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NASCAR's traveling circus? When a big race comes knocking, a small town starts rocking

Sporting News, The, August 26, 2005 by Matt Crossman

My introduction to Michigan International Speedway, site of Sunday's Nextel Cup race, came at a strange place: a debate between primary opponents for the state legislature. It was 1994, and I was a green news reporter in a pristine piece of Americana called Lenawee County, only vaguely aware the track was just down the road.

One candidate suggested I might enjoy the track's atmosphere. As evidence, he said he had been volunteering at the parking lot gate and had asked one woman to show him her tickets. She immediately had flashed him.

The candidate had wondered why. After figuring it out, he overenunciated: "No, tiK-K-K-Kets."

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He did not win the election, but he gained the experience of life in a small town when NASCAR rolls in, as it will this weekend for the GFS Marketplace 400 (1:30 p.m. ET, TNT).

40-ton containers (and 12-ounce open ones)

Idyllic Tecumseh will explode with activity Thursday. More than 90 haulers--53 feet long, weighing 40 tons each--will drive through, a parade of brightly colored semis. Think of a Norman Rockwell painting being devoured by a speeding rainbow.

Jack Baker co-owns a gas station in downtown Tecumseh with his brother, Jeff, a season-ticket holder at the track. A former mayor of Tecumseh, Jack Baker has watched the haulers since the track opened in 1969. "You still stop and look--every time," he says.

More than haulers will roll in. The gas station's business jumps 15 to 20 percent during race week. A NASCAR race used to be a one-day event--fans arrived Sunday morning and left Sunday night. No more. "You can be here on Monday morning, and there will be people here who were at Watkins Glen (for the preceding race) on Sunday," Jack Baker says. "That's the biggest change I've seen."

Those visitors better obey the speed limit. Tecumseh cops expect you to obey the law. (The nerve!) There was controversy several years ago when a cop sat at an upstairs window and looked for drivers with open beers. When he saw one, he radioed ahead to another cop, who busted the driver. A public outcry followed, and the Tecumseh City Council voted to stop that practice.

Little big town

Locals may not have liked cops busting race fans, but they don't welcome race fans with open arms, either. It's hard to blame them. U.S. 12, one of the county's main arteries, becomes one-way on race day, virtually stranding some residents and forcing others to take the long way.

No doubt, the place gets overrun, and not all residents feel the mountains of cash left behind are worth the hassle. Consider Brooklyn, Mich., the closest municipality to the track. (Also nearby: the ridiculously named Village of Cement City.) Normally, Brooklyn's population is 1,176. On Nextel Cup race days, the population soars past 160,000, making it Michigan's third-largest city.

All out of room ...

The track sits partially in Jackson County but mostly in Lenawee County. Forget getting a hotel room in Lenawee, as the locals call it. The area has about 350 rooms, and NASCAR teams and officials alone need several times that many, even with two or more sleeping in a room.

"If it weren't for NASCAR and MIS being in our county, we wouldn't have 350 hotel rooms," says Marilyn Schebil, director of the Lenawee County Conference and Visitors Bureau. Schebil says at least two of the county's hotels never would have been built if the track weren't there.

Brenda Miller manages three hotels in Adrian, by far the biggest municipality in Lenawee County. She sells all 209 rooms every race weekend, just to teams. Teams have contracts for the rooms and are more--how to put this--decorous than fans.

Hotels provide only a small fraction of the accommodations. MIS estimates 20,000 to 30,000 people camp on track property, with another 10,000 to 20,000 camping within 10 miles of the track.

... but how 'bout that boom

All those people have to eat and shop somewhere. Antique stores and party stores and everything in between hang "Welcome, Race Fans!" signs.

A study commissioned in 1999 by MIS found the race season dumped $380 million into the local economy. That figure is much higher now that NASCAR has crawled six years further out of the South. No doubt, when NASCAR comes calling, cash registers start ringing.

To get a table at a restaurant in Lenawee ... well, forget it. Ain't happening. There are few restaurants, and those are packed to bursting all race weekend.

But if you somehow find a seat, keep your eyes open. I saw Sterling Marlin saunter in once with two female friends; he's a frequent guest at a bar in Adrian. Another time, a bar patron, who had driven his motorcycle from Florida to Michigan, got into an argument with the bartender. Mark Martin had recently run out of gas in a race, a mistake which brought out empathy in Motorcycle Boy but which Bartender Boy considered laughable. It was the only time in my life I've heard anybody say, "You want to take it outside?" Someone should have told them--and the lady in the parking lot--"keep your shirt on."

NASCAR's traveling circus? When a big race comes knocking, a small town starts rocking

Sporting News, The, August 26, 2005 by Matt Crossman

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