And the Ghost May be Heard...

[rain_gryphon]

Sunday, at the Speedway. NASCAR is dying. It was eerie, and evocative, seeing all the Speedway's equipment deployed (track dryers, track cleaners, every kind of safety device imaginable - the Speedway has more revenue and deployable equipment than many Third World countries), all the cars turning out, the announcer doing his best to talk things up, but... just empty stands. Being of a rather maudlin disposition, I couldn't help but think of the final Australian Grand Prix from "On the Beach".

I kind of suspected it would be like this. When you watch on TV anymore, they never show grandstand shots. NASCAR laid off about half of their employees already. They're caught in a trap. They made the decision back in the 80s to become a TV sport. To make the sport exciting for an audience who have never been, and will probably never go, to an actual race track, they needed to keep the outcome in doubt until after the last commercial break. That led to silly game-show style rules to make sure that lap advantages built by skill and strategy over the course of a long race are stripped away by repeated restarts so that the race is decided on the final lap. Now they're caught in the trap of being dependent on the TV revenue stream that's killing their sport. The reckoning took a generation, but now it's here.

To their credit, they're trying to slowly dig out from under this, and return to sane rules. It may be too late, and they may be trying to fix things too slowly. Sunday was a great race, but... Nobody came to watch. NASCAR has spent much of the summer trying to play up nostalgia, and build a sense that today is built on the past, which it is, but not in a good way. When you're trying to make people appreciate what they have, it's not good tactics to remind them of how much they've lost. Sunday before the race, they kept showing past races on the Jumbotron. You couldn't help but notice the packed stands in the old videos.

For the past 20 years, at least, the Speedway has provided a shuttle service from the airport to the track and back for all of their races. This Sunday they didn't offer it. Mom and I drove to the track, past vast empty parking fields that were packed full in the old days. We parked about a half mile from the north end, starting to become nervous as to whether there would be closer parking. We needn't have worried. We could literally have parked across the street from Gate 6 (just north of the start/finish line). Mom's hip is still not fixed, so we brought along the wheel chair, and I pushed her, which I found oddly enjoyable. I meditated on being a Horse in Victorian London while I marched along. I kept a pretty stout pace too - I was passing lots of people who were walking with no load, both in and out. It ended up being probably about a mile and a half altogether each way (we sit at the head of the first turn), and I was blowing and slightly sweaty, but still enjoying myself. I'm in better shape than I've been for years now.

The race was sponsored by Big Machine Vodka, which sounds to me like a most unpromising name for a vodka, or really any liquor, or for that matter anything at all that one intends to eat or drink. Italian Futurists would probably differ. In addition to the "sponsored by" line, in the advertising and announcements the statement "powered by Georgia/Florida State Line*" is always immediately appended. Obviously, in a practical sense, this means that they're the secondary sponsor, but what idea is intended to be conveyed by "powered by" in this context remains a mystery to me, other than that we're meant to perceive them as all dynamic and stuff. A "powered by" sponsor seems to be de riguer for a major sporting event anymore.


* A country music band.

Edit: As you can kinda tell from the picture (cell phone), it's more the older fans who are left. We keep coming not so much for what's left, but for what once was.