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BY ROB LOUGHRAN
RS DEBATE ’S PROS CONS
NASCAR Sprint Cup Series The Toyota / Save Mart 350 comes to town on Sunday, June 26, at Infineon Raceway. Other events throughout the weekend. 29355 Arnold Drive, Sonoma. 6am. $65–$130. 800.870.7223. www.infineonraceway.com.
Mike Doran
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ASCAR sucks.
I’m not against racing. I run the occasional 10k and half-marathon. I realize competition is a genetic imperative for the human species. But the popularity of NASCAR offends, mystifies and intrigues me. I pick up the newspaper and section after section warns, exhorts and accuses me of being immoral because I’m not “green” enough. So be it. I don’t drive a hybrid, I eat New Zealand lamb and I refuse to throw away perfectly good lightbulbs so I can use those costly-yet-somehowmoney-saving incandescent corkscrews. And I’m certainly not going to buy new appliances until the old ones don’t freaking work anymore. But nearly every item on every page of the newspaper chides that I need to be greener than Kermit the Frog. And then I open the sports page. Emblazoned across the front is the coiffed, manicured and incredibly fresh-looking winner of the week’s NASCAR race.
The sports page features NASCAR pictures and NASCAR race coverage and NASCAR season standings and prognostications and the usual overblown polysyllabic and hyperbolic blather that sports writers love. But there’s no mention of the fact that 30 or so high-performance 10 mpg (if that) NASCAR racecars just burned an ocean of gasoline to go around an oval for four hours. Where are all the greennecks, all the holier-thanthou assholistic prophets of doom when it comes to NASCAR? Why does NASCAR receive absolution for burning up several tons of fuel—in a sanctioned and celebrated manner—to drive precisely, specifically and intentionally back to where they started? Think of the fuel—and tires and belts and oil and lubricants and filters and antifreeze and steel and plastic and the occasional human being—burned through in testing, qualifying and racing. Think of the greenhouse gases that could be eliminated by outlawing these beastly indulgent mechanical hedonists. Each of these races attracts a sea of ) 25
NO RTH BAY BO H E M I AN | JUNE 22-28 , 20 1 1 | BOH EMI A N.COM
Obscene Machines