Long before I had enrolled in drivers’ training as a teenager, I had gotten my first taste of piloting a motorized land vehicle behind the wheel of a go-kart at Playland Park in the southern Flint, Michigan suburb of Grand Blanc. It was intoxicating. I was in the second grade and had tagged along with my six-years-older brother and his friends to have a fun couple of hours at the video arcade and on the track. It was one recreational activity with my brother where I didn’t feel like he was babysitting me. We played Atari at the house, but that was his gaming system and he guarded that expensive toy very carefully and limited my use of it before he outgrew it and basically gave it to our younger brother and me. That fateful day at Playland, though, I felt like a smaller, younger version of one of his friends. I can hang, I thought to myself.
I still love air hockey, to this day.
Arriving at Playland when its front doors were open was the most thrilling aural combination of the electronic bleeps of the video games inside, voices of other kids having fun, and the blatting motors of the go-karts as they raced around the track behind the complex. Once indoors, the bells of the pinball games, clanking of the token machines, and rock music over the speakers added to the sensory experience, along with the stale smell of the funky, industrial-grade carpet and fresh popcorn wafting through the air. What follows in this account happened over forty years ago, so I’m slightly shaky on some of the specifics, but I can give you the gist of it with what I’ll estimate to be at least eighty percent accuracy. I don’t think we went straight to the go-karts, but it didn’t take long before we got there. They were the main attraction at Playland.
My brother, his friends, and I got our go-kart tickets from the stand. Always one to want to do things correctly, even at that young age (I was born to be an insurance underwriter), I wanted to make sure I had the whole driving process down… accelerator on the right, brake on the left. I had played arcade games before with this set-up, but I was about to do this for real and wanted to make sure I had it. My heart was racing, but somehow with my brother’s enthusiastic endorsement, and since he and his friends were going to be riding as well, my bravery shut down the risk-averse part and let my excitement rule the moment.
Racing a go-kart was going to be the closest thing a seven-year old kid would get to driving a car, which I knew I wouldn’t get to do for years and years. At elementary school age, even the barely-twenty-something student aide in my second grade classroom, Miss Kari, seemed like an old, adult lady, and there were many things that fell into the “not until you’re older” category. Growing up in a General Motors factory town all but guaranteed that I would take more than a passing interest in cars and driving, so it was going to be go-karts or nothing until the 1990s, which seemed like an eternity away in the early ’80s.
I’m sure my mind has protectively blocked some of the rest of what happened out of my memory because it was that traumatic, but there are parts I remember with crystalline clarity. The low driving position inside the go-kart and the proximity to the pavement below gave a visceral thrill. The cars at Playland also had a three-point safety harness system and buckling yourself in made you think that danger was possible behind each curve of the track. There was the smell of exhaust and rumble of the two-cycle engine, as it shook and sputtered behind the seat. It felt just like Atari’s “Pole Position”, but in real-time, as the attendant ran down the rules in front of all the cars and drivers, stepped out of the way, and then dropped the checkered flag…
Just like that, I was off, along with every other driver in the queue. I honestly didn’t know what to expect in terms of how seriously my brother, his friends, and everyone else on the track were going to take the competition aspect of winning the race. Knowing myself, I probably didn’t care at all about “winning” (still true today), but was just happy to be driving and part of this experience. However, I also don’t like to lose or be last, either, and was used to being teased – sometimes good-naturedly, sometimes not. Before too long, my brother and his friends had zoomed far into the distance on the track, and I was lagging far behind everybody. Starting to feel more confidence with my newfound familiarity with the placement of the gas and brake pedals, I started to floor it, laughing with the fun and sense of power that doing so gave me.
Needless to say, the motor skills of a seven-year-old are underdeveloped compared to those of a young teenager, but no one had told me that. I just knew I wanted to keep up with the crew I had arrived with. Nearing a particularly tricky corner, I failed to decelerate, steer, and properly navigate the curve, and I plowed sloppily into the row of tires lining the side of the track. I immediately felt terrified, embarrassed, and defeated. The next thing I remember with certainty is seeing my brother and one or two of his friends running toward me, on the track, with urgency and concerned expressions. The attendant yelled at them, “HEY… Where are you guys going?!” “We’re going to help our brother!” “You guys get back off the track, and I’ll handle this.”
