COOLEST SHOW IN VAN NUYS
LOWRIDERS AND CUSTOM CAR AFICIONADOS GATHER REGULARLY TO SHOW OFF THEIR ‘BABIES.’ WHY CRUISING IS HOPPING AGAIN
EV E R Y C A R worth showing off has a story. ¶ Consider Mike Molina’s powder-blue 1972 E-100 Econoline Ford van, which he inherited after his father and then his mother died during the early months of the pandemic. Parked on Van Nuys Boulevard, the in-process remodel looks a bit out of sorts, not quite as polished as the other lowriders and vintage cars drifting by. But it emotes a certain character, in the way a well-loved car often does. ¶ “It’s a rare find, because it’s a shorty box, no windows,” Molina says of his father’s van. “So in his memory, I’m keeping it. It runs perfect.”
Molina is one of dozens of car lovers drawn to Van Nuys Boulevard for a long-running cruise night. It’s a monthly meetup of lowrider and custom vehicle owners but also a street party. Onlookers post up on the sidewalk, sometimes with folding chairs and coolers. The sounds of funk, freestyle and R&B oldies ooze loudly from passing cars. Masks are mandated, at least on the fliers. Sometimes people get up and boogie.
Cruising is back in a major way all around Southern California.
“It’s culture and it’s history, because my dad used to cruise Van Nuys Boulevard in this van,” says Molina, 52, who reliably blasts music for the cruisers. “And then I saw the Van Nuys cruise night open up again.”
The custom of leisurely drives on urban boulevards in dropped and dolled-up vehicles never really left, but cruising is reaching heights not seen since the heydays of the 1980s and ’90s, according to interviews with car owners, law enforcement officials, neighbors and aficionados across SoCal.
Somehow, despite the awful toll of the coronavirus on Latinos in L.A. County, the cruising phenomenon has ratcheted up even further in the last year, police and participants say.
Call it a function of collective boredom during months of stay-athome orders. Social-distancing guidelines in the last year have also made vehicle caravans the new normal for birthdays, protests, graduations and funerals.
Lona and Ed Aguirre drove to the Van Nuys cruise night from Antelope Valley in her “baby” — a tangerine and pearl white 1951 “Shoebox” Ford sedan, with “suicide doors“and a creamy leather interior.
“It’s a full custom. Everything’s been touched,” Ed says of his wife’s car.
She can also drop her vehicle. “It’s a hidden button,” Lona says. “We have six grown children, so I needed a toy.”
She watches as several vehicles on the boulevard hop up their front tires, using custom hydraulic compressors activated by a switch. The cars bounce on the asphalt, practically defying gravity at the top of each arc. People on the sidewalk cheer and take videos or photos to share instantly on social media.
“It’s all about fun,” says Lona, 56, “the love of the cars, the love of the culture.”
But there are other shifts. The iconography of West Coast-style vintage lowrider cars is embedded all over popular culture, from films to music videos, video games, museums, marketing and even the digital NFT art world. SoCal-style lowrider adherents flourish in Japan, Brazil and Europe.
“Pretty much everything in lowriding has flipped around,” says L.A. director and photographer Estevan Oriol, a leading lowrider documentarian. “I would say right now is the third biggest wave in lowriding. The past five to 10 years, there’s been a resurgence.”
Arman Utudzhyan, standing on the sidewalk on a Saturday night for another Van Nuys cruise, marvels at how much has changed on the streets of Los Angeles since he first got into the scene. Violent crime, despite persistent spasms, is still dramatically lower today than the clatter of violence that once characterized large regions of the L.A. basin.
“Back in the ’80s, they used to jack you for these cars,” says Utudzhyan, who belongs to the Majestics car club and owns a wrecking yard in Sun Valley.
Indeed, with a glint of pride, he remembers the night he survived an attempted carjacking of his 1984 Cadillac coupe lowrider. “They couldn’t take it.
“Shoot me, then,” he told his assailants that night in Hollywood in 1988. So they did.
Utudzhyan, now 49, survived the incident with a permanent indentation in his calf, which he confirms by pulling up a pant leg.
And now he drives something arguably a little better.
His 1960 Chevrolet Impala lowrider, painted verde chiaro, an earthy and inviting green, has the sheen of a trophy. Admirers seem magnetically drawn to it when it is parked.
Today, Utudzhyan is trying to get younger motorists interested in the craft of maintaining a vintage vehicle, so he’s building a new lowrider with a nephew.
“He’s 16. I got a Cadillac for him. Keeps him busy, gets him out of trouble,” the lowrider says.
VA N N U Y S Boulevard and the San Fernando Valley are part of a constellation of historic nodes of lowrider culture in Southern California. Though Lowrider magazine ended its print run last year, by then, the web and social media had stepped up with easy networks for car clubs to get together.
Lately, cruises or lowrider meetups happen every weekend across the region, from Oxnard to Riverside, San Diego to Lancaster. The fountainhead of the culture remains Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, a place that is almost treated like a shrine for SoCal lowrider clubs.
“I hear people saying lowriding is making a comeback. It’s never gone,” says Juan Ramirez, a member of the Just Memories Car Club and an organizer with the Los Angeles Lowrider Community coalition.
But he acknowledges that fresh popularity is drawing people to the cruises with no cars to show off at all. “A lot of people are starting to adapt to this culture,” Ramirez says. “It’s crazy now.”
The car club gatherings have also been drawing other types of vehicles driven by a younger set of motorists influenced more by the “Fast and the Furious” franchise than the 1979 barrio classic “Boulevard Nights.”
Last summer, Ramirez and his coalition of veteranos had to call off the East L.A. cruise night centered on Whittier Boulevard because other motorists were swarming the surrounding parking lots and residential streets. The gathering returned in late August after local leaders negotiated among car clubs, residents and law enforcement in East Los Angeles.
Official L.A. has had a love-hate relationship with the culture for generations. Law enforcement and city governments have long sought to crack down on the practice, with