ãCopyright
by Denise Michelle Sandoval 2003
All Rights Reserved
|
Bajito y Suavecito: The Lowriding Tradition
by Denise Sandoval
Bajito y
Suavecito. Low and Slow. It is a phrase that captures the
distinctiveness of this American cultural practice. Lowriding has a style and
art which is distinctly its own. It is
more than just customized cars; it is also a way of life for many. Family, honor and respect, those are more
than just words, they are the unwritten social codes of the lowrider car
clubs. They are also the building
blocks of the history and spirit of the lowriding tradition, which has
crossed regional, national and international boundaries. In many ways, lowriding in Mexican American
communities is a living history of the Mexican American experience in the United
States
since its dates back to the early 1940s when Pachucos cruised the
boulevard. Therefore, Mexican Americans
through the years have been associated with popularizing low riding, mainly
due to the national and international popularity of LowRider Magazine and
other popular media outlets, such as television and movies. Yet, lowriding
has also impacted other cultural groups as well such as African Americans,
Asian Americans and Anglo-Americans.
Each of these groups has marked out a space within the lowriding scene
and they have also added to its vitality.
What has evolved over the years is a multicultural practice that
involves crossing cultural borders through a shared passion—lowriders. So where did lowriding begin you ask? That is the million-dollar question. Anyone you ask has a different story to
tell. So, maybe the real question here
is just what is lowriding all about?
The journey into the history of lowriding reveals not only a passion
for cars, but also documents a part of the Mexican American experience that
is often misunderstood. The cars are
the canvases on which the car owners create their dreams, express their
identity, and continue a tradition that began long ago.
History of Low Riding
Low
Riding as a cultural form is part of an American mode of expression through
both its materialist ideology and its classifications of aesthetics. Low Riders emerged out of the Southwest
during post World War II America.
. Low riders have historically been part of the barrio youth culture, from
the early 1940' with pachucos in their zoot suits and nice "rides” to
the beginnings of car clubs in the 1950s to the Chicano Movement of the late
1960s. Car culture within Chicano communities has been the result of the
changes occurring at the social and economic level.
Car industry and aerospace
industries boomed in many urban areas after WWII, especially in cities like Los
Angeles and Detroit.
After WWII, many cities underwent a phase of tremendous expansion and growth
and there was a need for labor in both high skilled and low skilled sectors.
After the war, many people now had money in their pockets to spend on either
new cars or used cars. It was then these used cars that became available to
be purchased by youth, veterans and ethnic minorities since the cost of the
cars was affordable. Additionally,
many returning servicemen had acquired mechanical and technical skills during
WWII, which could be put to good use in a sport like car customizing and car
restoration. The basic ingredients for
car culture were in place—young men with cars who could use their skills to build
the coolest rides on the boulevard.
Also of
importance is the fact that many Mexican Americans soldiers during this time
returned from fighting a war for democracy and freedom to find that little
had changed‑‑‑Mexican Americans were still treated as
second class citizens in America. It has been estimated
that between 375,000 and 500,000 Mexican Americans served in the armed
forces. A little known fact is that in World War II Mexican American soldiers
earned more medals than any other ethnic or racial group (Acuna, 2000). The
population of a city like Los Angeles boomed during the war since there was a
need for labor and we are able to see the beginnings of segregated
communities such as African Americans in South Central and Mexican Americans
in East side of Los Angeles. For example, California Mexican population
between 1940 and 1960 tripled from 416,140 to 1,426,538. Los Angeles experienced a rapid
growth, so that by 1960, the Mexican American population numbered over
600,000 (See Acuna).
Therefore,
the development of Mexican American communities meant the beginning of
cultural practices that were a blending of both Mexican and American
traditions. Mexican American youth especially sought to express these dual
identities (American or Mexican) and the idea of not fully belonging in either
one became self evident in the practice of low riding. For example, the low
riders were an affront to the car culture of hot rods and car customs as well
within their own communities of Mexican immigrants who did not understand the
younger generation of Mexican Americans. Lowriders created their own cultural
niche within the American social and cultural fabric. Low rider culture then is historically very
much a part of the Mexican American social history and according to Michael
Stone (1990):
Low riding is
considered as a public enactment of a re-negotiated sense of Mexican American
identity, an identity which contrary to mass depiction is increasingly
heterogeneous. If offers a high
profile commentary on the lived relations of class and ethnicity, and
reinforces a sense of collectivity in diversity bound up with being Mexican
by heritage and American by destiny. (pg. 86)
Car Culture: hot rods, car customs and low riders
Car leisure activities in the 1950s for Mexican Americans afforded a
new generation a feeling of belonging to America,
but also stressed a need to mark a space within car culture, one which was
different from the dominant scene of hot rods and car customs which tended to
be a sport favored by Anglo American youth.
The surge in low riding within the Mexican American community must be
framed within the proliferation of car leisure activities after the war, such
as hot rodding, drag races, car shows, and demolition derbies. Low riding is one genre within car culture
that flourished in America,
especially with young adults. Therefore, low riding is linked to vibrant hot
rod and car custom scene which exploded in the 1950's. But, what is unique
about low riding is whereas hot rods were about speed and drag races, low
riders responded to the challenge of speeding with the grace of cruising slow
on the boulevard. Low Rider cars were
lowered to the ground and meant to go slow in order to be seen. Young men
began to form car clubs that spoke to their affinity for hot rods, car
customs or low riders. Car Clubs
provided a source of solidarity among car aficionados but also provided
friendly competition for drag races or car shows movement and show pieces
worthy for competition against the best car customs. The beauty of the low rider lies in fact
that it is built to be in the public eye and the building of the low rider
car is not only an expression of one’s identity, but one’s solidarity and
community with other low riders.
The low rider label started being used in the 1960's after hydraulics
were introduced to the scene. Before
the low rider label, the cars were “pachuco cars” and Chicanos would lower
their cars by cutting their suspension coils and putting lowering blocks to
keep the car low to the ground.
Chicanos would also be known to put anything heavy in the trunk of
their cars, such as sandbags, bricks or bags of cement—all which ensured the
bajito y suavecito aesthetic. The goal
was to have your car as close to the ground and some guys would even install
street scrapers on the bottom of their car so the sparks would fly out from
underneath the chassis. All of these
features made the lowrider stand out, especially to law enforcement. California
vehicle code 24008 stipulated that no part of car could be lower than the
bottom portion of the wheel rim. The
police would give tickets to violators of this law and low riders were often
their favorite targets. Low riders
needed a technological solution and ironically one would appear courtesy of
the US
military.
In 1956, Ron Aguirre, a Chicano, put the first hydraulic system in a
‘56 convertible, and with a flip of a switch a car could be lowered and
raised. The hydraulic parts which
consisted of hydro air pumps and dumps actually were surplus parts from World
War II fighter planes. The surplus was
soon a valuable asset to the low riders since they could ride as low as they
wanted on the boulevard and if they saw the police, with a flip of a switch
they were “street legal”. Also, the sound this hydraulic system makes when
lowering and raising is very loud—imagine the sound of a WWII fighter
plane—but hydraulics definitely added “class” and style to the low
rider. Eventually though the WWII
surplus would run out and by the mid-1970s various shops began manufacturing
hydraulic parts such as the tailgate pump.
In the early 1970s, hydraulics also added another competition facet to
the sport lowriding—jumping contests.
