Fiona Apple and NASCAR
July 24, 2006 
This weekend was a lovely mix of Fiona Apple and NASCAR, both live!
I went to (Nikon) Jones Beach on Saturday night with my sister and Kaleigh to see Fiona Apple (awesome live!) with openers David Garza (who?) and Damien Rice (sucked live).
Despite the intermittent drizzle during the first two acts, the weather held up and we were able to watch Fiona Apple singing, playing piano, talking to herself off-mic, and doing that characteristic writhing and random arm-and-leg-flailing thing she is known for. She is always passionate in her delivery, which makes for a great live show. And, on an unrelated note, she is physically very short.
Thumbs down to Jones Beach for not using the two giant white screens during the concert, however. What exactly are they there for, if not for two camermen to shoot the event live?
On Sunday, I attended my first live NASCAR event, the Pennsylvania 500, at Pocono International Raceway in Long Pond, PA. It’s the closest NASCAR Nextel Cup track to New York City and Long Island and the 3-hour drive (the what? the 3-hour drive!) was pretty much painless — just a quick jaunt west on I80.
Cars going speeds upwards of 170 MPH are really loud! And the exhaust and burnt tire rubber clouds are exceptionally smelly. All part of the NASCAR experience, I presume. It was like me and my closest 76,812 (friendly redneck NASCAR fan) friends cheering on our favorite racecar drivers.
This year I started watching NASCAR regularly (all but 3 races so far) and I really enjoyed the drama (and the crashes), so I decided to actually go to an event. The only other car racing I’ve seen live was at a local track on Long Island, which is probably only a 1/4 mile track or something.
I went with my dad and everything about the event was amazing — the thrill of cars going 200 MPH, the crowd booing Tony Stewart (my favorite driver, who finished 7th) after he seemed to intentionally cause a wreck, and the sheer magnitude of the event.
Everything, that is, until we tried to leave. For you see, PA is one of those states with areas so rural that they are not equipped to handle large scale events. Sensing that we would be sitting in traffic for at least 2 hours, we decided to wait that long until the (endless) line of cars started moving. Here’s the thing — there was only one long, curving, one-laned road (Long Pond Road) for tens of thousands of cars to get to Interstate 80! It was ridiculous: thousands of cars, trucks, and RVs on a long line for several hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic. It didn’t help that my dad forgot to get gas and we only had less than a quarter tank left!
So after two hours and traveling a grand total of 4 miles, we got on some sort of multiple merging-laned on-ramp to I80, where we found another massive amount of race fans going about 5 MPH. This time, with an equal amount of 18-wheelers merging into the mess. Another hour later and we finally got moving. It was ridiculous and made me wish I was one of the lucky people leaving from the raceway via helicopter (there were quite a few leaving that way).
All in all, it was a great experience. I’ll go to another NASCAR Nextel Cup event for sure, but next time I’ll be sure to get seats higher up to see the whole racetrack (not just the straight-away and turns 1 and 4) and work out some sort of plan to avoid the 3 hour line of exiting vehicles (if possible).
Live music and car racing — the perfect weekend.
July 25th, 2006 at 7:54 AM
I was at Fiona as well
July 25th, 2006 at 11:50 AM
That’s funny, since Kate thought you might have been going to the concert.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:47 PM
I loved Fiona!