Squeeze.Benz: NYC’s Masked Street-Racing Renegade

New York City at 3 a.m.: a roar of engines slices through Times Square’s neon hush. A black BMW M4 slides through the intersection, Tires spinning, headlights lighting up oblivious pedestrians. Behind the wheel is a mysterious figure known only as Squeeze or Squeeze.Benz – a masked daredevil who turned NYC’s streets into his personal race track. His raw, guerrilla-style racing videos (drifting a BMW M4 through Times Square, doing doughnuts in Midtown) have clocked millions of views online. With every viral stunt – weaving through traffic at breakneck speed – Squeeze has built a cult following among adrenaline junkies and car aficionados, even as NYPD calls him “one of the most prolific street racers in NYC”.

• Alias: Squeeze, Squeeze.benz – an anonymous persona on YouTube/Instagram. Police and the press identified him as 19-year-old Antonio Ginestri, a Queens native. He always wears a mask and never shows his face on camera.

• Videos: He posts high-speed runs around NYC – dodging cops, leaping medians, and spinning donuts. Best-known clips include drifting a BMW M4 down Times Square and doing doughnuts in the middle of Columbus Circle. (One viral clip shows his convoy skidding around pedestrians in Columbus Circle and Times Square, another has a Lamborghini Urus on the Grand Central Parkway grazing a taxi.)

• Following: His channel has hundreds of thousands of followers and “palm-sweat–inducing” videos on repeat. Wired reports over 735,000 YouTube subscribers enjoying his high-speed “jaunts” through the city; HotNewHipHop notes he even reached “over 1 million followers” across social media.

• Team Swim: Squeeze is part of NYC’s underground racer collective. He rides with the so-called Swim Team, a crew of anonymous street racers (GoPro cameras rolling) who boast of hitting 150+ mph in Manhattan traffic. They claim with a straight face, “We’re not criminals — we have real life jobs… we pay for our cars,” making their illegal street “swimming” into a twisted badge of honor.

• Notoriety & Run-ins: Police call him “Squeeze.benz” and eventually caught up to him. In May 2024 NYPD and Newark PD jointly arrested a 19-year-old accused of eluding cops – whom they identified as Squeeze Benz – calling him “one of the most prolific street racers in NYC”. (Shortly after, he was tied to a string of ATM and luxury-goods thefts, making headlines beyond his racing videos.)

Streets as Racetracks

Squeeze’s brand of racing is equal parts spectacle and street art. He treats Manhattan’s iconic plazas and highways like a clandestine circuit. He drifts his BMW M4 at dawn in Times Square, spins donuts in Columbus Circle, and even flies down the Grand Central Parkway as if it were a runway. Wired notes that these reckless night runs – countless clips of cars skidding around Central Park and the Bowery – have made his channel a shrine to “palm-sweat–inducing” thrills. This isn’t the suburban strip: it’s Times Square under construction, Queens highways, Brooklyn-Queens Expressway ramps (once heralded in the 1960s as “a strip racer’s dream”). In Squeeze’s world, every traffic light is a challenge, every open lane an invitation. He and his friends (again filmed by in-car cameras) push American muscle-car culture to its limits in the city’s concrete canyons.

The Swim Team and Viral Stunts

Squeeze is hardly alone. A new wave of YouTubers – the so-called “swimmers” – are flooding the feeds with illegal drifts and chases. Alongside masked partners like MBox, Wheres981, or N3on, Squeeze helped pioneer a niche of urban racing content. In one popular video, Squeeze “sees a cop and can’t help himself,” launching into donuts around an idle Newark police car – a stunt that was later cited in his criminal case. These crews film everything. Float, another Team Swim driver, tells WIRED: “We’re just driving…we drive like this everywhere, all day…The cameras just started coming into play because we might as well record it.”. Together they feed a lust for raw, unscripted mayhem: weaving between taxis at red lights, dragging through empty city loops, adrenaline laced with the risk of a cruiser in the next mirror.

Their “swimming” style – threading through traffic at breakneck speeds – has become a kind of underground art form. As one old-school racer put it, today’s drivers feel so at ease at 100+ mph that maneuvers ordinary people call impossible become effortless. The thrill is visceral: one confided that riding this wave is “maybe like skydiving, or being in a shootout.” With each viral clip, these drivers paint a vivid picture of underground car culture: a blend of showmanship, tribal loyalty (chopping up payday in rented Lamborghinis), and the youthful defiance of authority.

Clashing with the Law

Of course, Squeeze’s rides haven’t gone unnoticed by authorities. By 2024 New Yorkers were reporting 1,200+ drag racing incidents in a year – ten times the count from 2010 – and police launched special task forces. One media summary flatly reported: “@Squeeze.Benz… has garnered millions of views for antics like drifting through Times Square in a BMW M4” – until the NYPD finally nabbed his car. After weeks of taunting cops on video, he was busted on May 16, 2024; the departments boasted that the city’s “Indy 500” had ended. (NYPD Deputy Commissioner Daughtry crowed that New York won’t let “street racers terroriz[e] our neighborhoods”.)

In the aftermath, Squeeze’s story took a darker turn. Police tied him to a rash of crimes beyond the highway: in August 2024 reporting showed Ginestri behind bars again, this time for $38,000 in stolen luxury handbags and ATM thefts. Whether racers or cops, everybody got burned. New York did achieve a measure of order: many of Squeeze’s videos were quietly taken down (YouTube doesn’t tolerate open calls for illegal danger). And Squeeze himself – once an untouchable legend on the loose – is now largely silent, his future uncertain.

Underground Culture and Kommerce’s Mission

Street racers like Squeeze.Benz occupy a fringe that’s more creative rebellion than textbook crime spree. They are to the pavement what graffiti writers are to brick walls: insurgents who use cityscapes as their canvas. (In fact, long before Squeeze draped Times Square in tire smoke, classic drag races roared down Queens highways – an era nicknamed a “strip racer’s dream”.) Their tools are performance and spectacle. When Squeeze slides a BMW through Midtown or “swims” the freeway, he’s broadcasting his art form to a global audience of fans and copycats.

At Kommerce, we see Squeeze.Benz as exactly the kind of underground talent worth amplifying. He’s unpolished, edgy, and utterly authentic – embodying the same rebellious spirit of street artists, DIY musicians, and graffiti crews around the world. Kommerce’s goal is to build an international community of underground creatives, from spray-can painters to street racers, and help spread their raw, real stories to the world. By shining a light on figures like Squeeze, we celebrate a culture that thrives outside the mainstream: a community where the city’s shadowy corners, adrenaline, and artistry meet.

Sources: Wired, Road & Track, The Drive, Carscoops, HotNewHipHop and others.