Originally, clubs would measure the height with coke bottled or beer
bottles and later on, special rulers were created as cars jumped higher and
higher. By the late 1980s, the
lowrider would be able to do much more than jump up and down, for instance,
side to side and even around the world (completely turn around). Today the innovations in hydraulics are
truly amazing. All the manipulations
of the low rider inherently add to how these cars stand out or now jump out
on the car scene.
The need to be seen was (and still is) at the core, of low riding, and
this fact is especially powerful given the racism and discrimination many
Mexican Americans faced on a daily basis during the 1940s through the 1960s,
such as housing segregation and poor education facilities. Low riding emerged from the working class
Chicano community who used home grown elements to fix up their cars and later
used technological advancements in car customizing to create a style all of
their own. As an extension of the
fascination with car culture within the US,
low riding began as an inherent male activity. At the beginning, there were
few women in car clubs, and if the clubs existed in the 1950’s or 1960’s,
they usually did not last long.
Generally speaking men have been the ones to carry on a life long
affair with their cars or cars.
Moreover the car also began to be tied to a particular cultural identity-----an
expression of self. At the same time, the participation in car leisure
activities formed a collectivity with other low riders. The low rider forced the broader society,
and even the Mexican American community, to acknowledge the presence of a new
cultural identity, which used a cultural blending of styles within Chicano
car culture. Simply put, the various
structural conditions inherent in the post WWII economy created a public
environment which furthered the American males' love affair with cars and
Chicanos were no exception.
As such, automobile culture became an avenue to examine how
"place” creates cultural practices in which one's identity is
negotiated. In fact, the car in many
ways may represent the hopes and desires of the owner. The history of
lowriding reveals the importance of understanding how urban cities and
regions become symbolic landscapes within the cultural practice of low riding
wherein individuals use their cars to negotiate identity (gender, ethnicity,
class), technology, and the media.
LowRider Stories
The Dukes
“It’s a Family Affair”
The best examples of low riding are the stories, which center on the
family. More importantly, the history of low riding is an everyday practice
within much of Mexican American Los Angeles, which revolves around la familia
and the strong bonds created because of that union. Low riding is a tradition that is passed on
from one generation to the next, from father to son to grandson. Los Angeles
is also the birthplace for the oldest low rider car club, the Dukes, who
prove that the strength of the lowriding tradition is found in la
familia. They are also very dedicated
to keeping nuestra cultura alive in
the barrios of Aztlan. The Dukes are
known for customizing ’39 Chevys a choice that made them stand out from the
rest of the low riders in the 1960s and 1970s when most lowriders were
customizing cars from the 1950s and 1960s.
Today these trendsetters are “godfathers” to the new generation of lowriders,
especially the younger generation that is enticed by the challenge of
customizing a ’39 “pachuco style” like the Dukes. This car club is a beautiful example of the
lowriding tradition and their story has its beginnings in a time period in Los
Angeles history when being Mexican was a reason to be
seen as inferior to Anglo Americans.
It is a story that begins just south of downtown Los
Angeles on 41st street
and Long Beach Avenue. In the mid-1950s Josefina Ruelas, a single
mother of four boys (Julio, Oscar, Fernando, and Ernie), immigrated to Los
Angeles from Tijuana
and settled in with Uncle Tinker and Tia Chana. Uncle Tinker, who became a father figure to
his nephews, introduced the boys to auto mechanics in an attempt to keep them
off the streets and in the process, he taught them about taking pride in
their work. The most important lesson that he imparted to them was the
positive influence of la familia working together. These would be lessons the Ruelas brothers
would one-day pass on to their own sons.
As Fernando remembers in the documentary Low and Slow:
My involvement in low riding
goes as far back when I was a young kid and my uncle was a pretty good
influence on that, being he bought us a go-cart. He also took us to the scrap
yard where they had tons of bicycles and he’ll go out there and he’ll buy
them for us and we’ll put them together and we’ll do all these different
types of modifications…My mother played a pretty good role into this because
she preferred us out there with the go-carts and with the bicycles and the
skateboards and the scooters than being on the street (Monica Delgado and
Michael Van Wagenen, Low and Slow, 16mm, 27 min., Ritual Films &
Publications, 1997).
At age thirteen, they each had a car that they began to customize and
each of the brothers became a “specialist” in certain areas of car
customizing. For example, one brother
would specialize in bodywork, one in upholstery and another in electrical
wiring. Since each one had different
talents, they would build the cars as a team.
Even though they were not able to drive these cars legally, the
brothers still took pleasure in their work.
More importantly though is the fact that the process of building a car
became a family effort of love as the brothers worked together. It also is a source of pride to say that
they built the car themselves instead of sending the car to different shops
in order to get the work done.
According to the Dukes, their lowrider club is an extension of their
family and that approach is one of the reasons for their longevity. In this manner, the car club is more than
just cars; it has really family ties that are integral to the survival of the
club. As the oldest brother Julio relates:
A car club is
a family orientated thing. We are a
whole family. It is a big family and you get them together. You can invite your cousins, your brothers,
your daughters, your sons, your wife, your in-laws, grandparents,
whoever. We will have barbecue or
dances. That is what it is all about…a
car club (Julio Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA,
12 June 1999).
The brothers are also acutely aware that lowriding is tied to Chicano
culture and it is something that Chicanos should take pride in. They want the work that they do to have a
positive effect on the Chicano community, especially Chicano youth. Fernando mentioned that the sole purpose to
start the club was not to get a thousand members, but instead their main
objective was to capture the youth and give them a positive alternative to
gangs that might change their lives.
They also share their own history growing up to also motivate youth to
enter into positive activities in their communities. An example of this concern is when a
documentary crew asked them to make a film on their car club, they did it
only when the crew promised to make the documentary available to the schools,
especially schools with young Chicanos.
The Dukes are well known among Chicano youth that follow lowriding
history and culture. I can only interject my own experience when I was at the
Petersen Automotive
Museum and a large group of
Chicano youth surrounded the Dukes one Saturday afternoon, asking for their
autographs and posing for pictures with them.
The Dukes are a fine example of role models from the Chicano community
and they also promote the positive effects of lowriding, which are often
overlooked by the media. When asked if
lowriding is a positive activity for Chicano youth to get involved in, Ernie
Ruelas responds:
I think that
it is real positive because it is bringing awareness and it is bringing
Mexican people or Chicano people to work together and to let them know that
is it not about doing combat with one another, but loving one another in
building something that is in our blood already. Chicano people have a lot of talent but
they are starting to work more together with each other and not be jealous of
each other, give each other respect, and get respect when it is due and all
that…I think that I live to see positive change in a direction where people
can love each other, respect each other, and to really let people know that
don’t know much about our background and all that. Let them know how talented we are and let
them know we also demand respect through our challenge and that kind of
stuff. We must love each other more
and be more aware of the good things rather than the violence and the
fighting…(Ernie Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA,
12 June 1999).
The Ruelas Brothers readily admit that as youth in the late 1950’s they
joined the 38th Street
gang out of a need for protection. The
38th Street
gang achieved mainstream recognition through the Sleepy Lagoon case of 1942
when 22 of their members where found guilty of crimes ranging from assault to
first degree murder through an unfair and racist trial. The Dukes’ roots are tied inextricably to
Chicano history in Los Angeles
through their association with the 38th
Street gang.
