New York City has always been fascinating to me personally with regard to cars. It’s this place with millions of people and yet it has always had a KILLER car culture. Guys in the different neighborhoods of the city have hot rods, muscle cars, and neat high horsepower stuff.
There has been a massive street racing scene in the city for a half century or more. The Connecting Highway was one of the most hardcore and famous street racing spots in the country with guys bringing full on pro stock cars out to compete in the 1970s. There’s the junkyards of the Iron Triangle out where the NY Mets play baseball, and the examples go on and on and on.
These facts are why I was kind of excited to check out a new Vice documentary series called Street Gods the dives deep into the scene of the automotive enthusiast world in NYC. To say that this one isn’t quite what I thought it would be, at least after the first episode, is an understatement.
Guys in big dollar cars ripping donuts in the street, guys on dirt bikes pulling wheelies and doing low speed stunts, loads of bling, and loads of attitude, this is a pretty decent mix of, “how’s he paying for that?” spiced in with, “wasn’t he on Jersey Shore?” and finally, “why is my face stuck in this cringing position after all these minutes?”
We’re interested to see what happens in the next episode but as for this first one. Wow. Its worth a look but it’s definitely not an all-star cast.
