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"Six lanes of rush-hour traffic, a good coffee shop, the touristy part of Rodeo Drive, too many luxury hotels to count\u2014these are the fancy, almost wholly useless trappings of the good life that you&amp;#039;re better off avoiding in Los Angeles. What you may not know is that they stand upon the bones of the most vicious racetrack the West Coast has ever seen.  You can get a good look at the glory that was Beverly Hills in this 1921 silent film promoting the success of Indian rider and AMA Hall of Famer &amp;quot;Shrimp&amp;quot; Burns at the 1.25-mile Beverly Hills Speedway. The speed attained around the banked board track should send shivers down the spine of any thinking man. 100-something mph for 50 miles? Unbelievable. Going down at that speed can kill you on today&amp;#039;s modern racetracks, even with all their safety features. Picture the danger that these old-school riders faced on miles of rough wood planking lined with guardrails that offered little in terms of rider protection. That&amp;#039;s what it was like in the &amp;#039;20s. F1 in the &amp;#039;70s had nothing on board track racing for danger.       Shrimp Burns\u2014everything was cooler in the &amp;#039;20s, even nicknames. Burns was admired at the time for riding his Indian into the wooden banking with his tongue hanging out. He could have been concentrating, or just panting for more. He was killed that summer in Toledo when a crash sent him into the railing. Board track racing in Beverly Hills didn&amp;#039;t last much longer. The track was torn down and moved to Culver City in 1924. Even the sport itself had a spectacularly short life. There were two dozen American board tracks in 1928, and by 1931, all but four were gone.   Racing today can be just as heroic as it was in the 1920s, but modern riders will never &amp;quot;escape from the hospital, swathed in bandages and full of splinters.&amp;quot; If you need me I&amp;#039;ll be in Beverly Hills, having a latte and feeling like I&amp;#039;ve missed out. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/videos/a8205/balls-to-the-wall-in-beverly-hills-circa-1921/>