Chicago’s Illegal Street Racing Community

Since the first American automobile race, Chicago has been the home to countless car enthusiasts. Some even show off their muscle and take to the streets. Sporting American classics, supercars, and even junkers, racers are drawn to Chicago’s famous Lower Wacker Drive. Often consider to be the epicenter of American underground car racing, Lower Wacker Drive provides a temporary haven for street racers. That is, until the police arrive.

Our Experience

To film “Off the Cuff” Season 1, we road-tripped around the US for 34 days, stopping and filming at each episode location. Our final and most anticipated stop, was Chicago. We arranged to meet up with Michael Grzesiuk, who filmed an excellent “Lower Wacker Drive” documentary on Youtube, which we had seen before. Luckily, he hooked us up with his friends, who we caravanned with to many of the hotspots around the city.

What are street racing meetups like?

Most of the meetup locations were hectic and tense, with drifting, drag racing, and huge congregations of people watching. Immediately after getting established in each hotspot, it seemed only a matter of time before the police would intervene.

After scrambling to a location, cars would quickly part to each side of the street as racers would send full speed down the street. That is, until the police showed up. Then, it was utter chaos. Or, in their words, “every man for themselves.”

In one instance, the police decided to take on the weakest link of the people scrambling away from the scene. Which, unfortunately, was us. After having a tense conversation with the officers, it was clear that they were frustrated and wanted to get out of there just as badly as we did.

So, we got off scot free.

And while the temptation to call it a night was strong, we continued on.

We headed just South of the city to get some arial footage of Chicago to use for our episode. While flying the drone, we heard squealing tires on the parking ramp next to us. So, we pointed our camera down, and saw a meetup. So, we headed up.

To our luck, we had stumbled upon a Miata crew, with whom we followed around the remainder of the night.

While departing Chicago, we couldn’t help but reminisce about how intimidated we were entering, and how vastly different we felt as we left. The Chicago car scene allowed us to ride with them, putting aside how ridiculous we looked driving in our Ford Flex.

Where is street racing most popular?

Certainly urban areas host the larger street racing meetups. After our video about the Chicago street racing scene went viral, we got a lot of comments about other hot spots in the US. The most active cities mentioned were Dallas, Washington D.C., Houston, San Antonio and central Florida. Nothing seems to match up to Los Angeles, however, in which there is an annual meetup where hundreds, if not thousands of underground street racers meetup and drive to Tijuana throughout the night.

Is street racing dangerous?

Absolutely. The dangers of street racing are present. In fact, we heard stories of tragic repercussions. Michael, who showed us around, share with us a heart breaking story about a crash he was involved in where he lost a friend of his.

We attempted to the Chicago PD to give us their perspective on the matter, but they declined to comment.

Collaboration

This episode is particularly special to us, as the post production effort proved to involve the most collaboration we’ve ever been a part of. We received footage from countless Chicago street racers to use to accurately depict what it is like on the streets. We also worked with some local Chicago musicians, including Blood People and Tegari, which really completes the footage. Our composer, Robert Pirogovsky also worked with other composers, including Brett Moreau, Sukchan Lee, Scott W. Hedrick, and Itay Amram. We ALSO got to work with an awesome EDM artist, Taavesi… who is TEN YEARS OLD! So, when watched, keep a close ear for the awesome music.

Where is Lower Wacker Drive?

Lower Wacker Drive is located in the heart of Chicago, IL along the Chicago river. Source

Where is Lower Lower Wacker Drive?

Lower Lower Wacker Drive is located below Wacker Drive, and Lower Wacker Drive. This underground street also follows along the Chicago river. Source

The first ever American automobile race was held in Chicago.
Many famous car chase movie scenes were filmed on Lower Wacker Drive, which runs underneath downtown Chicago.
During night, Lower Wacker Drive is considered the epicenter of the Chicago car scene.
While the dangers of street racing are present, the community is very active and tightly knit.