Ironically, their cars would be featured in the movie premiere of the
movie Zoot Suit (1981) that chronicled the Sleepy Lagoon case, again
tying them to their own 38th Street
past. That aside, in 1962 their
passion for cars won out over gang loyalty and they decided to form their own
social club with Julio Ruelas as the first club president. The
Dukes car club was born and the car club became an alternative to gang
life—or la vida loca. This
threat to gang control of the neighborhood caused some initial hard feelings
between the Duke’s and the 38th Street
gang. Yet, this riff vanished as the
Dukes car club brought honor and respect to their neighborhood. Car clubs as social clubs provided an
alternative option to gangs by providing the brothers with a positive social
environment that was “respectable”, even in the eyes of the gang members. Respect and pride is a theme that runs
through their family story. As Oscar
Ruelas relates:
So that was really the
main thing in starting the car club, doing things, doing different things and
to show the people that we just weren’t gang members, we did have some kind
of pride in us, we did know how to do something else besides just hanging out
in the street, running around the neighborhood doing nothing.
(Monica Delgado and Michael
Van Wagenen, Low and Slow, 16mm, 27 min., Ritual Films &
Publications, 1997)
Cars in many Mexican American barrios throughout the
Southwest provided the motivation for many youth to become involved in social
car clubs since cars were “status symbols” which a youth could take pride
in. The style of car customizing
“pachuco cars” which Chicanos brought
to the streets was also tied to the Mexican pre-Columbian past and would also
impact the broader community as well during the 1960s. Julio Ruelas traces the beginning of low
rider cars to the pachucos and the cars they drove as statements of their
individuality within the Mexican American community. And this new car aesthetic was definitely
Chicano since it had pride in our rich ancestry from Mexico
and also had roots in American car culture.
According to Julio, “Chicanos have always been low riding. I always saw them in the 1950s. Our colors we get them from our ancestors,
the Aztecs. The color of feathers is
the color of automobiles you see. We
have our own ideas and our own style (Julio Ruelas, interview by author, tape
recording, Los Angeles, CA, 12 June 1999).”
In the late 1960s a cultural renaissance was hitting Chicano barrios
and low riders were part of that activity.
Chicano Pride became the motto of the Chicano Movement and nowhere was
that more evident than in the streets of East Los Angles. Whittier Boulevard
was alive every weekend as the top cruising spot in Los
Angeles, and the Dukes were an important part of that
scene. Each lowrider club had their
own spot on the Boulevard and the Dukes had the prime spot in the Huggie
Boy (a popular radio deejay) car lot,
which was a prestigious place on the boulevard. As Fernando recalls, “Nobody
parked in our lot, they knew it was ours.
We filled it with ‘39s.” Yet,
the late 1960s also brought the Vietnam War to many Chicano barrios as many
of these same young men who cruised the boulevard were drafted in the
army. Several members of the Duke’s
were drafted into the U.S.
army, including the Ruelas Brothers.
Oscar was drafted in 1966, followed by Ernie in 1968 and finally
Fernando in 1969. Many of the lowrider
clubs also lost members in that war and Fernando Ruelas thought it would be
the end of lowriding. If they lost a member to the war, they would always
honor these fallen heroes a “lowrider funeral” which consisted of a large
caravan of lowriders. The Chicano
Movement was also occurring during this time period, and anti-Vietnam War
protests were also a part of the various social movements, which sought
equity for Mexican Americans. Many activists argued that Chicanos were dying
in disproportionate numbers in Vietnam (see Rodolfo Acuna, Occupied America,
377) , a sentiment that is echoed by the Dukes who lost many friends to the
war. The Dukes survived this time period even though the car club was reduced
to a handful of people in the early 1970s, and the war could not stop the
passion for lowriding. Ernie declares
how he felt in those early years, “And it made me say it doesn’t matter if
you have only two people, three people, we are the Dukes (Ernie Ruelas, interview
by author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA, 12 June 1999).”
Therefore in1974 Fernando Ruelas became President of the club, a title
he holds till this day, and he is also responsible for the changes to come on
the lowriding scene in the late 1970s.
The Dukes were key in the formation of the West Coast Association of
Low riders in 1978 with the Imperials and Groupe car clubs. The purpose of
the association was to get car clubs to unite and do something positive
within the Chicano community. Together
these clubs put on a “Christmas Toys for Kids” car show with all proceeds
going to purchase toys and Christmas stockings for underprivileged
children. This annual tradition
continues to this day. It is their commitment to community activism that
separates the Dukes from other car clubs.
The Dukes have organized car shows to benefit the broader Chicano
community from Cesar Chavez and the United Farmworkers to Mecha and other
Chicano organizations to local prisons. They even had a “Dukes Bus” that they
would take to prisons, along with lowriders, to put on lowrider shows for the
inmates. All of this activity reveals
the importance of la familia and the community to low riders who do more than
just cruise la calle/the street. The
Dukes represent the statement “giving back to the community” and they are
also a testament to the power of la familia which sustains Chicanismo in the
barrios of Los Angeles. As
Fernando states:
We were raised
poor and we know what it feels like to hungry and poor. At seven years of age
I sold newspapers and shined shoes to help support my family. So, our car club stated donating time for
fundraising to help the community…the community needs help and we are there
to help any way we can (Fernando Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording,
La Habra, CA, 10 June 1999).
The Dukes were also pioneers in the low rider car show circuit. Between the years of 1966 and 1977, the
Dukes were featured at the Trident Car shows (which later became the R.G.
Canning Productions) and were the only low rider club invited during the
initial years because of the tensions between hot rodders and low riders
within the car customizing scene. Unfortunately, low riders were given little
respect if at all within the mainstream car customizing scene. But that would change. In 1979, the Dukes helped to produce the
first Super Show at the Los Angeles
convention Center along with Sonny Madrid,
the editor of Low Rider Magazine. They
also participated in the very first LA Street Scene along with Tower
of Power, War and Tierra. The Dukes also broke through many cultural
barriers by being accepted by mainstream car magazines, such as Car Craft and
Hot Rod Magazine. The Ruelas Brothers
are able to promote their products—their cars—and they also take great pride
in having made a name for themselves within the lowrider scene as car
customizers who produce top quality work, again as a family unit. Ernie describes the legacy of the Dukes car
club to the lowrider scene as follows:
I think that
someone out there who is versed in old custom cars can work at one of our
customs that we built and say right away, the Ruelas brothers built
this. Because they know we were first
in doing that style of car. I think
that even now that is what it is all about.
To me, I get off on being able to have the energy and the charisma and
everything else and the knowledge of being able to build my stuff the way I
want it right now…Here with this family that I am involved with is so
talented, is so rich in talent. I am really blessed…I wish that we can be
able to do more things together, like we used to when we were young though
(Ernie Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA, 12 June
1999).
Today, the Ruelas family still
owns the shop and house that Uncle Tinker left them on the corner of Long
Beach Ave and 41st. Their shop is a family business that
Fernando wants to keep in the family and he is grooming his sons and nephews
to take over one day. They have had
many offers to sell the property for big money since it is located right
along the Alameda Corridor, but Fernando always refuses. He believes that is important that it stays
in the family, even though some of the other brothers believe the money would
be nice. Today, all the Ruelas
brothers moved their families East of Los Angeles to the suburbs of Whittier
and La Habra, yet the oldest
brother Julio still lives in the house he grew up in, and right on the porch
is a street sign that reads “Lowrider Blvd.” Even though the brothers moved out of the
area, they still get together on the weekends to work on their cars. And Jay and Ernie Jr., the oldest sons of
Fernando and Ernie respectively, work in the shop during the week and they
are also dedicated to the Dukes’ lowrider legacy. Ernie Jr. describes what it means to be a
part of this legacy:
It feels pretty good to work
with my dad and my family because I’d rather work with them than work with
anybody else…. And also people think lowriding is a negative image like gang
members and stuff. Its not necessarily like that, there’s a lot of family
orientated people that are involved in it.
