Talk:Racing in the Street

Asbury Park is Springsteen's Home Town?
Didn't Springsteen grow up in Freehold, NJ, NOT Asbury Park, which is miles away? And where in the greater Asbury Park area are any fire roads or fire breaks? I think even in the '50s and '60s the area was mostly suburban/urban, with relatively high-density, small lot housing, so there was no need for fire roads (which are usually found in rural, heavily forested areas?) Gladmax (talk) 10:36, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The comment is from a direct quote from Springsteen himself. Of course, he may have embelished a bit and may have used the New Jersey geography loosely, counting any town any near Asbury Park as being Asbury Park (given his association with that town).  The full quote references two specific streets within Asbury Park, but now I am curious where exactly those streets are located. Rlendog (talk) 14:39, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've been trying to verify this too. And Asbury Park has never really been considered his home town, just his home base during the early parts of his career.  The DYK is on the queue now so we're in a problematic situation....  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:17, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * OK, I believe the source is Bruce's intro to it during the 1978 Agora Theater show that was radio broadcast and heavily bootlegged. I've listened to it, and he says in Asbury Park there's two streets Kingsley and Ocean that form an oval (they're parallel, with Ocean along the boardwalk), and on Friday nights half the gas in the United States is used up there between stoplights.   Then he says that outside of town there's this little fire road, that's where they go racing in the street.  I live in the same county, and I've never quite seen any fire roads in the vicinity, although I wasn't looking for them.  (New project!)  So I guess we can keep this for now, but I've changed the "home town" to "home base".  Wasted Time R (talk) 23:29, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Have been looking at maps and websites, but haven't identified any fire roads yet. However there are wooded areas both northwest and southwest of Asbury Park, and the latter (e.g. Allaire State Park) is near I-195, perhaps 'the interstate' of the lyric.  The Earle naval weapons station is very wooded, but presumably the racers weren't able to get inside its boundaries.  Wasted Time R (talk) 00:14, 16 July 2009 (UTC)


 * You don't race a 396 on fire roads, so this is all moot. There's an entertaining and long thread about street racing at jalopy journal (I think) by several people who used to do it. Basically, it's drag racing on deserted stretches of highway. If the song interests you, it's worth a look for a taste of the reality.
 * btw, the pseudo-psychology of this article is pretty funny. Appalling, but funny. "American men like fast cars to escape from committment ..." (shaking head while giggling) 210.22.142.82 (talk) 12:40, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Inspiration for Cyberpunk
William Gibson mentioned on twitter that this song inspired him on how to protray hackers in his short fiction pieces that ended up in Burning Chrome. He has stated this elsewhere in interviews but he never pinpointed the exact song.


 * https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18393131313537024
 * https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18393569509249025
 * https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18393916621463552
 * https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18394179671433216
 * https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/18395038484537344

TedTschopp (talk) 20:27, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Dead external links to Allmusic website – January 2011
Since Allmusic have changed the syntax of their URLs, 1 link(s) used in the article do not work anymore and can't be migrated automatically. Please use the search option on http://www.allmusic.com to find the new location of the linked Allmusic article(s) and fix the link(s) accordingly, prefereably by using the Allmusic template. If a new location cannot be found, the link(s) should be removed. This applies to the following external links: --CactusBot (talk) 18:17, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=17:1253149

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Racing in the Street. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20090808203644/http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg to http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=17:1253149

When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true to let others know.

Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 15:39, 24 January 2016 (UTC)