By Zara Rubin
While the city slept, hundreds of amped-up cars pulled onto an empty block in Washington Heights. Their revving engines filled the night with the stench of gasoline, as drivers huddled to set the course. One spotted the red and blue glare of police lights and the drivers scrambled to their cars, regrouping a few miles away to continue the race.
That was the life of Rafael Estevez – a Dominican-born daredevil from Washington Heights who made his money through illegal auto races, flooring Honda Civics at speeds nearing 200 miles an hour while evading cop cars.
But today, walking along the tree-lined block of Amsterdam Avenue between 190th and 191st Streets, Estevez says he never imagined becoming the inspiration for the explosive, globe-spanning “Fast and Furious” franchise, which has grossed over $1 billion in the last 15 years. The late Paul Walker starred with Vin Diesel, whose character was based on Estevez.
Estevez – a balding and slightly round, but still intensely handsome 48-year-old – has retired from street racing and now runs an auto shop in Queens, while living with his wife and children in New Jersey.
It’s hard to imagine that in the 1980s and 1990s, he was a real-life speed demon. Washington Heights was his domain and he was a pedal-stomping king, earning street respect and defeating any racer who dared to challenge him.
Today, illegal street racing remains a dangerous pastime in Washington Heights. In the past five years, locals have lodged 33 complaints about draggers blasting down a six-block stretch of Amsterdam Avenue between Fort George Avenue and West 188th Street, making it the city’s most talked about racing strip.
According to the city’s 311 hotline records, drag racing is on the rise even as Mayor Bill de Blasio seeks to reduce speeding and pedestrian fatalities under his “Vision Zero” plan.
“The mayor’s Vision Zero effort is ensuring safe streets for drivers and pedestrians alike. It is a top priority,” Karen Hinton, de Blasio’s spokeswoman, said via email.
Nevertheless, complaints have risen 31 percent so far this year compared with the first nine months of 2014.
On the Amsterdam Avenue raceway, the most recent 311 complaint was made July 25 at 4:11 a.m., concerning the corner of West 190th Street. Hotline operators notified police, who arrived 2.5 hours later, when the racers were long gone, 311 records indicate.
Ebenezer Smith, district manager of Community Board 12, which covers Washington Heights, put reckless speeding on the board’s agenda five years ago but insists street racing is no longer a “problem” in the area.
“One isolated incident doesn’t make this problem,” he said, though he admits dragging was once a serious issue in the Heights neighborhood. “When I started eight years ago, there were a lot of complaints.”
The city then added angled parking on Amsterdam Avenue to make the roadway narrower.
Estevez agrees that illegal dragging has diminished in recent years and says this is because of more stringent laws.
“Back in the ’80s and ’90s, all you’d get was a ticket. You’d get a summons, because it’s a driving violation,” he said. “Now, it’s more complicated. If the car is registered under your name, it can get taken away, it can get crushed. You can even go to jail.”
Estevez was once considered a god among young speed junkies, said drag racer Dina Paris. She explained that a tightly knit crew of Asian-American youngsters in Southern California started the urban drag-racing frenzy in the early ’90s; it hit the East Coast shortly after. Hundreds of teenagers — Puerto Rican, Dominican, Chinese, Filipino, Jamaican and Italian — now line New York hot spots such as Francis Lewis Boulevard in Queens and the Fountain Avenue strip in Brooklyn to watch the action.
Paris, like Estevez, sees racing as a sport and emphasizes the distinction between illegal street racing and drag racing. According to Estevez if a track were created in the city, the numbers of illegal street races would decrease.
“Politicians only care about the numbers anyway,” he said, laughing.
“There are benefits to legal racing, too. When you’re street racing, it’s a hassle. Cops will come and move you sometimes 10, 15 times. But the racers – they’ll keep moving all night, doesn’t matter how many times. They won’t stop until the race is done.”
Jose Rivera, 36, a Washington Heights shop owner, said Amsterdam Avenue remains a popular racing strip. “You hear about them coming here but because it’s at night, and in a kind of parking area, we don’t hear much,” he said.
But Jeremy Wallenberg, 22, a student at Yeshiva University, has never even heard of racing in the Heights neighborhood. “My classes are all on this street. But I’m here during the day so maybe that’s why I haven’t heard about it,” he said.
According to Estevez, the number of complaints registered are taken out of context.
“Nowadays, what they do the most is drag racing – quarter mile stuff,“ he said. ”In the ’80s and ’90s, when we were here, we used to run a whole mile on the Henry Hudson and that’s where you get all the complaints from.“
City records indicate that police issued only two traffic summonses in response to 311 racing complaints, arrived after the racers left the scene in 358 incidents, and found no evidence of rule breaking in 364 incidents over a period of five years.
But Estevez acknowledges that things can, and do, go wrong during races. “Accidents, police chases, people get caught. … But that’s why we do it: out of fun and excitement,” he said. While Estevez is thankful that he was never arrested or badly injured, he says he has “seen a lot of bad accidents” in his day.
He is, nevertheless, a firm believer in street racing and says it will always be around. “There will always be a new generation of kids with nothing to lose.”
(Featured image from Google Maps. Other photos courtesy of Rafael Estevez.)