They make look strange at sometimes, but it’s particularly family
working people who are earning an honest living and just want to have fun and
build their cars and take them out to shows and have a good time. It’s really a family thing (Monica Delgado
and Michael Van Wagenen, Low and Slow, 16mm, 27 min., Ritual Films
& Publications, 1997).
.
Just
as the Ruelas brothers learned their customizing skills by working on bikes
and go-carts, the younger generation of the Dukes received their schooling on
customizing through also working on bikes.
In 1977, The Dukes started a bike chapter in order to get the youth
involved. Just as the Ruelas brothers
had to work for their money to customize as boys, the next generation of
Dukes also had to work hard in order to buy the bikes and also to maintain
their bikes. In the process, a love
and passion for customizing was born later continued as they graduated to
working on cars. The bike chapter is
also a way in which the fathers could build relationships with their sons by
working together to create a lowrider bike and also teach them to have
respect and pride in the work they do. As Oscar Jr. a member of the Dukes bike club chapter states:
I save my cans for I could
make money so I could buy parts. I buy
the parts for my bike and I’m barely working on it. I worked on it for one year and I’m also
finished. I really like working with
him [my dad] on my car. I really like
watching my dad. I like cleaning it
[the car] for him and everything (Monica Delgado and Michael Van Wagenen, Low
and Slow, 16mm, 27 min., Ritual Films & Publications, 1997).
.
The women in the Ruelas family also play a
central role in the workings of the car club, although their roles may not be
visible, their presence is still felt.
And many of the men mention that they could not participate in the car
club if not for the support and patience of their wives. Gloria Ruelas is Fernando’s wife and she is
the coordinator of all the Duke’s chapters throughout the United
States.
Gloria remarks that the car club has been a positive influence for her
sons in the documentary Low and Slow:
I think it’s great that the
boys are involved in the old cars and the old bikes. It kind of keeps their mind off drugs,
being in the street, drinking and basically stirring up a ruckus…This takes
up so much of their time and they’re so intense about it that they really
don’t have time for anything else. And
also, it costs a lot of money. They
have to work to get their cars done.
And the bikes, it’s a very expensive hobby and I want them to know
that if they want something they have to work for it. No one is going to give it to them (Monica
Delgado and Michael Van Wagenen, Low and Slow, 16mm, 27 min., Ritual
Films & Publications, 1997).
Since the car
club is family orientated, the participation of the women is also important,
and they too are at all the car shows.
The most important female presence is that of Josefina Ruelas who is
always at every car show and exhibit to show support for her sons as she says
“ I am always with them, all the time.
In spite of my age and all, I love to be with them” (Monica Delgado and Michael Van Wagenen, Low
and Slow, 16 mm, 27 min., Ritual Films & Publications, 1999).
Over the years, the Dukes have built a solid reputation and have set
the standards for other car clubs. The Ruelas Brothers developed the
necessary skills in car customizing that would establish them as one of the
top low rider car clubs for nearly forty years with thirty chapters
nationally and even internationally.
The Ruelas family is truly passionate about lowriding as a sport and
as a way of life. As Fernando
says, “If God gives me another fifty
or forty years, we still be doing the same thing. It is something that we will carry
on”(Fernando Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording, La Habra, CA, 10
June 1999). But, it is their commitment to their East-side roots over the
years, which speaks to the strength of the low riding tradition within
Chicano communities. The Ruelas
brothers exemplify the roots of lowriding which is anchored respect and
family. It is also a source of pride
that stems from el corazon/the heart as Julio beautifully states:
A true low
rider comes from one’s heart, a true working person that has his own steady
job or his own business and he loves automobiles and goes by low riding. Low riding is more than a name. It is really a customized car, whether you
change the interior, change the painting, the engine, put chrome here or
there…And your sounds…your oldies music…”
(Julio
Ruelas, interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA, 12 June 1999).
The DeAlbas
“El Corazon”
I am not into baseball, so I am not
going to join a baseball team. If I
join a baseball team I have to dedicate myself to be at practice and all the
games. It is the same thing with our
car club, we take it that much to heart.”
Alberto DeAlba
(Albert DeAlba, interview by author, tape
recording, Montclair, CA, 19 March 1999)
The importance of family is key to many car clubs since it is the
center of loyalty and unity in many Chicano families. Lowriding is more than a sport, it is a
lifestyle choice that takes a lot of heart and hard work to be successful at
the top competition levels. Yet, low
riding is also about the relationship between fathers and sons. For example, a father teaching his son
about the history and skills of a low riding becomes a time to share his own
stories of cruising the boulevard and they also create new memories as the
work on a car together. Then,
hopefully one day his son will teach his own son (and now grandson) the
skills of a beautiful tradition and the art of low riding. It is a passion that many families share.
The DeAlba family of Montclair is
another example of the family tradition of low riding. They have a family business called Mario's
Auto Works in Montclair, California. There are three sons, (Mario Jr., Albert,
and Greg) and they all work together with their father Mario Sr. And after the shop closes, they work
together on their low riders, building on a passion and skills which Mario
learned in Tijuana and brought with him to the United
States. It is a history which his sons know
well and they now begin to teach their own sons.
Mario Sr., 53, worked at the horse track in Tijuana
when he was youngster, which was a prestigious job to have in those
days. Mario would notice that the
jockeys were the ones who had the money and they would drive customized
cars. Mario began by learning how to
customize bikes at an early age, but the cars always turned his head. Mario recalls, "There was a lot of low
riding down there [Tijuana, Mexico].....I would see the cars going down the
road and I would say that maybe one day I'll get me one” (Mario DeAlba Sr,
interview by author, tape recording, Montclair, CA, 19 March 1999). Mario Sr.
was fascinated by those cars and true to his words, his first lowrider was a
‘39 Plymouth that he bought for
fifty dollars. He cut the suspension
coils on it to lower it closer to the ground and he cruised the streets of Tijuana
as a teenager. At eighteen he came to
the states and settled in East Los Angeles. The year was 1965, known as part of the
golden years of cruising on Whittier Boulevard,
and he would often join in the festivity of the performance by cruising that
sacred boulevard. Mario Sr. reminisces
about the good times of cruising on Whittier,
which today is shut off as a cruising spot,
On Whittier
Boulevard, I still remember like the cruising
would start from Ford and go all the way, way past Atlantic. If somebody went up there to just get
through, it would take the person an hour or so because of the cruisers. They are so slow but that is what everybody
used to go for, just to be seen on the street and a lot of cars and people in
the business parking lots and all that.
It was like a car show on wheels.
I have seen a couple of fights or two once in awhile. But that is normal when there is a lot of
people. They come and go but nothing
major, nothing…It was very nice. Like
everybody mind their own business. If
it could be done again, I think it would be nice (Mario DeAlba Sr., interview
by author, tape recording, Montclair, CA, 19 March 1999).
Mario Sr. had his cruising
days cut short when he was drafted into the army in 1968 during the Vietnam
War and as he says “I was mad. Nothing you can do when Uncle Sam says it’s
your time”(Ibid). Mario was also married that same year and after he returned
from Vietnam,
the family settled in Pomona and
Mario worked in an auto repair shop. Mario Sr. had joined a car club called
Elite which his cousins’ started in the mid-1970s but then the club
collapsed, so then he joined Style from Pomona
and that club lasted until 1983. Mario then did not join a lowrider club for
almost another ten years. In the
1980s, lowriding came to shortstop for many car clubs, some of the reasons
may be economic troubles of the Reagan-Bush years, but by the beginning of
the 1990s, lowriding was able to pick up again.
