The New York Times Wheels Blog :: Lowrider Space

Lowrider Space

By Ben Chappell

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The New York Times Wheels blog talks to Lowrider Space author Ben Chappell:

"Lowriding is a social medium. That’s the message brought by an anthropologist who has spent years looking at those curb crawling, brightly painted, hydraulically athletic vehicles that have become a familiar image of Hispanic culture across the Sun Belt.

Ben Chappell, author of Lowrider Space: Aesthetics and Politics of Mexican American Custom Cars (University of Texas Press) and an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Kansas, discovered the world of lowriding when he was in graduate school at the University of Texas in Austin. 'It’s about taking your car out in a caravan and making sure that people see it out in public,' Mr. Chappell said. 'A lot of time, it involves finding an empty parking lot late at night and just hanging out. It’s a chance to talk about the cars, but also discuss what’s going on in the community. It was really a public sphere where people were talking about what was going on in their lives.'"

Read the full interview at wheels.blogs.nytimes.com >>