was. Drew was up with his Acura, and Jay slid into the driver's seat of his Volkswagen.
The two-lane road stretched before them. Scattered streetlights illuminated the pavement.
Their radios were turned off. They pulled their shoulder harnesses on. The only sound they heard was the hum of their engines.
"One!" The Rabbi swept his arms up.
"Two!" Drew gripped the steering wheel.
"Three!" The words were barely out of The Rabbi's mouth when the cars leapt forward.
Drew stomped the pedal hard and shifted fast. His tachometer redlined, and he shifted again.
The Acura flew. The needle climbed. Thirty, forty . . .
"I think I got him!" he muttered to himself. "I think I got him!"
Well, I'm not braggin' babe so don't put me down
But I've got the fastest set of wheels in town
When something comes up to me he don't even try
'Cause if it had a set of wings, man, I know she could fly
She's my little deuce coupe, you don't know what I got . . .
The Beach Boys
Drew Irby fell in love with his bright blue Acura the moment he spotted it on a dealer's lot last fall.
He was just 19, about a year out of high school, and working as a manager at an office supply store. He and his girlfriend, Lauren, lived with their baby daughter in his father's house in North Kingstown. He was driving a nondescript Toyota, just a "grocery getter."
Drew had bigger ambitions, and all of them circulated around that car. He plunked down $1,000 and got his father to back him on a loan for the $15,000 car.
Soon after, Drew was heading out late on Friday and Saturday nights, looking for races in the streets.
Chunk was out there in his 1997 Honda Accord, with a body dropped so low that even a slender cell phone could barely fit underneath it. He was installing a television and video game system in the front passenger side.
Jay, who worked in sales, had a GTI with turbo. Drew had his Acura. They met at street races last winter.
The guys spent Friday nights hanging out in parking lots, talking with other enthusiasts about their cars and the work they were going to do. The girlfriends hung out with them, but weren't allowed behind the wheel.
On Saturday nights, they went looking for races, searching for quiet industrial roads in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts. Sometimes, there were up to 200 of them, on slow nights, just a few dozen.
Street racers are loosely organized, some pledging allegience to their race teams or speed shops. For others, there is allegience only to their cars.
How many street racers are really out there in Rhode Island is anyone's guess. The racers count the number of cars that show up for the street duels. The police count the number of tickets they hand out.
Races are as impromptu as two cars speeding away from a stoplight at the same time -- or as planned as events where scores of people gather to watch the races from lawn chairs and blankets.
Until the police show-up.
The street was deserted late Friday night
We were buggin' each other while we sat at the light
We both popped the clutch when the light turned green
You shoulda heard the whine from my screamin' machine ...
Jan and Dean
For Drew's father, it's hard not to think about what his son may be doing on a Saturday night, especially when he has his own past to remind him.
"I go to bed at night, put my head on the pillow, and listen for him to come home," says Alfred Irby Jr.
Irby once had a lime-green 1967 Ford Mustang. That was when there were fewer cars on the road, he says, and the Detroit-made machines put more metal between the driver and the pavement.
Now, Irby is 55 and the father of a racer. The lime-green Mustang is long gone, replaced by "Betty Boop," his red 1992 Mustang convertible.
Betty Boop doesn't race. Irby takes the car to cruise nights at the Garden City mall.
There, the cars are sharp, and the drivers are tame. The shows are about as safe as a sock hop. The police are barely visible. The middle-aged crowd isn't spinning its tires or talking about racing later in the night.
Irby cajoled his son into organizing the racers.
During the meetings of Drew's team, the Rhode Island Street Racers, Irby suggests delegating authority by having a chairman and vice chairman. He advises them to get permission from business owners to congregate in their parking lots for a cruise night.
But the racers don't want to have "officers" in their club, or follow Robert's Rules of Order.
They take their cues from the street racers in California -- entering and organizing car shows, going to the dragstrip, setting up Web sites and recruiting young women to model with their cars. California, they say, is where it's at. And Drew and his friends pay close attention to what the better organized street racers are doing 3,000 miles away.