During those years of the
1970s and 1980s, Mario Sr. kept his sons off the streets by teaching
them customizing skills. He started
with the bikes and eventually the boys would graduate to learning how to
customize cars. Albert’s older brother, Mario Jr., was the one who got him
interested in customizing. Mario Jr.
would always fix up their little pull wagons and little pedal cars . Their
dad later bought them bikes, they would fix them up and their dad painted
them. Once Mario Jr. learned how to
paint, he would start painting the bikes. The De Alba boys really enjoyed
customizing and they learned the skills that have made them one of the top
customizers on the low riding scene today.
Again it is a true-life long passion that began in their youth while learning to fix their bike and
they also learned the rewards that come with the competition as others admire
your work of art. As Albert says, “It
is a statement of your personality.
Lowriding to me would be a statement of my individuality. So when people are looking at it, they are
also looking at you (Albert DeAlba, interview by author, tape recording,
Montclair, CA, 19 March 1999).” Mario also taught his sons responsibility and
dedication by making them work for their money by cutting the yard or other
chores in order to buy parts for their bikes.
It is this work ethic that their father taught them which they now
apply to the cars they build and which is evidenced by the many trophies
their car club Elite has earned in car shows throughout the years. It is this pride in their work that makes
them feel good about their own self worth.
Albert elaborates further when he says “When somebody admires your
car, they are admiring you at that same time.
You developed that. You are the
one who put the ideas and work into it (Ibid)”.
As Albert and Mario Jr.
entered their teenage years, they also became fascinated by car culture as
part of the mini-truck craze of the late 1980s. They were not happy with the car clubs that
were around back then, and they started thinking about bringing back to life
their dad’s old club Elite when they learned another old club, Traffic, was
started up again. They remembered how
they used to go to car shows when they were kids and they wanted a club that
had a history and also had lowrider style.
Albert mentioned that the other clubs that he and his brother checked
out were just single guys who wanted to be out there “screwing around”. They
had started out with customizing mini-trucks as teenagers, but the DeAlba
brothers were now ready to begin customizing the more classic lowriders—Chevy
Impalas and bombs. The DeAlba brothers wanted to be more focused on a
professional level of low riding to create some of the best cars on the
streets and in the show circuit. So
these two principles of professionalism and fantastic lowriders would shape
the direction of the re-born Elite car club in 1991. When asked what are the requirements that club
members must follow Albert explains:
Well we tell
people, like all our membership is based on friends and friends of friends—we
put people through a 3-month trial phase, a probation period. We are now more of a family orientated
club…So our requirements nowadays are to have a nice car, you don’t have to
have the best car in the world, but your car has to have hydraulics, it has
to have wire wheels, you have to have a hell of a paint job, you have to have
a hell of an interior, the car has to be top notch period…We tell them our
main goal is to have guys with level heads.
We don’t have want guys that our pushing drugs. We don’t want guys that are using
drugs. We don’t want guys that are in
gangs. We don’t want guys that are
just negative people. We want pure
positive, more family orientated, grown up people (Ibid).
The Elite
car club ranges in age from 19 to 54 years old and is focused on representing
low riding at its most positive level, so cars that fly the Elite flag must
do so with honor and respect. If a car
member is out on the streets and gets in trouble, that comes back to reflect
on the car club. So very simply, Albert feels that in order to be part of
club, a person needs to not only have a top-notch vehicle, but also must be
“down for the lowrider movement”, which means full dedication at club
meetings and club events. Since
cruising has been outlawed, one of the main places to display your lowrider
is at car shows and car club picnics.
Every year the Elite car club has their own car picnic, which is very
successful and their flyer announces their emphasis on the positive vibe to
lowriding, “No colors and no
attitudes”. This statement is a
warning to gang members and also car clubs that like to start problems over
losing awards or car hopping contests as a result of competitive jealousy.
Albert believes that club picnics are part of the future of low riding since
it offers the best solution to cruising, and the various car picnics are open
to other car clubs to attend. Most
important though is that these car picnics are family orientated and a time
to celebrate the tradition of lowriding on a Sunday afternoon in the park,
which is a tradition in many barrios throughout Los
Angeles. For
the DeAlba family, lowriding has brought them together and this family is
another testament to the positive-ness of lowriding within the Chicano
community. The DeAlba men also have
the full support of the women in their family and according to Albert,
lowriding as a hobby is not something women in their family should worry
about. It is also something that
Albert is sharing with his young son, Albert Jr, and his son now shares in
his passion and enthusiasm for lowriding.
Albert relates:
Like my mom,
my wife, they know where we are at. We
are not at nude bars spending our paychecks out there. Like a lot of people do and that is their
thing and that’s fine. But like my dad
says, lowriding is good, clean wholesome fun. It is a deep hobby. It has
brought our family close. We go to the
shows. Like I told you earlier, my
son, Albert Jr., is a hard-core low rider fanatic. He got to meet the Alberto Lopez who is the
old owner of the magazine. The day he met him he was acting like he met
Michael Jackson…. And, I have even seen it in our club, the members pick up
their cars, and now the parents come to the shows, their wives and kids. It is a family thing. Let’s bring the families out. That way you are closer to your
family. It is not only a thing for
guys. When we were younger, we would go cruising, and you would go to the
cruise spots to meet girls or whatever, but as you mature, you grow out of
that (Ibid).
The DeAlbas’
pride and dedication to lowriding is best exemplified in their show stopping
1951 Chevy Couple entitled “El
Corazon” which gets its name from its fiery red color but also because as
Mario Sr. states, “I put by heart and
soul into that car.” It is a legend
on the bomb scene and it won the title of “Lowrider Bomb of the Year” three
times in 1991, 1993 and 1994. It also
represents the ingenious innovations of lowriders as they design cars that
can boggle the imagination and also can be compared with great works of
art. As a young boy, Mario Sr. was
always fond of ’51 Chevys and he originally bought this one for $150. He used it first to run parts for his shop
before finally deciding to customize it in a manner he had always dreamed of
as a boy living in Tijuana, Mexico. Working with his three sons, it took Mario
more than four years of hard work to created this explosive ride that also
has many technological changes. First
he installed a 1979 Chevy engine in order to give his car power. He then he shaved down the original body of
the car and extended and rounded the hood in order to get a unique look. He
included other car modifications such as a ’53 Chevy grille, ’59 Pontiac side
moldings, modified ’76 Cadillac rear
skirts, ’49 Dodge tail-lights, and a
center console from a ’66 Pontiac Grand Prix, just to name a few. A master painter, Mario went all out on his
car by first applying a custom acrylic lacquer gold base and then layering on
numerous layers of candy apple red and brandy wine lacquer. The interior of the car is red velour and
gold plating can be found throughout the car. Finally he added several coats
of clear lacquer to give it extra shine and for historic sake, a pair of
fuzzy red dice hang from the rear view mirror. The car lies so low to ground that you can
barely slide a piece of paper under it---an exquisite lowrider
masterpiece. The car has become an
icon on the lowrider scene and also represents the passion for lowriding
within the DeAlba family so according to Mario Sr., he would never sell
it. The name of the car embodies
everything that it takes to build a lowrider----el corazon/the heart.