That attendant surely looked old to me at the time, but in retrospect, he was younger than some of the interns or young professionals I currently work with. He had bushy, reddish hair and glasses. Sensing I was going to be in big trouble, I lied and told him my go-kart’s steering gear had gone out. As he helped me out of the harness, he said, “Don’t ever, EVER come back here again!” That was in 1982. I didn’t go back to Playland until at least 1990. I lived for years in irrational fear of running into that guy. I avoided activities with my friends that involved going to Playland, all the way up through the beginning of high school.
Where was my hypothetical therapist to tell me later, say, around the eighth grade, that this dude had very likely gotten another job somewhere else years ago? Where were any adults to tell me that mistakes happen, and that sometimes we just need to be just a bit more careful? And that I wasn’t a bad person? I have long forgiven young Joe for messing up that day, so he and I are good. It’s so important to recognize that making an error, even something as trivial as driving a go-kart too fast for our abilities, shouldn’t keep us from wanting to take chances in the future. I digress.
The Earthshaker, as photographed on August 10, 2011. It was still the same after twenty years.
When I finally started going to Playland again by the early ’90s, it was a wholly different experience. I was among the last of my friends to get a drivers’ license, so I was still a passenger when we’d all arrive at Playland. I still couldn’t drive a car by that point, but I could still drive a go-kart. Suddenly, at age fifteen, all of the pent-up fear and judgement I had felt having cracked up in spectacular fashion when I was just a young kid was gone, as I’d race around the track against my friends, pretending my go-kart was a Camaro, Aspen R/T, or some other car du jour that I had found in the pages of the most recent Auto Trader.
It was at Playland that my love of driving had been born, and where it was reborn almost a decade later. When I had finally gotten my drivers’ license, I would sometimes go to Playland by myself when I couldn’t find a friend or just needed to be somewhere that wasn’t my house. I would never ride the go-karts solo, but would find comfort in playing some old-school video games or my favorite pinball machine, the Earthshaker.
Years later and as a working adult, my trips to Flint would often include ducking back into Playland for a few minutes to buy just one roll of tokens and play until I had used them up. These pictures were all taken on three separate dates between August of 2010 and May of 2012. It’s hard to believe that Curbside Classic is now up to reruns of original content that had first gone live back in 2018, which is now six years ago. That was the year that Playland closed for good, with the land sold to the city of Grand Blanc.
The park has all been leveled for years now. I haven’t found the courage to drive along that particular stretch of South Dort Highway since then, and I’m not sure I’m ready. I hope I will always remember the sights, smells, and sounds of what it felt like to be behind the wheel of a miniature race car at Playland Park, which would be but a small foretaste of what I would experience in 2017 as a spectator at the Indianapolis 500. It was truly a happy place of my formative years, one that would help solidify the joy of being behind the wheel, at any speed.
Good times! I remember going to a sketchy go cart place near Salisbury beach in MA in the early 80s. The rules were no bumping and of course we immediately started bumping. No frills, nothing like the F1 stuff today.
LOL – the rules! They inevitably get broken. I’ve been invited to go “modern” go-karting within the past few years, but I’m not going to lie… I’m a little intimidated by it based on some of the descriptions I’ve heard and read. I’d probably end up loving it. Or crashing again.
Great article Joe.
You highlight one of those features of life that is often taken for granted until it’s gone. “Arcades” and go kart tracks used to be a feature of life but indeed – at least around me in an area of high land values – these sorts of businesses have all faded away. There are now indoor carting venues that are very expensive and billed as “corporate retreats” (certainly not for teenagers, if for no other reason than the carts go a lot faster than back in the day), and few kids would think that going to an arcade would be fun when they could stay in their basements and play games with unseen strangers from across the planet.
Different world than in the 1980s and 90s.
Regarding the corporate indoor carting venues: the issue that I have isn’t so much the sped of the carts; it’s that most of the other drivers adults and are there to be competitive, not to have fun, and are thus incredibly aggressive drivers to everyone else, including kids and teens. Takes all the fun out it for everyone else too. 🙁
Yep, I’m in my early 30s, but grew up with a place like this, just down the street from me in Rehoboth, MA. I went there many times as a kid and early teenager in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. It also had mini-golf. (Unfortunately, the place was closed after Labor Day 2005, and it was “to be sold for condos”…yet 18 years later, it still sits there, abandoned, for some reason, oblivious to today’s real estate market.) It’s sad to drive by. I’ve also, much more recently, been to the indoor F1-style places. While they’re a lot of fun, they are very different experience, as you noted.