They've had a Web site. They want Rhode Island Street Racers windshield stickers and T-shirts for the guys; booty shorts and thongs for the young women. Drew's girlfriend, Lauren, recruits other young women to drape themselves suggestively over the racers' cars for photos.
During one of the meetings, Irby took one look at a giggly, scantily clad woman and frowned. "How old are you?" he asked.
IRBY REGULARLY follows the team to the New England Dragway in Epping, N.H., where they race legally on the quarter-of-a-mile track. He coached his son there, and briefly held his hand against his heart as he watched Drew race there for the first time.
"I just want to see how he's going to do," Irby said. "If I can just get these kids not to do things on the street."
Even as he says it, he knows the truth.
The dragway is safe, legal, and provides each racer with exact statistics on how fast their car speeds. It's also two hours away. And there are industrial roads and lonely stretches of highway everywhere.
"I tell him, 'Son, you're getting to that edge, and some day that edge is going to cut you," Irby says. "It's like the 1950s, but these things are fast and will fold up on you."
Irby was tossing in comments during a meeting of the Rhode Island Street Racers when he glanced over at a videotape they were watching in his living room.
At first, the film flashed pictures of the team's first car show, at Goddard State Park, which attracted about 120 show cars and street cars.
Then, the video switched to a nighttime view of two cars racing down a tree-lined boulevard. The camera was being held by someone standing up through the sunroof of a car that was driving in an oncoming lane beside the two racers.
"What's this? Racing? Where's this?" Irby asked, peering at the screen. Then he looked at his son.
"Are you in this?"
Drew hesitated. He laughed. "Uh, no."
"Tach it up, tach it up
Buddy, gonna shut you down . . .
The Beach Boys
"We're trying to get these kids off the streets!" Joe Pucino exclaimed.
He's one of the "Raceway Four" -- North Kingstown race enthusiasts who've been trying for five years to turn an abandoned runway at Quonset State Airport into a dragstrip.
Pucino, John Sousa, Russ Johnson, and Charlie Eldred have solicited politicians, held meetings with fellow North Kingstown residents, and taken their case to the city and state offices to open the Rhode Island Raceway Park.
Their efforts haven't gotten the green light. The town council voted to support it, but the Airport Corporation killed the idea in September.
People were worried about noise from a dragstrip. The men said they did sound tests that proved residents wouldn't hear the cars.
Some complained that they didn't want "those kinds of people" driving into their town. Those people already live here, the men argued.
"I guarantee you, if we had the dragstrip, 75 to 80 percent of those kids would be off the street," Pucino asserted.
Some of the men raced when they were younger. Some still race, though only on the dragstrip. They're about 20 years older and more experienced than the younger street racers.
But when they talk about racing, they sound like the boys in the streets.
"You know what that feeling's like?" Sousa asked.
"It's incredible," Pucino said, biting a finger.
"Your heart's beating fast," Sousa said, "and you know that panicky feeling . . ."
". . . but you're in control," Pucino jutted in.
". . . you don't get a sense of how fast you're going until you get to the end, and the lady waving you on just whips by," Sousa said.
Their faces glow.
"See, this is what happens when you get together with a bunch of guys and they talk about racing," Pucino says. "Everyone gets excited."
Just tuned my car, now she really peels
A-lookin' real tough with chrome reverse wheels
Gonna get my chick and make it out to Drag City . . .
Jan and Dean
The grandfathers of these teenagers raced hot rods. Their fathers raced muscle cars.
The new racers go for the import cars, Toyota, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, and Volkswagen sedans that wouldn't ordinarily get a passing glance in a parking lot. But these cars are like blank slates to their young owners, who will sink thousands of dollars into them to get the look they want.
Sonehet "Toppy" Khamsyvoravong, the co-owner of Leading Edge Racing in East Providence, sees them all the time. The young racers pick up imported cars with a few years on them and tell him they want to make it look fast and drive faster.
"Some kids will work their asses off for it. Some put themselves in debt for it," Khamsyvoravong said.
The all-time biggest customer drove in with a mild-mannered 1998 Honda Civic hatchback. Two years and $150,000 later, the customer had a race car.