A Caravan of Love: The
Evolution of Lowriding
“Brotherhood”
“Everybody in the club no matter where they are from is my
brother and family member. Some of the
members have been in other clubs before and never felt as if they belonged,
but in Uso, as brothers, we all belong to each other. We are really one big family, enjoying each
other’s company, helping each other to achieve their goals.”
Kita Lealao (interview by
author, tape recording, Los Angeles, CA,
15 April 1999)
USO is an example of a car club that started in the 1990's with a
multi-cultural perspective on cars and people. USO in fact translates to
"brother" in the Samoan language and the club definitely has a
created a brotherhood across racial lines. The club also speaks to how
lowriding has evolved from being Chicano specific to one in which the passion
for cars is viewed as a more important requirement for club membership. In 1991, Kita Lealao and his friends, who
are of Samoan ancestry, decided to start their own lowrider car club in the
city of Carson where they lived,
which is a city that has a mixed population of Samoans, Chicanos and African
Americans. Kita, who has been low riding over twenty years both in Northern
California and Southern CA, was one of the
few Samoans in low riding in the late 1970s. He is comfortable in
multicultural settings since he grew up in neighborhoods with primarily
Chicano and African American residents.
He also sees acculturating and interacting to other cultures as normal
for Samoans living in the United States
as part of their quest for the “American Dream”. He explains:
Where I grew
up on Second Street,
there was a handful of Samoans that hung out with Chicanos, because there
wasn’t a lot of Samoans in our neighborhood, so we hung out with people we
lived with. So that this how I learned
a lot of the culture. We grew up with
Blacks too. When you come from
different countries like the Samoan people do, the only places we can afford
to live in and start our families is in the ghetto. You know as you move along, you get
upgraded as you go along, and find a better job, you make a little bit of
money and move to a better neighborhood just to better your family (Ibid).
Kita’s upbringing exposed him to different cultures and also taught him
how to get along with people from different cultures. And it would be the Chicanos and the
African Americans who first introduced him to the low riding scene.
Presently, there are 31 car club chapters of USO, and they even have chapters
in Canada and
Guam. In 1998,
Lowrider Magazine named USO Lowrider car club of the year and they have the
added distinction of being the youngest car club to win this prestigious
title. Uso is an example of a new
breed of low riders who are multicultural and diverse in membership. As they boast, “While other clubs talk
about being together, USO does it everyday (Lowrider Magazine, April
1998, 134)”. The club speaks to the
transformation of low rider culture and also is an example of
multiculturalism in practice. Yet,
they are also representative of the central tenets of the lowriding practice
which are pride, respect, and family.
Kita Lealao is 42 years old and he was born and raised in the Bay
Area. As a young kid of 9 years old,
he remembers visiting his relatives in Los Angeles
and seeing lowriders for the first time and he was soon hooked. Or as he says, “ I feel in love with them
ever since (Kita Lealao, interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles,
CA, 15 April 1999)”. He purchased his
first lowrider in 1976, a ’73 Lincoln Mark IV, which he customized and lifted
with hydraulics. Lowriding hit the Bay
Area big in the late 1970s with cruising the Mission District in San
Francisco and King Boulevard
in San Jose as standard weekend
activity for many youth. In 1979, he
joined his first car club, Low Creations, based in San
Francisco and they were the biggest lowrider car club
on the scene at that time. They were also a mixed car club with an African
American as club president. Kita
remembers there not being much racial tension between Blacks and Chicanos
back then as he says “They low ride basically the same. They just come from different towns
(Ibid).” Yet, he does admit that some Chicano members would later leave Low
Creations to form a different club, just for Chicanos. He remembers that every weekend the streets
in Northern California were filled to capacity with
people and everyone was getting along and just enjoying themselves.
Yet, Kita’s dream would be to start his own lowrider car club one day,
but that would not happen until he moved to Southern California
and settled in Carson. In
1991, Kita co-founded Uso with his
cousin Daniel and a friend Joe Hunkin. They had initially thought to start a
“Samoans Only” club, but that plan soon changed when they realized that they
would not have many members since they are so few Samoans who low ride. So, they instead decided to open the club
to every race. As he tells it, they
did not care what ethnicity a person was, they just wanted some one who had a
lowrider style vehicle and who had a positive attitude. Put simply, “The basic requirement for a member is only
10% the car and 90% the person. That
is the way we judge people in our car club (Ibid).” So with 10 members, USO was born and would
soon rapidly grow in numbers. USO is
also a lowrider car club that does not have specific car type requirements
for instance only specializing in “bombs” or Chevys or strictly American made
cars. Again it is the passion for lowriding which is key to membership. Kita explains:
We wanted
people who would look at the club as family, get involved with each other and
enjoy each other’s company. After all,
if we were going to be a success, it would be as a club and that meant that
everybody would have to contribute and help each other to achieve their
goals. To me, a car club is like a second family. You have your immediate and then you have
them. Besides your job, those are like
the three groups you kick it with mostly.
You know what I mean. Myself, I like it because it is something that a
bunch of guys, even their women, that we all like to do together…. build
cars, talk about them and hang out (Ibid).
Kita attributes his club’s success to the
cohesiveness of the various chapters.
According to him “we put our brains together 24-7” and they talk to
each other everyday, either by phone or through e-mail. They also have a website that keeps
everyone in the club up to date through a newsletter so that every member can
be informed to of the club business. Another innovative way they communicate
is that they have their own telephone code of 870 so they all the USO members
in the United States
can communicate with one another. In
six years, they were able to have a respectable name for themselves on the
lowrider circuit and they also established club chapters. Kita views the strength of the club being
the brotherhood since they value the
person, not the race of perspective
members. They want positive people who have good attitudes and if they are
affiliated with any gangs, then that person need not apply. Yet, if a person was once a gang member
and now they are out of the gang, then he says they are welcome to join and
they can also be part of “teaching youngsters the rights and wrongs
(Ibid)”. Another similar trait that
USO has with other lowrider clubs is their belief in being role models for
young kids. Kita even equates his club
to college and the members then are the professors teaching the kids the
right way of doing of things in life in order to stay out of trouble. It is this dedication to the younger
generation by being good role models that makes USO stand out. It is also a
fact that often goes overlooked by the media and other critics of lowriding.
Kita relates:
Believe
it or not, I look at USO as more like a college. It’s where you can learn right from wrong,
what to do to achieve what it takes to get there, and what’s wrong and how to
stay away from that. I’ve got more
than twenty five years of experience in lowriding and I want to make sure
that the chapters are preaching the right concept to the members and to the
kids who are going to be lowriders in the future (Ibid).
Almost everyone you talk to on the
lowrider circuit knows Kita and speaks of him highly. He is well liked and is
also very respected from an older club like the Dukes to a highly competitive
one like Lifestyle. Some common words
heard to describe Kita are nice guy, big teddy bear, and family man. Those are people who know him and have
interacted with him, but Kita also has to deal with being stereotyped by how
he looks by those who do not know him.
It is easy to take one look at him and jump to all the wrong
conclusions. He is a big Samoan guy,
with a shaved head and tattoos and one would think that this guy was either
in gang or maybe even has done some time in the “pen” (penitentiary). Yet, the real story could not be farther
from truth and is an example of how stereotyping can be damaging to a person
and mislead those outside of lowriding what the culture is really about. Kita has this beautiful personality and a
warm soft voice that does not match his physicality, and he is quick to hug those he meets as if they are
old friends. He is wonderful human
being. And he is an example of the
reality that just because a person has a lowrider and tattoos does not mean
the person is a gangster or ever was one.
