Chasing the Dragon: Under the Sodium Arcs with The Inkstone
Byline: Kei Matsuda, StreetHunters Underground Racing / Tokyo–SF Bureau
The Bay hums. Third Street, Dogpatch, after midnight, the sodium arcs bleeding orange halos into the marine haze. The crowd’s half-shadow, half-chrome. Twenty-somethings on hacked Groms and cut RX-7s idle between heats. Hatchbacks sit open, neon bleeding from boosted amps in their trunks, basslines slamming like rival heartbeats, sound wars between jungle heads and SoCal trance kids, each crew pushing another decibel from banks of thousand-farad capacitors. The air tastes of fuel, salt, and incense from somewhere close. No plates. No fear.
But it’s not all for kids. Parked half a block from the light, the sound, and the fray, quiet as a temple bell, sits something older, a relic of a more mechanical time. A 1971 Nissan Skyline GT-R KPGC10, two-door Hakosuka, … this one finished in inky midnight blue. A rebored L28 stroked to 3.1 liters, triple Mikuni 45s Tomei cam, and Fujitsubo twin exhaust exhaling horsepower and hot metal under the bridge. Whoever built it knew patience and precision, rare currencies out here.
People talk about her sometimes, the one they call “High Binder.” Most haven’t seen her, or if they have, they didn’t realize what they were looking at until she was gone. Always a whisper at the edge of the scene. The Hakosuka racer, the ringer who shows up when the money’s real and the stakes are stupid. I’d heard the name, figured her for another ghost story from the Dogpatch pits. Then I saw that car, and I knew exactly what I was seeing. So I took my shot.
What the hell, right?
I think she’s older than she looks, twice as old as anyone here, and something about her makes time behave differently. The air between us hums with the car’s idle, low and patient. When her voice came, it was smooth, precise, English, but carrying the rhythm and weight of Hong Kong, the street markets and rain on metal.
Anna Lukas: “You, Kei yeah? Write for StreetHunters, yeah?”
I blinked. Didn’t expect her to know me. “Hey, yeah, that’s me. You’re High Binder, right?”
I stopped short without meaning to, already drawn in too close.
Anna Lukas: “You can call me Anna.”
Kei Matsuda: “So, Anna, most of the people out here chase the sound or the fame. But your car runs like a secret. What are you really after when you line up under those lights?”
She smiled behind the glasses, sodium glare tracing a soft line across her cheek. “I bought her new in Hong Kong,” she said, running her fingers along the fender as if checking for a pulse. “I don’t race for me,” she said at last. “I race for her. She was born to roads. I just keep her heart strong.”
The engine idled like a monk’s chant, deep and even, each cycle a breath pulled from the earth itself.
Anna Lukas: “You want to hear a story, yeah?”
Before I could answer, she stepped closer. I could see my reflection in her Ray-Bans. Her hand came up, light as static, and she pressed the red button on my digital recorder. The display blinked to life.
Anna Lukas: “Then listen.”
I race for her. — Anna Lukas
She laid a hand on the hood, the way a priest might touch a parishioner in prayer. “Inkstone. 砚台.” Pronounced Yàntái. “Elegant, yes?” The car idled behind her, patient and dangerous, hearing its name, waiting for its moment to pounce.
Kei Matsuda: “You talk about her like she’s alive… and maybe that’s the point. Out here, most of these kids are trying to outrun something, trying to feel alive. When you drop the clutch, what are you chasing, Anna?”
Anna Lukas: “A heartbeat.”
Her smile flickered, like she was watching a memory spool out behind her eyes. She inhaled the night, tasting gas and nitro. “Nothing like the rush. Speed junkie, that’s real, right?”
She stepped away from The Inkstone and, of all things, pulled a straight-stemmed briar pipe from the inner pocket of her flight jacket. She lit it, the flame briefly cutting through the haze, and drew it to life. The smoke smelled earthy, rich like spice on wet stone, the faint ghost of temple incense and the dry sweetness of an old apothecary.
She used the stem as a pointer toward the kids milling under the overpass. “These ones get it.” Nodding a bit, “Some of them do.”
She pointed out a ’68 Nova, idling loud and heavy. “That L79’s tight,” she says. “Wins half the time. Heavy foot, lead foot. He’ll learn.”
Anna watched them for a while, the pipe ember glowing like a tiny brake light in the dark. “They’re all chasing it,” she said, her voice a mix of warmth and something ancient. “That pulse when the RPM’s climb and the whole car feels like it’s sucking you in.” She tapped out the bowl on the side of her boot and glanced toward the fog curling off the bay before re-packing the bowl. “That’s chasing the Dragon. Need to feel your heart pounding again.”
Kei Matsuda: “You say it like a prayer… or a confession.”
She popped the hood for me so I could, “…take a look in her panties.” I hear myself say it before I think it, but she barked a laugh, like she’s heard worse.
