By Cara Jepsen
Stratman, who drives a Ford pickup and teaches film and video at the School of the Art Institute, eventually decided to focus on a group of African-American racers who drive older, eight-cylinder American cars. She first encountered some of them outside her west-side apartment, near the corner of Fulton and Damen. Soon she learned the owner of a body shop next door, Tim Mullins, was a former racer, and she decided to scrap her original idea in favor of making a video documentary. The result, The BLVD, mixes Mullins’s recollections and interviews with other drivers and spectators. There’s also footage of races.
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Stratman doesn’t discount the danger posed to both drivers and spectators, as well as to those who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Recently a south-side woman driving home late on a Friday night was killed by a teenager racing along 64th at Pulaski. A broken leg is the worst Stratman has ever witnessed. In a scene from The BLVD, a driver plows into a row of spectators and parked cars. “He wasn’t really experienced,” she says, “and had never driven with nitrous.” Nitrous oxide is used by some racers to give their cars an extra boost. “A few people got hurt, and it smashed up a few cars.” The sequence ends with an SUV towing away the wreckage.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/Robert Drea.