The connection between lowriding and gang banging is one that is hard
to overcome, because it obscures the fact that many of the lowriders are hard
working guys with families and respectable jobs. It is still easy to criminalize lowriders,
which is a reality that many of them face everyday. Kita explains this fact,
The
first thing they always ask me when they see me tatted up is ‘hey man what
joint were you in?’ No man, I have
been really lucky. I just like
tattoos. When you tell people that,
they are kind of like, ‘you are kidding’.
I say, ‘no man, I’m not. I’m telling you the truth’. Yeah, sure I can glorify myself and say
I’ve been in this pen or that pen, but for what. You are just going to look
at me like what the hell, I don’t want to be talking to this fool…..When
everybody says that lowriding is associated with gang banging and stuff like
that, I would tell them about just the lifestyle, having a nice car and I
have worked for TWA for twenty years.
You can keep a job, keep a car and still have fun. That is what I mean, having fun is the
bottom line (Ibid).
Though
lowriding is about having fun, there are times when it is not fun and
involves being mistreated because you are always seen as a gang member because
you are brown skinned, you have tattoos and you cruise the streets in a low rider. Some clubs have good relationships with the
police, especially the older clubs that have been around for a long time in East
Los Angeles and have built
an understanding with the police. But, the police harasses other low
riders, and Kita says that the Los
Angeles County Sheriffs in Carson
were not friendly with lowriders. He
describes the degrading and humiliating experience of being pulled over for no reason, sitting on
the sidewalk and having his car searched for guns or drugs. He also says that the sheriffs talked down
to him and cussed him out just because they found nothing wrong and were
trying to provoke him so that they could arrest him. When asked if he received the same kind of
treatment by police in Northern California, Kita elaborates,
Not
as severe. I am talking about severe
means just like verbally abusing you.
You say one little thing back just to say I’m sorry or something like
that because you didn’t hear the question, it is like boom, they want to kick
your butt. If they think you are
trying to get smart with them, but you are not, you are just trying to
utilize your rights. They just be
throwing it in your face man, ‘You say
one more thing, I am going to kick your ass’ (Ibid).
Kita also keeps the lowriding tradition
by passing along his knowledge to his children and he admits that his
daughters who are eighteen and nineteen are the best pupils. He says that they can tell a difference
between all the different styles of Impalas and they also know the year and
makes of lowrider cars. Kita says all
his children can look inside a trunk and tell you what kind of hydraulic set
up it is, to what kind of paint job a car has, to basic things such as what
type of rims are on the wheels. And
now, even his grandkids also are learning what lowriding is about. It is very rare for a Samoan family to have
lowriding roots according to Kita.
Lowriding in the case of the Lealao family is something that they can
do together and at very car show, the whole family is there in support of
lowriding. Kita best describes the
energy that lowriding has for him when he says:
It
doesn’t matter how old you are, that love is still there for the game. The sport.
That is what I love about low riding .
To me, it is like I’m always in the candy store. I
never get tired of it. Never.
It is always exciting (Ibid).
The excitement of lowriding is something
that continues to grow stronger. And as lowriding has evolved through the
years, it has changed, and this is mainly due to the increase of low rider
car clubs, especially multicultural car clubs. Not all car clubs have strict requirements
for membership, such as a specific type of cars or even ethnic ties, but some
car clubs are social clubs based on a passion for lowriding. Kita told me that the oldie song that
captures the style and emotion of his car club is one by the Isley Brothers
called “Caravan of Love”. He said this
song is like the national song for his club, especially the words “we join our hands, we join the caravan of
love”. For him, Uso is all about love. And I believe that is an accurate
description. Uso also lives the social
codes of the lowriding of pride, respect and family, albeit with a multicultural
twist. When asked to describe the
contributions of USO to the lowriding scene,
Kita sums it up when he says:
There
is nothing in the like expressing yourself and your ideas on a lowrider that
you have so much love for. USO is
proud to be part of that. In just six
years, USO has gone from being “just
another lowrider club” to what we hope will be the pattern for all of the
other clubs of the future—no racial lines, no color lines and connected to
the hear of the Lowrider Movement through LRM. That way, all of us can spend more time
enjoying the sport of lowriding that we live and love and less time with
problems among the people. While other
clubs talk about being together, USO does it every day (Ibid).
The Rock and
Rollers---the Lowrider “Lifestyle”
I don’t let my
family involved in anything I do here really, they wouldn’t understand. You
get told “why are you leaving? You
gotta see your son’s football game!”…My friends are always there for me, and
if one day I am not there for them, they’ll never forgive me. The less I tell the family, the better off
I am.
Joe Ray, President of Lifestyle
(Interview by author, tape
recording, Los Angeles, CA, 6 May 1999)
There are many lowrider clubs that
depart somewhat from the structure of the incorporating the family into
lowrider club life, and instead are focused on the passion for the cars as a
purely masculine activity that sometimes must come before the family. These clubs typically have young men in
their 20’s and 30’s who are single and then also a few guys from the older
generation in their 40’s and 50’s.
The commitment they make to the club is a primary one, and many of
them therefore are divorced or have broken relationships with women and even
their children. The particular car
club that I am examining here is called Lifestyle---and
the name captures the philosophy of the men in the club. Lowriding is the lifestyle they choose, and
they live it in its fullest extent with pride and respect for their craft,
with one exception, family is often a sacrifice that one has to make in order
to belong to the club. When a man chooses to join Lifestyle, they are joining a club that must come first in their
lives and the loyalty they have to one another creates bonds that are
displayed through behaviors that one can accurately portray as being
macho. It was one of the few instances
in my research process that my role as a woman placed me in a disadvantage
and I had to prove myself to them through various masculinity strategies that
were employed against me. Women are
conspicuously absent at all club activities and that is the way they like
it. Therefore, it is important here
to include my positionality as a Chicana on the research process because it
is relevant in context of the club’s philosophy. Lifestyle
car club is a perfect example of how lowriding at its most basic level is an
expression of masculinity, though some clubs display it in a less forceful
level than others, and their existence speaks to the diverse politics
involved in lowrider clubs. Also, this
section allows the reader the chance to understand the inner workings of car
club meetings, which can range from an expressions of male bravado to the
mentoring of younger members of the veteranos—the older generation.
My first interaction with Lifestyle car club came at a club
meeting on February 26, 1999,
car club meetings are usually held every other Friday in an auto-body shop in
Santa Fe Springs . The car meeting was supposed to start at 9
pm, but would start late because the President of the car club,
Joe Ray, was running late. The
meeting started around 9:20 pm
when Joe Ray arrived, and the rest of the car club filtered into the garage.
I noticed that most of them were in their early 20s to their early 30s and
there were about 40 or so guys. All of
them were Chicano, except for two Japanese guys. The car cub sits in a make
shift circle, some find chairs or boxes to sit on and other just stand
around. The officers of the club stand
together on one side of the circle. And Joe Ray stands in the front. All club members are wearing their car
club T-shirts, which are the club’s colors of Black and gold.
The club meeting then officially
started by taking roll and collecting dues.
