Lowrider
I always liked the local version, in San Antonio, “Move your switches — not your mouth!”
Seen here.
And I can’t locate the images from previous excursions.
In Austin, warm spring night, I was walking home from a gig at the convention center. I’d packed up about midnight, slow stroll home in the torpid spring heat. A car club was bouncing a late 50’s Chevy, fins and all, chrome undercarriage, ground effects lighting, bouncing the car, maybe up to three feet, perhaps more, in the air.
Hopping.
I realized, later, that most summer nights, a long line of cars cruised past the old Shady Acres Trailer Park. While I didn’t have a front row seat, it was a spectacle to behold, not more than a hundred meters from my front door.
Gradually, over years of exposure — predominately in San Antonio’s South Side, but with some other experiences in New Mexico — as well as any part of my southwest, the rolling artwork, the majesty of the Lowrider.
Begs a tune, no?
There were two standout pieces at the Museums in Santa Fe, as the Lowrider — curated — display was spread across several locations.
Car Carino
One was a pair of images from Marie Simpson, if I recall, raised on the reservation, and her version combined a vintage El Camino, done in solid black like a brand of native pottery. The two images of the truck–ette were also fixed with native dancers, or two figures that appeared to be native dancers, at casual glance. Instead, they were females, and the native hoops and bands of shaped willow and rawhide were replaced with auto–parts. Remarkable work.
There was a touch of the exotic and erotic in those two images. Not overtly so, just, like a hint, a hooded stare.
The second piece that was amusing, to me, was a table–sized spin on the little figures that I see from Central America, the little carved animals, some of mythic proportions and shapes. This was a folklore rendering of a dashboard of a Lowrider, with green Cholla cactus, carved wood to represent that, as a sort–of steering wheel. All carved and done up in that gaily-colored pastel flavors, all too common. For me, as it looked like the dash and two seats, the kicker?
The windscreen depicted a scene of highway with the Santa Cruze exit, just up ahead. The rear view mirror had an image of a skeleton riding in a bed, merrily chasing the driver.
“But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.”
- Excerpt From: T. S. Eliot. “The Waste Land.” Line 185–6
Which is funnier as that’s an allusion buried in an allusion.
A ’50 Mercury, tagged “50 MERC” squatted in the front of one of the museum’s entrance, as fine a pieced of art as any pictures or paintings. Just more examples of the art and craft.
Another car was simply tagged, “FAMILIA,” Family to those who can’t figure out the Spanish.
Monte Carlo
Lowrider
Dashboard
“Slow–ride, take it easy” — cf. Scorpio for more car culture.