Super depressing. It sometimes helps take the edge off when something else has sprouted up in the same place as a former park, but when it’s just sitting there – an empty lot with weeds – it somehow makes it worse. From what I understand, nothing has been put up where Playland used to be.
On Indoor Karting, Corporate Events, and Aggressive Racers: A few years ago a consulting firm I worked for had a corporate meeting/event at Speedway Indoor Karting on Main St. in Speedway, IN. Less than a mile from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. (Link here: https://www.sikindy.com/)
The track has a nice second floor area for dinners or meetings. So we catered in and had our meeting, and then went downstairs to race. The first clue I had that this wasn’t the “cute little go karts” I was used to was they told you to pick out a full face crash helmet. When you go to the site you’ll see the karts are halfway to a “shifter kart” younger racers who are trying to become professional racers race. I don’t recall a speedometer but the site tells me those little demons could get up to 40 MPH on the straight.
And as you’ll notice there’s an elevated straightaway that descends down into a corkscrew. Lots of twisty turns and a chicane.
What could possibly go wrong? Fill the track with younger guys who play iRacing and other racing video games and let them work out their pent up aggression. In my first session it took me a few laps to get the hang of the damned thing and I got jammed on the back bumper and side swiped until I got into a steady rhythm. The second time around I was doing pretty well until someone jammed me head on into a retaining wall by catching my rear quarter and turning me. I wanted to switch to the oval track but nobody else wanted to so I left.
That was our company’s last time there. The next day I found out some of the boys got rambunctious enough that someone who clouted the retaining wall complained of chest pains afterword. His wife took him to the hospital and x-rays showed he had a broken rib.
The most recent company outing with go karts was with a client a year and a half ago. It was outdoors and the karts probably didn’t even go 20 – 25 MPH. No injuries.
What kind of companies are you all working at that take you go-karting as part of a “corporate event”? All I ever got were some boring Christmas parties.
Well, I can tell you that MY company (which I own) has never had a “corporate event” that didn’t primarily involve pizza or fishing…so I don’t personally know about these F1 retreats other than from what I hear.
Nevertheless, I do hear a lot about these things from people with deeper pockets than I. 🙂
Wow – that sounds like a full-on race in miniature. I can’t imagine what the waiver looked like! The thing about the 20 – 25 mph karts is that sitting so low in such a little machine, those speeds actually seem so fast! Old-school go-karts left me wanting for nothing. I need to find the experience again. No cracked ribs for me.
Waiver?!?! Oh you sweet summer child Joseph. 🤣 If there WAS a waiver I never saw it.
Oddly enough on another of our trips to Speedway around the Indianapolis 500 I showed My Lovely 🥰 Mrs. the building and the track via a side door left open and she’s interested in racing there.
Thank you, Jeff. I was completely immersed in writing this once I got started, and once I was done with the first draft, I was even a little surprised by how much that came back to me.
Arcades have sort of come back at places like Dave & Buster’s, but I miss the little one-off shops like Playland. Or even Tilt at so many malls. As for the new-style karting and as I mentioned to Andy above, it seems a bit more intense. Having never tried it though (yet), I won’t knock it.
I’m just glad I took these pictures when I did. I assumed Playland would just sort of always be there.
I would have killed for a chance to go to a place like this when I was a kid, but I don’t remember one in Fort Wayne at the time. You do, however, jog memories of the basic little go-kart my cousins had when I was a kid. That became my first vehicle at age 12 when I bought the frame from them after they had all outgrown it. My father bought an old mower so that we could use the engine, a mere 2.5 horsepower. It was broken down more than it was running during the time I owned it, I believe. But it was incredibly fun when it was running!
So cool that your cousins had a go-kart, even if it was “on blocks” a lot of the time. That was the dream to hactually own one of those, man. I used to dream of a loophole by which I would be able to own and operate a go-kart in my neighborhood before I could actually drive. I sketched many of them, dreaming of being able to have the body built of fiberglass and plopped onto some ready-made chassis. It might have been a pipe dream, but it was one I held close to my heart.
I too bought a motorless go cart at the age of 12, but unlike you, my dad very much did not buy a used lawnmower to harvest the engine and install it. Major bummer! Who is going to help me motorize this thing?
At least our dead end street was sloping, so I’d push it up and coast down, using my imagination as I cut tight S turns.
But that eventually got old.
