The Historic Birthplace of NASCAR

Is now a GAY BAR





(Yahoo! Sports)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – The penthouse where NASCAR was founded in 1947 is now a gay bar.

Back then, Bill France Sr. walked into the four-story, art deco Streamline Hotel and, in a series of meetings, laid out the rules and regulations of what would become the nation’s most popular racing organization.

Friday, two days before the 54th running of France’s baby, the Daytona 500, the lobby of that same hotel, now dusty and worn, was filled with a combination of cheap NASCAR memorabilia and a line of drag queens set to sing and shake to a raucous crowd of almost exclusively male patrons gathered inside the hotel’s racing-themed bar.


In all of American sports, there is no more profound juxtaposition of past and present.

This here was a fine symphony of salt air, longneck Buds, an old Ken Schrader cardboard stand-up awkwardly holding a package of Little Debbie snack cakes, cheap wigs, Kasey Kahne posters, Lady Gaga lyrics, “Do you have a husband?” pickup lines and, right there on the wall near the front desk, a historic, hopeful black-and-white photo of France and other racing enthusiasts banking on a future no one could predict.


http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=dw-wetzel-streamline-hotel-daytona-500-022512