The dues are five dollars a meeting and you get fined for being late,
and a guy can even be placed on probation for habitually being late to club
meetings. I asked Joe Rodriguez, the
secretary of the club, as dues were being collected if everyone at the
meeting has their own car and he yes. Joe said that one exception to the rule
of a car per member are the “cuates” or the twins. They have one car and they were voted into
the car club together. As the meeting
continued, some older men walked in and Joe mentioned to me that they were
“honorary members” who come to meetings when they wanted. These men are typically in their late 40s
and early 50s and have been in lowriding for along time, so they have special
status. There is a definite generation
gap in the club between younger men and the old timers. The club celebrated their 25the anniversary
in the year 2000 and Joe Ray, the president, was with the club since the
beginning.
After roll and the dues are
collected, Joe Ray then begins to preach to his young audience, which is
something he does a lot during this meeting.
But his “preaching” is a combination of motivational speeches and also
admonishments ala Vince Lombardi or even General Patton in some cases. He tells the club that he is ashamed at the
club presence in the last car show in Arizona
were they showed only thirty cars. He
said that some of the cars in this club are not “cutting it” and they will be
kicked out of the club for not having their cars “show ready”. Apparently, some of the guys in the club
have been in the process of building their cars forever and Joe Ray said that
this is unacceptable. He says the club
is about competition, not only among car members but also about having cars
that are competition ready and cars that are the best ones out there.” And
the lack of progress by individual car club members reflects badly on the
whole car club according to him. Joe
Ray speaks in a tough manner and as he talks he walks around and looks at
every car club member. He is very
dramatic and energetic in getting his point across and everyone is listening
and watching him.
Then this being said, it is time
for the head of the car committee to go around the room and check on the
status of the cars that are still “in process”. Joe Ray says that he wants the guys to be
short and sweet on their updates, and he wants no excuses. This though would end up being the longest
part of the meeting as the guys get into elaborate stories as to why their
cars are not done and the rest of the club gives their opinion on the
matters. I guess from this process
that certain members have a history of giving sob stories and making excuses
to why certain things are not done on their cars. And then there a few members who are in the
club that have not even built a lowrider yet.
Joe Rodriguez mentioned to me that in the car club at the moment are
35 cars that are competition ready and 15 cars that are not. That means that those 15 members cannot
fly the club colors or the club plaque on their car. Also all the cars are classic lowriders
such as Impalas, Riveras or other Chevy cars, and there are even Cadillacs,
but basically no car after 1979. He
said that the club has certain standards for modifications to the cars and
the car committee does have the final say on what the member does to the
car. The car committee also challenges
certain members to finish the work on his car and also tries to motivate
them. Joe Ray particularly challenges
a young Chicano/Flipino guy in his early 20s, who has a ’59 Chevy convertible
and all that has been done is the frame of the car. Joe Ray tells him that he needs to think
about why he got into the car club in the first place because so far he has
done nothing to his car and he appears to have no interest. Joe Ray tells him forcefully, “Where is
your motivation? You need to look at
yourself and your whole life and ask yourself that question. You build the car yourself and you got into
the car club yourself. Get off your
butt and do the car or throw in the towel and get of club because at the
moment, you are doing nothing.” The young guy
looks at him the whole time he is talking with a bit of arrogant
attitude, and this exchange reminds me of a father trying to motivate his son
to get his life together. Joe Ray then
talks about how it takes pride to “fly your machine” and how it is an issue
of respect. You get respect for being
in the club, having your Lifestyle plaque and also for having a nice ride.
And every member reflects on the club, therefore he is going to keep each
member “on check”. Finally, the wrapping up of the meeting was supposed to
start, now it was about 10:30 pm. Joe Ray mentioned that if any member is
late to the Azalea Festival that they would be fined or swatted. Swatting is something that I would
experience first hand in a few minutes, but Joe Ray continues to try to
motivate his members. He also mentions the importance of grooming future
leadership in the younger generation.
He says that he used to be a lot stricter with the club, but he is
mellowing out in his old age. I think
to myself what exactly “mellow” means to him, as I again notice the
generation gap between the club members.
And at the young age of 43, Joe Ray is the “veterano” who is respected
and admired for having given twenty-five years of his life to this club and
to the lowriding scene.
It was now time for the swatting
to begin. The Sergeant of Arms a young
Chicano in his 20s steps forward carrying a large black wooden paddle with
the name Lifestyle etched on it. He says
that he is going to go through the list of members who need to pay their
fines and be swatted. If someone is
late or misses a meeting, it is $25 and apparently if your fines are then
over $15, you are “swatted” with the paddle. There are three members who are
swatted during this meeting. It works something like this; the guy being
punished walks to the center of the car club circle, bends over and then
receives one swift hard smack on his ass by the Sergeant of Arms. .
One guy tries to negotiate his way out the swat, he said the club knew
he was having money problems and okayed the fact that he would be late with
the money he owes. But, The Sergeant
of Arms says that the rule is that if you owe more than $15, then you get
swatted—no exceptions. So, the guy has
to bend over and get his smack. As
this was happening, I was trying hard not to laugh at the absurdity of this
ritual, that reminded me of something that frat boys do, but I had to
suppress it since everyone was so serious.
This was not a laughing matter to the guys in Lifestyle. And it also
something that not too many car clubs still do, it is a throw back to old
days when the car clubs were run like “gangs on wheels”.
After the meeting ended, Joe Ray
walked over to my dad and I and said that he was sorry if any of the language
offended us, but his club is dedicated to “keeping it real”. Joe Ray thanked us for coming to the
meeting and then asked me to notice that there are few wedding bands on the
guys which means it is hard to have relationships with women and also be in a
car club. He also told me that many of
the guys are divorced because of their dedication to the club. Also, that the dedication is so fierce that
their wallets are thin from putting so much money into their cars. This fact speaks to the dedication of the
guys in the club, but also speaks to how one’s family life at home
suffers. I am reminded of something
that the artist Mr. Cartoon said about Lifestyles’
philosophy in regards to lowriding:
Put it this
way, we pay the chrome bill before we pay the phone bill. We’re down like that. We lose sleep over what color we’re going
to paint our cars and how we’re going to affect the streets when we’re
rollin’ in our cars. We live our lives like that and we bounce off each other
because building a lowrider isn’t just about one person, it’s a unity of all
our friends. So for most of us here,
lowriding is our passion. It is
something we will always do (Lowrider Magazine, August 1999, 70).
My experience at Lifestyle’s meeting
was one instance when I see how each car club has different politics and also
a different philosophy toward lowriding.
For Lifestyle, it is about
dedicating your life to the club and to having your cars at a competitive
level. They only have one chapter
because they want to control the way they perceived on the lowrider
scene. And their cars are some the
best lowriders I have seen. They are
also one of the most respected lowrider clubs on the customizing scene and
they have a lot of prize-winning cars.
Yet this club, and there are other clubs out there like them, does not
integrate family into the car club. The car club comes first and family
second, therefore a member must be willing to sacrifice their family or have
a family that is very understanding.
Joe Ray can be overly dramatic, but his own life experience with the
club has cost him a lot. He reminds me
of the “Godfather” when he says,
“Lowriding is a sport. It’s a
hobby. It’s a lot of fun. It takes a serious commitment of time, you
get trapped, you’re stuck and you’re not gonna get out. I’m stuck real bad”
(interview by author, tape recording, Los Angeles,
CA, 6
May 1999).
Chicano Art and Culture
Pachucos and Lowriders
“It is the secret fantasy of every bato in or out of the chicanada to
put on a zoot suit and play the myth mas chucote que la Chingada.” Luis Valdez, Zoot Suit (1981)
El
Pachuco: Man or Myth?
The pachuco is |