I remember having a friend or neighbor who built (I think) a go-kart and had it in our backyard (or maybe someone else’s back yard, don’t remember), but we couldn’t really use it there. Other than that, the closest i got to driving a go-kart was one of the Disney World Magic Kingdom attractions that had go-kart-like cars with accelerator & brake pedals and a steering wheel, but there was a raised rail you straddled so you could only steer about two feet in either direction, and couldn’t crash into the walls or cars to either side (if there were any, can’t remember). I did spend lots of behind-the-wheel time in bumper cars though, which were cool because you could crash them if you wanted. Also they had a single-pedal driving experience similar to that in some EVs, where lifting off the pedal slows you down.
I’m not clear on how go-karts are safe in the hands of 7 year olds and what keeps them hurting themselves and damaging the cars, having never really driven one.
I’ve driven those cars with the central rail on the ground before, I think at Busch Gardens. That experience is fine for a kid, but not unlike having a “remote control” car with the cord still attached. Sort of fun, but no complete freedom.
As far as age range, the karts at Playland weren’t what people are describing above for modern facilities. Quick Google search shows that some kids start at age 6, with lessons, anyway. This was Flint, Michigan in the early ’80s. I don’t remember lying about my age in order to ride. I just did too much and crashed.
Sweet .
I find it hard to put all those feelings & memories into words, you aced it .
I don’t recall any two cycle go carts back in the day, I bet these were much more fun to drive .
-Nate
Thanks, Nate. These weren’t powered by any special engines – I just assumed they were two-cycle (lawnmower) engines only because of the way they sounded and the way the exhaust smelled. I’m not the mechanical guru, but the Internet does confirm that many go-karts use (or used) two-cycle engines.
There weren’t any go-kart tracks nearby when I was a kid, and there’s no way my parents would have taken us to one. I hit a few tracks with friends in my early twenties and had a great time. At 60 I still enjoy the karts, and I’m not the only 60-year old in the lineup. When my wife and I go to Niagara Falls for our birthdays every May I hit the kart track (Niagara Speedway) at least twice. My inner ten year old can’t stop smiling.
Yes! Love it. I indulge my inner ten year old from time to time, but haven’t been able to do so on a go-kart track since Playland closed. May is when spring is just warm enough to do outdoor things like ride the rides – a perfect time to do what you described.
Early in my high school years a few of us friends would go for a drive and visit this really cheesey low budget mini amusement park because it was just so bad it was funny. Like an animatronic piano player that would skip similar to a record player and make sudden unintended movements. However they did have one cool amusement and that was a slick go cart track. They would sprinkle what appeared to be a dry paraffin wax all over a the track. I don’t think any of the carts went over 15 mph but you could go around corners sideways like an off-road rally car or do donuts if you liked. The only rule was no crashing into other carts but you could crash into the guardrails and you would just bounce back onto the track like nothing happened. It was probably safer than driving at fast speeds and you had to be a real meatball to get into trouble.
I had totally forgotten about the slick tracks until you mentioned it here. Wow. Something I never got to do but always wanted to! Sometimes, it’s the low-budget or old (“vintage”) amusements parks that have held the most appeal for me.
I also remember the animatronic “Rock-A-Fire Explosion” at local Showbiz Pizza before the Chuck E. Cheese corporate takeover. I would have died laughing at the skipping CD or record, but enjoyed it. Sounds like a great place to film scenes for a movie or TV program.
Dear Old Dad took me to the go-cart track nearby, I’d have been perhaps 5 years old. Started out in a 2-seater cart with D-O-D driving. Eventually graduated to a single-seat cart. All these rental carts had what I later learned were 4-stroke “mini-bike” engines, essentially 5-horse flathead lawn-mower engines turned on their side so the crankshaft was horizontal.
Then a decade later, I had a friend with a real-live racing cart complete with 2-stroke chainsaw engine, heavily modified. He’d do engine work for other racers to support his “habit”. I was told–but never saw–that they’d race sporty-cars on that same track. The concrete was that thick and wide to support real cars. That didn’t last long. The track closed, the land sold-off. I drove by later, the new owners of the property were pasturing horses on the track–the concrete was too strong to easily break-up and remove.
Other local go-cart tracks have come and gone; all of them prohibiting “real” racing carts. The rental carts are governed so low that any corner on the track can be taken WFO. In other words, if you’re not in elementary school, be prepared to be bored silly. I suppose the track owners then wonder why no one comes back a second time.
Cool memory shared of when go-karts started for you. It’s true that so many such places are just memories now. Even when driving between Chicago and Flint, I can think of at least two former go-kart track facilities by the expressway that are no longer operating as such.