Thanks to a combination of a non-working online check-in system, kiosks that wouldn’t read passports, understaffed airport counters, and the cruel, unrelenting march of time, I got bumped from the flight I was supposed to take to London last night and instead have to get up in like three hours to get on the one I’m supposed to take. I should get to sleep, but, as always, you deserve a Cold Start. And the coldest start you shall have!
I’d like to make this one short while also providing you with the important information you require, which, today, I think will be to remind you that there are multiple terms for driving your car in very tight, gleefully reckless and often smoky circles, usually where the wheel is at full lock and the rear tires lose grip.
Like this, for example:
A Beetle is maybe a less-expected executor of this maneuver that I suspect most of you call doing donuts, or something donut-related. That’s by far the most common term for this act of hoonery, at least according to this Harvard Dialect Survey from 2003, which pegged “doing donuts” as the term for this for about 80% of America.
There were others, though! It seems the Dakotas and some of the Pacific Northwest use a different dessert-related idiom, cutting cookies, for this same act! Who knew? Sometimes it’s making cookies or doing cookies, but the point is here the round donut is replaced with another round baked treat.
Then there’s what may be my favorite one, the largely-Minnesota-based whippin’ shitties, which is delightful in its cavalierly vulgar vagueness.
And then there’s what may be the most peculiar one, I believe the least common one, and the one less regionally-focused: pull a brodie. Maybe rippin’ or spinnin’ brodies,too.
That term seems to have originated from the tale of a poor sap named Steve Brodie who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge in a failed attempt to commit suicide in 1886. There’s some dispute as to whether or not a Brodie is a full donut or a J-turn or a Rockford turn – which, by the way, looks like this:
…but it does seem to be used at least sometimes to refer to donuts.
Here’s a crude map of the terms used, because this may save your life one day:
Which term do you use? Any brodie pullers out there? I’m very curious.
Oh, also, another car/donut related question is worth posing, too: which is the preferred way to make a donut car? Horizontal or vertical?
Okay. Now I really gotta get to sleep. Britain, here I come!
Growing up generally in the south, usually along the Gulf coast, I’ve only ever heard it referred to as “doing donuts” and very very rarely as “cutting donuts”. I’ve never once heard of brodies, or shitties, or cookies. If someone told me they were “cutting cookies” I would assume that was a euphemism for flatulence.
So, you would assume that cutting a cookie is a northern term for “floating a biscuit.”
Dropping wolf bait!
In the North of England, farts are sometimes known as ‘air biscuits’.
That’s cutting the cheese. As in, “Ewww, who cut the cheese?”
Excellent choice of donutting cars in the image BTW.
As a cartographer, I know a map for just this occasion!
https://www.threads.com/@midwestvseverybody/post/DEsYC9hxocI/media
Also, here’s maps results of that dialect survey Torch mentions http://dialect.redlog.net/staticmaps/q_77.html
While a donut is what they’re generally called, I do have vague, fuzzy, unreliable memories of the very “to rip a shittie” growing up in Central New York. Being a sheltered youth, I don’t know if it was referring to donuts specifically, or to general hoonery. Something in my mind connects it to drifting through someone (else)’s yard.
I was SURE this article was going to be about doughnuts, and not donuts, but alas, I was bitterly disappointed–until the end of the article! Horizontal donut cars rule!
Fig. B looks vaguely like a Rochedale Olympic with its top cut off. Where can I buy the Donut Car?
Decent grocery stores?
https://hotwheels.fandom.com/wiki/Donut_Drifter
As a born and bred Wisconsinite, “Whippin’ Shitties” is the term I’m familiar with, so your map is absolutely correct. I assumed I’d have to contribute the term, but here it is.
I grew up in the area listed for “cutting cookies.” I don’t think I heard anyone refer to it as such until I was in my late twenties. Around that time, I also heard “doing cookies,” probably just from people who mashed together the dessert-related idioms. I’ve also heard “whippin’ donuts” once or twice, but never “doing shitties” or “cutting shitties.”
With the evolution/globalization of language via our ever-online society, I really hope we start to adopt the best terms for things. “Whippin’ shitties” should win out.
“Whippin’ Shitties” is now my new favorite term for this.
I may be biased as it was my default but it is clearly the best term for this.
Cookies definitely covers most of Idaho, growing up in northern Utah we had a fair amount of those weirdos come down and I heard that one a lot from them. It was and still is weird. Donuts is the only acceptable term.
Agreed. Donuts is the only term I heard growing up in N California. But “Whippin’ Shitties” is now what I imagine passengers doing while the driver is doing donuts.
