During this holiday season Cup racing fans lucky enough to have tickets to Bristol can get a chilling glimpse of the ghost of Cup Racing Future. On the surface it might not look like too big a deal. Track general manager Jeff Byrd noted in a column the track would ask fans who smoke to refrain from doing so in the grandstands. Fans are asked instead to go out onto the concourses if they choose to light up. This in a racing series that was until last year known as "Winston" Cup racing.
Obviously smoking is an extremely polarizing issue right now. RacingOne's own Pete Pistone has stopped just short of demanding all smokers be loaded onto a NASA rocket and sent to find their own planet. Nobody can dispute the dangers of smoking even if evidence of the dangers of second hand smoke aren't scientifically documented just yet. For non-smokers just the smell of second hand smoke can be either a minor annoyance or a serious affront depending on their levels of tolerance. For smokers it must sometimes feel they are being herded into ever-smaller areas where they can indulge as they are treated as pariahs of a lower caste system. To many it seems absolutely ridiculous they be told they can not smoke in the grandstands of an open-air amphitheater. But most outdoor NFL and MLB stadiums already prohibit smoking. There is a difference though. Football and baseball games have regularly scheduled interruptions of play during which a smoker can burn one without missing any of the action. Heck, even at a race track like California a fan could leave the track property, hitchhike to the beach, dig up enough change to buy a pack of Winstons, go store to store until he found a retailer whose first and last names began with Q to make his purchase, smoke the whole pack, and head back to the track without missing any action. But at Bristol with its sub-fifteen second lap times a fan glancing at his watch, much less heading to the concourse for a smoke, could miss an incident that changes the whole nature of the race. The racing is that intense in Thunder Valley.
Enraged fans shouldn't feel that Mr. Byrd doesn't understand their concerns. He was after all gainfully employed for many years by Winston. Byrd counts the late T. Wayne Robertson, the guru of Winston's involvement with NASCAR and a man who did more for than this sport than any three members of the France family combined, as his one time best friend. Byrd is simply reacting to some complaints from less tolerant fans who visit his facility with a polite request for smokers to take into consideration the more delicate sensibilities of some newer fans (particularly the Volvo-wagon driving, tree-hugging, Birkenstock wearing, whale-saving Yuppie scum who FOX markets the sport to…but I digress) when lighting up. In a note he sent me to discuss the issue Byrd says the column he wrote in his latest newsletter on the smoking issue has drawn heavy and passionate response from smokers and non-smokers alike. He says that the mail is running almost exactly 50-50 in favor of and opposed to the prohibition.
Count me among the loud-mouthed opposition to the idea. As noted above even a light smoker who burns two to three cigarettes during a four hour race is going to miss a lot of the action he or she paid good money (and lots of it) to see. For those concerned about their health perhaps a race track, particularly a concrete short track soup bowl like Bristol, isn't someplace they need to hang out. I can say from personal experience the levels of carbon monoxide from all those race cars can rise to a level that in the Bristol grandstands that leaves a soul as woozy as a six pack and a left-handed imported cigarette. The noise level at Bristol, particularly when 43 unmuffled cars line up for a restart is so intense any OSHA official would crap kittens in his bureaucratic drawers if he showed up. The terrain surrounding the Bristol track rivals the Alps and fans who might not exercise regularly if at all risk a serious cardiac event as they lug their coolers over uneven terrain before facing one final climb up aluminum mountains to their seats. Health nuts might want to attend a tennis match in Flushing Meadows instead.
As usual the health-Nazis are quick to play their trump card, children. "I don't want little Buffy and Biff exposed to second hand smoke when I bring them to a race!" Fine. Once you manage to banish adults who choose to smoke to the concourse or outside track property all together I'll place a quiet phone call to the Tennessee Department of Children Protective Services letting them know you as a parent are exposing your offspring to unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide, albeit smoke free, and dangerous sound levels that will doubtlessly damage their delicate little lungs and ears. As such hopefully a state official will arrest you for endangering your children and banish you to the vomitoriums that are the local Bristol police holding cells until a judge can decide if you are a fit parent. And here's a hint. When you bring your four year old who has the attention span of a, well a four year old, to the race track the kid is going to get bored and annoy the Hell out of others in your row running around paying attention to anything but the race. Hire a baby-sitter for Junior, select a designated driver and we'll all have a lot more fun. If I can't tell you not to bring the kids, please don't tell another fan they can't smoke.
Bristol is after all Bristol. It's as close to the wild, wild, west as most of us will ever get. It's an alcohol fueled, sometimes R-rated party thrown for the screaming masses who live on the outskirts of society. It's the perfect track for that guy that accumulated ten moving violations in his first few months as a licensed driver. It's the perfect track for women who perhaps wore a little too much makeup and her jeans too tight in high school and never quite made it home before curfew. It's a place where the four speed heroes and the hot rod angels gather together to celebrate all that is righteously mechanical, loud and out of control, all those things that make racing great. It is not a place for the meek, overly sensitive, or puritanical to visit. Let those quasi-Mennonites find their own celebration far from those who pump a fist in the air and give out a loud "yee-haw" when Montgomery Gentry belts out "You do your thing, I'll do mine."
A friend of mine who fixates over gun laws once explained the "elevator theory to me." Smokers once were allowed to light up in elevators. I think most of us agree that due to the confined space of an elevator and the short time one rides one rules banning smoking in elevators are OK. Then rules were made there was no smoking in a hospital. Again there's lot of sick folks in a hospital, some of them in oxygen tents, so that makes sense. But once smokers agreed to some limits on their behavior things ran amuck to the point that even some beaches now ban smoking. It's the same thing with race fans accepting a "no smoking" rule in the grandstands at the track. It won't be long before the handwringers attack their next favorite target, fans indulging in the consumption of adult beverages in the stands. Make no mistake there are a goodly number of people out there even at race tracks who'd like to see a prohibition on drinking in the stands. And if you give such busybody control freaks an inch they'll take a mile or in this case the half-mile Bristol race track. It won't be long before they insist that the race cars be fitted with mufflers and catalytic converters and speeds be greatly reduced lest little Finster see a driver get a bloody nose in a wreck consigning him to a lifetime of therapy to beat a phobia of driving.
The Fun Police are at our door and while they are too milquetoast to kick it in they've learned well that the vocal whiny minority can impose their will on the unaware in this litigious society. Whether you're a smoker or a non-smoker its time to stand up and refuse to bow to their will. They're using smoking as a way to get their foot through the door. Anyone who has ever dealt with these folks as the owner of a lifted four wheel drive, a hunter, a street rider, a dirt biker, or a snowmobiler can testify the enemy has his wiles and is relentlessly determined to keep you from having a good time. Let em have the whole rest of the damn state of Tennessee, but we're keeping Bristol. To alter a phrase those types are so fond of, it's time to stand up and defend our wild life.