I circled The Inkstone, her fine Japanese body drinking the sodium-arc light up into her liquid obsidian. The surface so deep it could swallow your reflection whole. Under the light, you see the obsession in every panel gap, bolts all clocked to twelve. The engine bay’s a shrine of precision. No loose wires, no slack hoses, nothing rattling.
Triple 45 Mikunis polished to a mirror, throats beveled and synced so tight they breathe as one. Stainless headers curl down like wrought-iron vines into the Fujitsubo twin-exit, welds so clean they look fictional. A Tomei cam humming under a brushed valve cover, tuned to a pulse only a Doctor could feel. Tein coilovers, Cusco brace, every line and hose routed like a circuit diagram. Form following function, nothing left to chance.
She had relocated the battery, tucked it into the rear corner, with powder coated aircraft-grade aluminum fittings. Even the vacuum lines cut to identical lengths, each tied off with stainless clamps, every clamp turned the same way. There’s a rhythm to it, a geometry, a purpose. Built not just to run, but to chant.
It wasn’t loud though, not really. Under the bridge, where loud was just as important as fast, Yàntái was precise. A thousand small decisions adding up to something closer to meditation than mechanics. You look at it and know, this isn’t simply a car, it’s a ritual that happens to move.
The roar fades as another heat launches, taillights bleeding red into the fog.
Kei Matsuda: “Chasing the Dragon. People mean a lot of things when they say that. Escape. Hunger. Addiction. What is the period at the end of that sentence for you?”
Anna Lukas: “Prolly a brick wall or a fuckin’ cop.”
She closes the hood with care, the sound more like punctuation than noise. I notice the right-hand drive, still stock, still pure. Most would have converted. She kept it the way it was born.
The interior’s immaculate, with Bride Histrix leather in midnight blue with white contrast stitching, so tight it looked machine-pulled. The seats cradle you like they were measured to your bones. The dash? Super clean, no loose switches, dangling bullshit, no clutter, just the low amber glow of analog gauges and the Alpine 79-09 head unit, simple, elegant, and exacting as a scalpel. “Simpler times, Kei.”
We talked about naturally aspirated versus injected for a while, that endless debate that’s half science, half religion. Down the line, the ‘Lead foot’ Nova won his third heat, the L79 barking through second, and the crowd losing their shit.
And for a minute, with the smell of rubber and race fuel hanging in the air, it feels like we’re all chasing the same thing. Anna looked at me then, smiling, leaned in conspiratorially saying, “I kinda like the big block, you know? Don’t tell anyone.” Her smile was quick and private, but a smile. I told myself it was just the light catching her lips, but I’m not sure I believe it. I hope she’ll forgive me for letting her secret out.
You look at it and know, this isn’t simply a car, it’s a ritual that happens to move.
Then came the echo of buzzes, chirps, beeper tones, the kind of digital panic you only hear when a hundred pagers go off at once. The street rippled with motion, engines coughed awake, tires screamed, taillights sliced through the fog. The Bay swallowed them whole.
She hadn’t moved. Heat shimmered off the asphalt, the air still vibrating from the exodus. “Aren’t you going to leave?”
She just smiled, tamped her pipe. “Naw. They’ll net three or four down on Cesar Chavez, maybe, then get bored. They don’t really care.” She drew once on the pipe, a deep lung filling inhale, the ember flared and she exhaled the words, “They never do.”
Red and blue lights flashed through the Dogpatch fog, painting the street in alternating halos of law and defiance. She looked up toward the dull orange sky and exhaled slow. “But it’s about time. Need to try to get some sleep before the sun comes up.”
Kei Matsuda: “Last question before you disappear, Anna.”
The sirens were distant now, chasing ghosts down Chavez, their Doppler wail rising and falling in the fog. She moved without hurry, tamped the last ember from her pipe, slid it into the leather pouch inside her jacket, and stepped closer. Instinct made me back up until the heat from The Inkstone’s engine met the backs of my legs, the space between us shrinking to breath and metal.
Kei Matsuda: “If Yàntái could talk, what would she say?”
Anna laughed, low and warm, like fuel igniting in a piston. Her shadow slid across the hood as she leaned in, close enough for me to smell smoke, metal, and something faintly sweet, like age and ozone. She reached for the recorder hanging around my neck and twisted it a bit, her thumb hovering over the stop button. For a second I thought she’d kill the tape and take the recording.
Instead she smiled. “Oh, I think she’d ask if you wanted a ride, Kei. You wanna ride?” Then she clicked it off.
She took me, for a ride.
The car moved beneath us like a living thing, muscle and machinery sharing one long breath. San Francisco unspooled in curves and grade, up Potrero, over Bernal, down into the Mission. Fast. Slow. Fast-fast-slow. The city strobing between light and shadow, the sound of the engine folding into heartbeat, into breath, into nothing.
At some point, she laughed.
At some point, I remembered to breathe.
When I played the tape later the last thing it caught was her voice and the click. I can still feel it sometimes… a low mechanical heartbeat in my ribs, an ache Yàntái left inside me. The sound won’t fade, and I keep catching myself listening for it, wondering if she’s out there again, chasing the Dragon through the fog.