Vertical, like Teemto Pagalies’s podracer.
Can confirm the Minnesota parlance.
In early ‘80s Central MN “doing shitties” was an average attempt. ‘Whipping shitties” was a higher level execution.
“Whipping” does conote a degree of confident ease.
As a resident of Southern Ontario (oddly, you chose white space to denote the Province both me and Hundal haunt), I’ve been doing my best to embrace and spread “Whippin’ shitties” as the term.
However, donuts are the most common term.
We also take advantage of the snow and occasionally do cyclones (donuts on the spot in a 4WD). Oh, and a LOT of drifting. I have more miles sideways in the snow than I do going straight, thanks to having never owned a FWD,
Tangential, but I think the proper usage is “to pull a Rockford.” Jim would never be so formal as a call it a Rockford J-turn or similar. Angel might, but only if he were working some con where he pretends to be a rich guy.
Yeah, this is always and has only been ‘a Rockford’.
In fact, if you were talking out of context and mentioned a J-turn, I would have no idea even how to picture it. OTOH, a Rockford is only a Rockford (unless context is Punch 40, which were only good before they moved manufacturing offshore in the late 90’s)
Growing up in Ohio, a J-turn would be something like a sliding U-turn. That was also referred to as “whipping a shitty”.
It sounds to me like a J-turn or whipping a shitty would be more of a Scandi flick, for as much as I can picture it.
Are you starting at the top right of the capital ‘J’ and headed south, swinging the ass end around the bottom curve?
Top left of the capital J, IIRC. Headed South, then swing the ass around the curve in a left hand turn. The resulting tire marks look like a J, providing you smoke ‘em heading North.
“Britain, here I come!”
I lit the beacon, hopefully news of your arrival will spread entirely across our tiny country by the time you arrive.
Sadly I can’t make it to the FoS this year, due to hating the crowded mess it’s become.
Richard Scarry in Cars & Trucks & Things That Go established the Donut Car as vertical, therefor this is the correct answer.
I was looking for this as it’s the first thing I thought of
I loved that book.
It would make me happy if most of us here also had it as kids.
Nothin’ more fun than whippin’ shitties on a frozen lake. Just watch out you don’t hit old man Gunderson’s ice fishin’ shack.
Wouldn’t be any relation to good ole Margie Gunderson, would’e?
A big frozen lake and a WRX are a lovely combination. A great place to see how big a circle you can make while sideways, doncha know.
Growing up in south Texas it was always doing donuts. Then stationed in the Northwest I heard an old hot rodder calling it pulling brodies, and being a young impressionable sailor with a muscle car adopted the saying to this day.
The horizontal donut car looks like a Miata and we all know the adage; Miata is always the viable response to a car choice question.
MIATVRTACCQ
I may or may not have that tattooed on my lower back.
As a scientist, I must side with the DAATA: Donuts Are Always The Answer, whether the question is car or cuisine related.
Eastern PA, it’s doing donuts or the rarer NJ term: doing burnies. Growing up we always called illegal/inconvenient U-turns whippin a shittie.
Illegal or sudden U-turns in California are referred to as “flipping a bitch,” a term I introduced David to a couple years ago, much to his amusement.
I have heard “whippin shitties” from the upper peninsula of Michigan as well
Came to say the same. The UP is just “Occupied Wisconsin” anyways.
you mean wisconsin is “yet to be occupied upper peninsula”
Is Adrian picking you up at the airport in the Rodius?
More importantly, what do they call doing donuts in England? Cuttin’ biscuits?
We call them donuts.
Although we spell that as doughnuts.
I know, we are the worst.
About to say the same thing: https://www.westminster.gov.uk/news/cctv-used-fine-drivers-performing-doughnuts-less-mile-buckingham-palace
My brain said “it’s donuts, you’ve heard it enough times on Top Gear”.
My heart said “please let it be cuttin’ biscuits”.
Also acceptably amusing to me and (probably) annoying to the Brits:
Slicing Crumpets
Both of those donut cars look like they’re gritting their little piranha teeth.
As I understood it when growing up in MN, “whipping shitties” referred to performing this maneuver in a snowy parking lot or a frozen lake.
Maybe some people used the same term for RWD donuts on dry pavement, but none of us in HS owned anything powerful (or RWD) enough to do so, making it a bit academic.
Fig A, strawberry flavored with sprinkles.
Strawberry frosted with sprinkles. The classic Homer Simpson donut.
Amen
I refer to it as making an A-hole.
Is that a reference to the maneuver or the driver?
I’ll take Fig B – Chocolate Iced Kreme Filled Krispy Kreme please.