5 minute read
We’ll Do It Live!
Nightly Races & Daily GIFs In America’s Rust Belt
A man with a great big bushy beard and a mohawk descends the stairs into his basement. His image fills the screen as he makes a bit of small talk to cover the moments before the aim of his camera can be reset upon the two-lane racetrack known as The Sky Drop, one of the multiple tracks at Rust Belt Raceway Park just outside Buffalo, New York.
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The man is Josh Paufler, the commissioner/founder of Rust Belt Diecast Racing, and he does this just about every night. What makes Rust Belt Diecast Racing unique is the league’s focus on nightly live-streamed racing.
As of this writing, there are 199 members of Paufler’s Facebook group, the location of every Rust Belt race. What attracted those group members/viewers? Paufler posits that it is “the action and the nostalgia of it all. I think it takes them back to their childhood. Plus, it’s a lot of fun with low stakes.” used to build LEGO towns and drive them around. I also built some course by running orange track down the couch cushions and across the living room floor.”
Now, he has taken out the orange track as an adult and invites others to play along with him, or at least to follow along as he plays. An active group of race fans have taken Paufler up on the invitation.
“My goal was to build a community around diecast racing,” Paufler notes. “The live races give people an opportunity to chat in the comments [on Facebook], and interact with the host.”
Generally, the atmosphere created by Paufler is casual, and he converses directly with the audience, answering their questions in real time. But, sometimes the banter stays between the viewers. It is always friendly, but sometimes a little feisty. As Paufler points out,
The people talking trash with each other have become the very community that Paufler set out to create. They have grouped together into teams.
Often diecast racing teams consist of one person who is the owner of a car or two in a race. At Rust Belt Raceway Park, teams are made up of anywhere from two to ten people. Viewers cheer their teammates on throughout an evening’s racing.
Any given night Madness Motorsports (one of the league’s resident teams) may have as many as ten drivers in that evening’s race. Or, given the luck of the draw, a night at The Sky Drop could potentially be devoid of Madness Motorsports participants.
Driver selection for the nightly races is part of the fun. Drivers are assigned their rides immediately before the races begin. Sixteen cars race each night, and any given day 30-40 drivers could have put their names into the pool to have a chance at that evening’s glory.
Each nightly race is actually the culmination of the Rust Belt community’s daily activity.
“First of all,” says Paufler, “the theme is picked by the previous day’s winner. The host then makes a post in the group after they’ve chosen cars to fit that theme. Members comment with a gif or pic, following the directions in the post, to enter the driver pool. The host pulls the 16 names during the live broadcast and we go racing!”
Recent races have been along such themes as “Road Racers”, “Ford v. Chevy”, and “New Kids on the Block”. Both the night’s cars and the day’s posts had to reflect the themes.
As the league has grown, so has the camaraderie among the participants. Many no proudly wear nicknames given to them by the commish, or their rivals. Drivers primarily go by their Facebook screen names, but they’ll gain appellations such as “Killer Bunny”, “The Kid”, “Golden”, or “Mr. Second Place”.
Mr. Second Place is Jay Bishoff, and he’s in the process of building Rust Belt’s newest track. Soon he’ll join the ranks of the others who host.
In addition to the tracks at Paufler’s home in New York, there are tracks elsewhere in the geographic Rust Belt that occasionally take up the hosting duties for the nightly races.
Mike Rader, Rust Belt’s co-founder, hosts races out of Michigan at the Rocket Dragway; and David and Amanda Jewell host races from their Ohio home on the track called Shrubbery Lane.
Normally the races take place somewhere between 7 and 8 pm EDT. But the newest addition to Rust Belt’s docket is the Saturday late night races that live-stream from Shrubbery Lane. Dubbed “Midnight Shrub”, these races do take place long after dark. And the aesthetic of the live-stream adjusts accordingly. The lights are dimmed, and an LED light show accompanies the races.
Midnight Shrub at Shrubbery Lane
At the inaugural Midnight Shrub, the Jewells were joined in hosting by their son. Paufler’s kids are also part of the racing action back at Rust Belt Raceway Park, though not part of the nightly live races.
Rust Belt does have a YouTube presence, too. And there you will find pre-produced races of the type of which most fans of diecast racing have grown accustomed. Currently, the league is hosting a Kids Tournament of cars modified by younger racers. Paufler’s daughter provides the voice of the track-side reporter during those broadcasts.
In the first video of the Kids Series, a special segment was done to explain “The Parabola Effect”.
As Paufler explains it, “The Parabola Effect describes the action of a car converting potential to kinetic energy while exiting the curve in the track at the end of the drop.” Paufler’s been using the term for a while now, and often enough that some viewers have based a drinking game off of the term’s use in the nightly races.
Really, it’s all fun and games for Rust Belt Diecast Racing, and that seems to be appropriate for a league that was started by a man who keeps his favorite childhood car next to his track. In case you’re wondering, it’s a baby blue T-Bird convertible.
