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It’s Speed Week in Charlotte NC: the NASCAR crowd is in town for a week of racing at Charlotte Motor Speedway (now technically Lowe's Motor Speedway, but locals still call the track "Charlotte"), culminating with the Coca-Cola 600 on Sunday night. That’s right after the Indianapolis 500, so if you’re a real racing nut, this is your weekend.
NASCAR has some dedicated fans. They drive their Winnebagos from site to site and set up camp right in the infield of tracks like Charlotte Motor Speedway and make a whole week of it. As it turns out, Charlotte Motor Speedway is not actually in Charlotte, but a few miles away in Concord, so the area is flooded with racing tourists, but a lot of them never make it into town.
To lure the crowd into visiting our fair city, Charlotte throws a street festival called Speed Street on the main drag, right in the middle of our downtown area (which, strangely, the locals call “uptown”). My office is just a couple of blocks off the main action, so I visit the festival every year on my lunch hour.
OK, Charlotte is a Southern city, and NASCAR is a very Southern sport, so this festival has a particularly Southern feel to it. To a NYC expatriate like me, it can seem a bit like a redneck fest, but you know, I kind of like Speed Street. There’s a lot to see and do, some professional music acts to listen to, and lots of free stuff. Plenty of sample food (popcorn from the Pop Secret folks, Chex Mix from the Chex people, beans and franks from the Van Camps people, cereal and S’mores from the Kellogg people) and trinkets (caps, T-shirts, key rings, cereal bowls, toy cars), so I usually come away from Speed Street with a shopping bag full of stuff.
It almost makes me feel like an honorary redneck. Quick, maw, fetch me my banjo!
NASCAR has some dedicated fans. They drive their Winnebagos from site to site and set up camp right in the infield of tracks like Charlotte Motor Speedway and make a whole week of it. As it turns out, Charlotte Motor Speedway is not actually in Charlotte, but a few miles away in Concord, so the area is flooded with racing tourists, but a lot of them never make it into town.
To lure the crowd into visiting our fair city, Charlotte throws a street festival called Speed Street on the main drag, right in the middle of our downtown area (which, strangely, the locals call “uptown”). My office is just a couple of blocks off the main action, so I visit the festival every year on my lunch hour.
OK, Charlotte is a Southern city, and NASCAR is a very Southern sport, so this festival has a particularly Southern feel to it. To a NYC expatriate like me, it can seem a bit like a redneck fest, but you know, I kind of like Speed Street. There’s a lot to see and do, some professional music acts to listen to, and lots of free stuff. Plenty of sample food (popcorn from the Pop Secret folks, Chex Mix from the Chex people, beans and franks from the Van Camps people, cereal and S’mores from the Kellogg people) and trinkets (caps, T-shirts, key rings, cereal bowls, toy cars), so I usually come away from Speed Street with a shopping bag full of stuff.
It almost makes me feel like an honorary redneck. Quick, maw, fetch me my banjo!
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