Published in the New York Times, December 4, 2015. Photo by Estevan Oriol.
In the Southern California lowrider scene, there are some clashes as to which country has adopted the Mexican-American culture with the most swag.
Some say that the lowriders in Tokyo have the West Coast style perfected. They hang with Nike Cortez track shoes and socks pulled to their knees as flawless Spanglish by Japanese rappers blasts from slick, curb-hugging Impalas. Others say the scene in São Paulo, Brazil, with its oversize Dodgers jerseys and tricked-out rides, is most true to lowriding’s Los Angeles roots.
Then again, the lesser-known scene in Jakarta, Indonesia, is stealing attention. There, row upon row of young people flash the occasional Westside sign as they ride sparkling low-to-the-ground bicycles, with an occasional female rider in a hijab.
It’s a head trip because, if one squints, each and every distant country’s lowrider bicycle or car scene looks as if it could have taken place on the West Coast within the last decade.
Lowriding, rooted in the Mexican-American subculture, emerged in the ’40s and ’50s, when car customization took off after World War II, and it hasn’t slowed since. It is common for lowriders to have hydraulics that make the cars gyrate and dance, plush velvet upholstery and murals that often reflect images from Mexican culture, perhaps a detailed rendering of an Aztec goddess or Our Lady of Guadalupe.
Over the years, the cars have been popularized in music, with the ’70s funk band War singing, “All my friends know the low rider/The low rider is a little higher,” and the ’90s and 2000s hip-hop group Cypress Hill’s song “Low Rider.” With the music came videos highlighting the ’90s style of loose tees, low and baggy pants and sleeves of black-and-gray tattoos sometimes incorporating Chicano-style skulls and roses. In time, YouTube videos, Instagram and Facebook spread the subculture globally.
Today lowriding has an active presence in American culture — and having something of a moment. A film called “Low Riders” starring Eva Longoria, adorned with a bandanna and gold-hoop earrings, is now in preproduction.
And on Dec. 7, after a yearlong hiatus, the Petersen Automotive Museum will reopen in Los Angeles, continuing its more than 20 years of exploring the car’s impact on American culture. It has a lowrider car exhibition. The 1964 Chevorlet Impala is head-turning with a flamingo and violet paint job, chrome-dipped engine and custom purple leather interior and hydraulics.
Hanko Hernandez, a custom car painter, has been working on hot rods, lowriders and Harleys for decades at his Hankos Kustom shop, which he recently relocated from Ventura to Santa Paula, Calif.
“People make whatever your imagination can build,” Mr. Hernandez said. “It’s really an art form. It’s style more than anything else.” He added that it started as part of Mexican-American culture but that it’s now all over the world.
The photographer and former pro skater Pep Williams is a Los Angeles native who says he was born into lowriding culture. He calls São Paulo his second home partly because of its welcoming lowrider scene.
“One thing I like about it in Brazil is they look tough, but they are so nice — the same as in Japan,” Mr. Williams said with a smile at Psych Ward, his Fairfax Avenue skate and clothing shop where he recently photographed the rapper Bow Wow for a magazine cover. “Creased pants, khakis sagging — but they are hugging you. It’s pretty cool. They have red rags, blue rags, but they don’t know you’re supposed to be enemies.”
Phuong-Cac Nguyen, a filmmaker and journalist in Los Angeles, was introduced to lowriding several years ago when she was in downtown São Paulo. “I saw these two guys, and they were dressed in the cholo-style that I was familiar with growing up in L.A.,” Ms. Nguyen said. She got closer and realized the men were speaking fluent Portuguese. She wondered, she said, “Are they American-Brazilian-Mexicans?”
At a nearby mall, she discovered a shop with Dodgers gear and Nike Cortez sneakers. “I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what is this?’” she said. “A shop clerk explained Chicano-style culture had taken root there.”
She had to get it on film. Ms. Nguyen’s documentary, “South American Cho-Low,” surveying the lowriding culture in São Paulo, had its debut this year. The world she captures looks as if it could have been torn from the pages of a lowrider style guide, with Brazilians dressed in oversize muscle T-shirts tattooed with the letters L.A. or an 8-ball as they watch an Impala dance.
In the documentary, Antonio Carlos Batista Filho, nicknamed Alemao (German) because of his light skin and blue eyes, is credited as Brazil’s ambassador for lowrider style. Mr. Alemao, who designs for international brands as well as the Brazilian men’s line Otra Vida, wears his mustache long and his head shaved and has black-and-gray tattoos across his arms and chest.
He was drawn to the working-class values and devotion to family that is part of lowrider culture — plus he liked the style, with its dickeys and baggy shirts. It was inexpensive and broke away from the mainstream.
He tells the camera, in Portuguese: “You learn something new every day — the Internet and books are things that keep you updated or help answer questions. Maintaining the cultural element is my biggest quest.”
The photographer Estevan Oriol is a renowned figure in the lowriding scene. For years, he was the Cypress Hills tour manager. “I’ve been to Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Bangkok, Australia, Sweden, London, Japan,” Mr. Oriol said, and there is, he said, a lowrider scene in all of those places.
It’s not uncommon for someone to fly Mr. Oriol and his partner — the tattoo and graffiti artist Mr. Cartoon — to display work in galleries in cities as far apart as London and Taipei. When they get to a new place, they scope out the tattoo shops, examine the cars and go to the local cruise night.
“Some people out there say it’s funny what they are doing, bouncing cars over there,” Mr. Oriol said. “Then they see how hard they have worked to get all the parts, and the work they have put into it, and they are, like, that’s [expletive] cool.”