the portrait of a small-town stock car racetrack and the tribe of blue-collar drivers that call it home, struggling to hold onto an American racing tradition as the world around them is transformed by globalization and commercialization.
Opened in 1949, Riverhead Raceway, a quarter-mile loop, is one of the oldest stock-car tracks in the country and the last auto track on Long Island.
The track is on the only piece of undeveloped land in the area—it's worth millions—and the only thing keeping the bulldozers at bay is track owners Barbara and Jim Cromarty’s love of the track and its community. They even bought the Amityville Horror house https://people.com/archive/the-amityville-horror-lives-on-in-a-snarl-of-lawsuits-and-suspicions-vol-9-no-6/
Real estate development, noise ordinances, aging owners and other factors have put an end to racing in areas that were once hotbeds of wheel-to-wheel action. This trend is painfully evident on Long Island.
Long Island was once a mecca for motorsports. The "World Famous Islip Speedway", in Islip, N.Y., was the smallest track ever to host the NASCAR Grand National Series, with drivers like Richard Petty and Bobby Allison taking victories there. The island also hosted the Vanderbilt Cup, the first major motorsports event held in the U.S. It even boasted one of the first permanent road racing facilities in the country -- Bridgehampton, which held Trans-Am races won by Mark Donohue and George Follmer.
The Cromartys, who began working at the racetrack as promoters in 1978, have said all along that they had no intention of selling the track to developers, and that they would keep the raceway as long as they could. “We felt strongly about that,” Ms. Cromarty said
Former Riverhead Councilman Ed Densieski drove a race car for 25 years at Riverhead Raceway, where he won two championships and still holds the record for fastest lap in a Late Model car.
Some drivers from racing families block for one another, holding off competitors to enable a team member to cross the finish line first.
The project documenting the saga of Riverhead Raceway began in the fall of 2012, when producer Gregory Kershaw was approached by photographer and filmmaker Michael Dweck. Dweck had been shooting photos at Riverhead and wanted Kershaw to help him “document the culture of blue-collar American racing in previously unseen ways” through film.
https://autoweek.com/article/racing/last-race
https://www.thelastracethefilm.com/
http://riverheadnewsreview.timesreview.com/2016/01/70864/2015-businesspeople-of-the-year-jim-and-barbara-cromarty/
https://www.facebook.com/TheLastRaceFilm/
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/nyregion/12ritual.html
Long island has had a race track since 1665, though that is horse racing of course... and there were 14 horse race tracks in the area
https://www.albanylaw.edu/media/user/glc/racing_gaming/there_used_to_be_a_racetrack_but_where11.pdf
The island was once home to three drag strips: National Speedway in Center Moriches, Islip Speedway and LI Dragway in Westhampton, which was the last operating drag strip, and closed in 2004. https://riverheadlocal.com/2018/01/18/racing-fans-renew-plea-motorsports-calverton-enterprise-park/
Islip Speedway was owned and operated by Larry Mendelsohn, who also holds the distinction of being the inventor of the demolition derby, the first of which was held at Islip Speedway in 1958. These derbies were a regular feature on ABC’s Wide World of Sports in the 60s, live from Islip http://www.longisland70skid.com/islip-speedway/
there have been at least 85 race tracks across New York state http://www.dirttrackdigest.com/DTD/index.php?/topic/16036-defunct-ny-race-tracks/&page=4
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