Then, there are customers like Drew, who's been on a payment plan. He's changed the gauges, bumped up the wheel sizes, and had a new turbo installed, all for about $8,000. Khamsyvoravong is just 25, but he's been racing on the drag strip for years. He knows some of his customers are street racers.
"I don't recommend it. I don't condone it. It's very unsafe," he said. "I would have liked it a lot better if Quonset was built. The kids would have had a place to go, and it would be a lot easier for law enforcement."
I'm a roadrunner, honey
And you can't catch me
Yes, I'm a roadrunner, honey
And you can't keep up with me
Come on over here and race
Baby, baby, you'll see ...
Bo Diddley
On the first Saturday night of the summer, hundreds of cars jammed into the parking lot at the East Side Mario's off Pleasant Valley Parkway in Providence. There were race cars and show cars, and the talk jumped from what their cars could do to where they were going to go to prove it.
Then, someone screamed "Five-O!" and everyone ran for their cars. It was too late. In the split-second that someone noticed an unmarked car, the Providence police had already corralled them in the parking lot. The only way out was through a police barricade, where officers scrutinized the drivers and the cars for violations.
That was it for this street racing staging area.
They used to meet at the Dunkin' Donuts on Harris Avenue in Providence to organize their races. The police surrounded and ticketed them. .
The racers tried the Wendy's parking lot by the Rhode Island Mall. The Warwick police moved them out.
They moved on to a grocery store parking lot in Fall River, Mass. The police surrounded them and gave them all $250 trespassing tickets.
The racers use their team Web sites, e-mail and cell phones to contact each other about upcoming challenges. The police check the teams' Web sites for clues on where and when the next race is coming.
Windows tinted -- ticket. Altered height of car -- ticket. Modified exhaust -- ticket. Stickers on the windshield that could obstruct view -- ticket.
Some racers post the laws on vehicle modification on their Web sites, along with the locations of speed traps and red-light cameras, the names of various lawyers, and how to file complaints against the police.
The police also see names posted and their undercover cars listed on the sites.
Providence's traffic commander Lt. Timothy Lee reads the taunting and laughs.
"We're going to just keep finding and arresting them, finding them and finding them," he says.
A teenage boy was killed and three others were injured in street races in Providence last February. After that, Lee pushed harder to get the racers out of the city.
"If we can stop the races from happening, we can eliminate their chances of getting hurt," Lee said.
The racers say a legal dragstrip in Rhode Island would get them off the streets. Lee doesn't agree it would work for everyone. The drag strip, he says, doesn't have the same allure.
"It's that rush of adrenaline of winning the race, and it's getting away with the race," Lee said. "They get a thrill out of what they can get away with."
Tonight, tonight, the highway's right
Out of our way mister you best keep
'Cause summer's here and the time is right
We're going racing in the street . . .
Bruce Springsteen
The whites of the Volkswagen's headlights were just off Drew's door.
Jay banged into third gear, fourth.
"Oh, no, he's catching up," Drew says.
Fifty. The cars were side by side, but Drew and Jay didn't look at each other.
Fifth gear, sixty. Jay pulled ahead. Turbo power. "Oh, no, he's got me," Drew muttered. "He's got me.
Seventy. The Acura whined, its small metal shell feeling like it could lift off the pavement. Trees whipped past.
Eighty and rising.
The stop sign was blurring ahead. Drew pressed the brakes, hard, and the car slowed and stopped just at the intersection. Another car was coming out of a side street.
Jay laughed. Victorious.
Drew turned the Acura and headed back to the "starting line." Another pair of cars was already lined up behind The Rabbi.
Drew's car purred at a comfortable 35 mph. A blissed-out grin crossed his face.
"An adrenaline rush," Drew said. "Yeah."
They had just a few more minutes to race, and then . . .
"Five-O! Five-O!" the racers screamed into their phones. The blue and white lights were flashing off the trees down the street.
Zoom! The cars sped out of the parking lot, and away from the starting line, searching for an exit.
The police were seconds behind them -- but too far to see the red glow of the escaping racers' taillights.
Watch a slideshow of street-racing scenes by Journal photographer Kris Craig.
