Gone are the October nights of the Race Rock Cruises on International Boulevard that signaled to the Disney dreamers and the NASCAR-smitten that the drag-racing crowd was in town.

 

Those gatherings of racers and collectors of spit-shined show rods -- preludes to Orlando Speed World Dragway promoter Carl Weisinger's annual doorslammer extravaganzas  -- were the epitome of sexy style, of automotive nirvana.  Overflow crowds snaked through the maze of displays, and as the sun went down the sense of anticipation rose. People ran for spots along the boulevard, like they were lining up for the Tournament of Roses Parade. Some crawled into comfortable vantage points in the inviting trees that line the median. And the cars left the Race Rock Café in single file but not necessarily in an orderly fashion.

 

Everyone wanted to witness the beer burnouts that raised clouds of smoke -- and the blood pressures of the Orange County Sheriff's deputies trying to prevent the crowd from spilling into the thoroughfare. Under the gauzy harvest moon, it was pure paradise for gearheads. When the Race Rock Café closed its doors in 2007, the action shifted to a Hooters restaurant near the racetrack, and Weisinger has his hands too full to participate.

 

But Weisinger, who crafted and orchestrates the World Street Nationals -- uh, pardon us . . . the Real World Street Nationals -- has built this event, shaped it, for 17 years. And all the hype is a testament to Weisinger's wizardry. How, for example, back in the Race Rock days,  did he get the local police to be so accommodating to supervise this audacious display? After all, it isn't natural for Americans to run into the streets to celebrate much of anything in the news. So this was definitely a spectacle.   
 
"I never asked 'em," he said, as though the thought were a truly novel idea. "It's always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission."
 
In the fall of 2004, three hurricanes raked across his facility in six weeks, and a foolhardy local TV camera crew clocked winds at more than 100 miles an hour huffing and puffing against his three-story cinder-block tower. Aside from an adios to sponsor signs atop his scoreboards, a few leveled fences, and a giant pile of splinters that used to be trees, Weisinger and his Orlando Speed World Dragway did more than survive.
 
They tidied up and got ready for company, folks who brought along their Willys coupes, their '54 Studebakers, their '72 Hurst Olds, their '67 Camaros and Novas and Mustangs, their '71 Hemi Barracudas, their Biscaynes, Bel-Airs, Chevy IIs, Chevelles, Cobras, Fairlanes, Firebirds, Grand Ams, Trans Ams, Malibus, Mark 7s, Mercurys, Monte Carlos, S-10s, Vegas, 'Vettes, Vipers, and Z-28s. And they put on The Show, the Southeast mecca for street-legal outlaw racing.

 

Weisinger, it seems, is almost untouchable by statute and by storm.

 

However, brutal economic winds have blown hard against all American business owners this year, and not surprisingly, against operators of small local racetracks.

 

Before the worst of the financial downturn started to swirl, Weisinger was able to install new concrete guard walls, along with about 5,000 new grandstand seats. He has a completely new speaker system, upgraded timing equipment and scoreboards and upgraded restrooms among his sweeping renovations.
 
But he explained his modest racetrack by saying, "It's kind of like you didn't know a guy was a drunk until you saw him sober. Well, if you never saw this place before today, you have no idea what it was like."  He remembers inheriting in 1987 a place where the restroom roofs were such that "you could look at the stars while you went."

 

So Weisinger is a small-track operator . . . with a big reputation, big expectations to satisfy, and big chutzpah to attract the traditionally large car counts by offering incentives to the racers.

 

"Our $1,500,000, two-year track and equipment update is finished and this year we want to say thank you to the racers in a way that has some substance to it," Weisinger's advertisement said. "We'll waive the $150 car and driver entry fee for this years 2009 World Street Nationals if you raced at the 2007 or 2008 World Street Nationals."

 

Referring to last year's rain-delayed finals and the 2007 washed-out event (the only two times the World Street Nationals was derailed in a major way by rain), Weisinger himself said, "We wanted to thank all the people who stuck with us through all the crap."

 

And if the dollar savings weren't enough, his latest ad features three classy chassis (two blondes and a brunette), who invite racers, "See you in tech, boys." (By 9 p.m. Thursday, he had 95 cars with dozens more to register in the four classes: Super Pro Street, Outlaw 10.5, Heavy Street, and Drag Radial. That's a respectable number in an unrespectable economy.)

 

Weisinger knows he has to do everything he can to maximize his gate. He recognizes that what once was an automatic pilgrimage to Orlando -- an open event for street-legal cars that has grown popular enough simply to go by the name "Orlando" -- is no longer a given for outlaw racers.

 

And unlike mega-machine Disney World on the opposite corner of town, Weisinger can't rely on fantasy-weaving, inherent pop-culture hype, and pixie dust to keep the public mindlessly marching through the turnstiles. He said of Disney, "They make more at one hot dog stand by accident in one day than we make all year." It's a bit of an exaggeration, but the analogy is spot-on.

 

Still, Weisinger uses the same superlatives as the marketers for "The Happiest Place on Earth." He has called the Orlando World Street Nationals "absolutely, positively the most outrageous doorslammer shootout in the known universe!" A later version was billed as "the most talked-about drag race in the world."

 

Drag racing is the ultimate escape, and that might provide Weisinger with the crowd he needs to turn a profit in a pitiless economic climate.

 

"There are places that people can sit, but they don't want to sit. They'd rather stand down there at the fence," Weisinger said. "And some of them are waving dollar bills for some reason. I don't know what it could be," he said with mock surprise. "Maybe investment counseling down there. But they're six deep at the fences. They want to be close to the cars. Wagering? Really, that's news to me."

 

One spectator is an imposing man named Ralph, a tall, muscular man with a row of gold-capped upper teeth, a Bud in one hand, and a wad of C-notes in his other. Dangling from the heavy gold chain around his neck was a cobra pendant, and three fingers of his left and two of his right were adorned with massive gold rings.
 
He moved fluidly among the crowd that had gathered near the fence at the starting line. "It's just like football," Ralph said of his decidedly Southeastern practice that's as common as tailgating. "We're just havin' some fun. Got to take a chance." The lone woman in on the game had a funnel-shaped bun plastered to her head and a fistful of twenties. "Whatcha got?" "Inside lane!" "I got the blue car!" "Shiiiiii -- I don' want' no blue car. I take the white one." "You break a hunnert?" The banter flies back and forth. One sturdy, straight-from-Stark dude with a goatee looked as if he could've been from either side of the bars at the state prison there. But he was discriminating in who he'd take on, and he waved off several offers for the outside lane. Even if a driver makes a solo pass, the Big Boy makes a deal, "What'll he do? Beat a 6.7? . . . Yessir -- Woooo-hoo! Gimme my twenty!" He got twenty dollars, though it might easily have been twenty years if he had been busted.

 

It's an eclectic following here at Orlando Speed World Dragway, with drivers from as far away as St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

 

Come hardship or high winds, Carl Weisinger still knows how to pack in the fans. And the 2009 financial climate appears just to be a speed bump in his road.