Another night on the boulevard

Streets are more than just a route from one place to another. They're a public space where history happens. Where people from all classes and all backgrounds interact equally walking, biking, driving, or just cruising. Opp Now applauds SJ’s recent abandonment of its anti-Lowrider ordinance because, hey, the streets are for everybody. We perused a few academic journals and websites to celebrate The Return of the Lowrider to our calles.

It began with Dukes Car Club in Tijuana, 1956.

Rhetorician–student Francisco Ortega gives us a little history lesson on lowriders in the Golden State: 

In its simplest sense as known in the public realm, a lowrider is an old lowered car which might even bounce, and is driven by someone who has brown skin. I argue, however, that the lowrider is much more than that: it extends a car; it extends a person… Lowriding is a cultural movement… This particular lifestyle has its roots in the borderland cities—and although there is debate as to where it began, Francisco “Pancho” Gonzalez documents the historical Dukes Car Club as having started in the year 1956, in the border city of Tijuana, Baja California (qtd. in Pulido, 2014, 26:25). (pp. 7–8)

Read the whole thing here.

And the gov't pushback began almost immediately.

In his 2011 book entitled Lowriders in Chicano Culture: From Low to Slow to Show, Charles Tatum narrates how in the late ‘50s, California banned lowriders statewide in efforts to squelch lowrider culture:

Media coverage suggested that cruisers were gangs of roving criminals threatening white residents. Although it is probably true that there were some gang members among the lowriders, the media coverage was grossly exaggerated to the point of causing a public outcry. Pressure on politicians resulted in the California legislature passing a law in 1959 prohibiting the use of any vehicle with any part of it below the rim base. (p. 11)

Read the whole thing here.

SJ City Hall put the hammer down.

The Mercury News describes how lowriders were outlawed locally in San Jose several decades ago, local governance primarily citing safety factors:

In 1986, the city banned cruising over concerns of traffic congestion, criminal activity and the “environment of fear” it was creating — a heavy blow to lowriders who would regularly cruise up and down Story and King roads in East San Jose back in the 1970s and 80s.

Read the whole thing here.

But the beat goes on.

The Long Beach band War’s song “Low Rider,” which peaked at #1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 1975, soulfully celebrates the lowrider lifestyle embedded in many locals’ Chicano culture:

All my friends know the low rider
The low rider is a little higher

Low rider drives a little slower
Low rider is a real goer

Low rider knows every street, yeah
Low rider is the one to meet, yeah

Low rider don't use no gas now
Low rider don't drive too fast

Take a little trip, take a little trip
Take a little trip and see
Take a little trip, take a little trip
Take a little trip with me

Watch the whole thing here.

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