I actually had to work last Saturday.
For whatever reason, I looked up at the BART station sign as I squinted in the September sunrise light. Flashing on the older red of the Fruitvale station screens said something about there being a lowrider show in The Mission starting at 1pm. It was the weekend after Mexican Independence Day, the kick off of Hispanic Heritage Month.
There’s sadly not much of a discussion between the connections between Black and Latine populations and our parallel car cultures, especially in California. Honestly, I’ll always feel at home at a Lowrider show. I remember when a different set of anti-cruising laws targeted a community I belonged to; El Camino as it blends into San Carlos in San Jose lead the way to East San Jo.
On lazy nights, with no particular place to go, parade of preserved often Chevrolets, often Impalas took up space. I’m none too sure how exactly this went against suburban standards, but the practice was outlawed in the 1980’sThe soundtrack was always a mixture. In one channel of stereo was 283 or 327 Small Block V8’s burbling baritone to tenor notes through glasspacks, depending on the feathering of the driver’s foot on the pedal.
The sweetest of low and slow oldies more often of forgotten by the mainstream but much beloved in their romantic sentiment Black singers poured first from Radio stations. I wonder how Sylvia Chacon is doing these days. I’m sad that she’s not on the radio anymore taking requests dedicated to ones we love anymore. There’s many a Shirelles tune I’d love to send to one cute boy or another, well into my 40’s.
You should hear what they say about you, “cheat,” “cheat”
They say, they say you never never never been true (Cheat cheat)
Uh oh
It doesn’t matter what they say
I know I’m gonna love you any old way
What can I do when it’s true?
I don’t want nobody, nobody, no
I know I’m packing up and leaving soon. Despite pulling a 7 hour day after pulling off 45 in the 5 days before, I felt I owed it to myself to stall time a little bit. I was still apart of this world that’s defiant against the erasure that is the measure of progress in the Bay Area. I rarely come into San Francisco on the weekends for anything other than work. As I walked from the progression down 18th Street as the boundaries become less proximity to The Castro to the directness of The Mission, I was shocked at how white San Francisco really is now.
7 Blocks had to pass before I recognized I was what I feared since The Last Black Man in San Francisco debuted in theaters. I’ve become a ghost here, recognizing that I’m dead to the vast majority of the current world around me. It’s painful to realize also that I’m not; my heart still beats, my joints a bit sore from being on my feet doing photography AND a cooking demonstration for newly launching programming at a job I can’t wait to leave behind. Random emotions about the loves I might be permanently leave behind here ache in my forearms, wanting every last hug.
The world flowing away from Mission Street sometimes openly sneered at the random chrome creations that were seeking how to place themselves in the Festivities. I loudly overheard people complaining about the parade of lowriders blocking and delaying their WayMo. I’ve never been so tempted to trip people in my life. Other people took opportunities to have not-planned-for Garage Sales. They all peddled the best-worst markers of white San Francisco Hipsterdom down to the Blu-Ray Criterion Collection of David Lynch’s ‘best’ work. Maybe I’m not the ghoul here, maybe I eat enough garlic to fend off the vampires. The worst thing about that vampire dying is he clearly didn’t even have to bite anyone to make a fleet of new ones.
I found relief in the sky blue Thunderbird making its presence known. It turned right at 18th and Valencia, the driver and car itself seemingly joined by hands on wheel in the confusion of the crowds going the wrong way. Why was everyone heading to Dolores Park, to do the same thing they always do, when something special was happening to the East? I have to remember the vast number of people that call San Francisco home now are people that went “west” to “find themselves.”
Too often they found that they’re the same person they left behind in whatever place they found too ordinary (probably suburban Ohio) or too tough to make it as an individual, speaking to their lack of talent (we all know I’m looking down my nose at all of those New York ‘artists’ here).
A confused Monte Carlo drove north on Mission. Across the street, strangled by the frame of 18th and Mission being a shadow of its former self was the defiance I remember. I remember all the places I was brought in to sit down and take space. Some jams blaring out of the Sound Systems reminded me of the days of my Aunt Stephanie dragging me along for babysitting money as she chased boys at Festival at the Lake. Last time I was at Lake Merritt, the horrific inverse I confronted the fun house mirror version. I got chased for all the wrong reasons sexually by someone in clear mental distress. Distress that is too often ignored on this land. It took an uncustomary drag of a vape and an edible to come down from that. I sit for a few moments everyday, looking at the mental health of Black people in the Bay Area. I know I have to leave before it too drives me crazy.
I passed a peach 1965 Impala. The art of the custom interior made my blood pressure drop. I love that among the problematics of late 60’s full sized Chevrolets, they are excellent canvases. By sheer production numbers, often over a million a year between 1965 and 1969, left many people with 18 foot long blank canvases. At this stage, No 1965 Chevrolet Impala is exactly the same, despite their used Toyota Camry level ubiquity 50 years ago. None of the ones on this sterling Saturday in San Francisco were twins. Sure, they may have shared model year. Some might have had the same aforementioned 283 or 327 V8’s and Powerglide Automatics as the one parked next to them.
They also all had unique either true to original or vastly fantasia oriented reimagining of first run color combinations. The 1958 thru 1964 models share the same questionable for safety “X-Frame” but the bodies changed sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically over those 7 model years. The crowd is so condensed that I have little chance to really talk to anyone. I also probably look more like the token negro Mission Hipster, far past my sell date in terms of wardrobe to the crowd. I’m probably making the aesthetic choices worse shooting film. Who is holding onto an outmoded past while calling it tradition? The drive of “Tears of A Clown” plays out of a random 1967 DeVille Convertible. The universe has been playing a lot of jokes and some wild surprises lately.
I turn the corner to two more luxury convertibles. I smile at the Camelot Continental Convertible that have a couple of soul mate skeletons in the back seat. I wonder if their supernatural powers mean they can relax and cuddle in the back seat because I’m not too sure where their chauffer has gone. I pay a mild cursory glance to the 80’s Eldorado convertible before I return to the regularly scheduled program of nothing but Impalas.
I will say one thing I’ve always said is lowrider culture is such a rich glimpse into the multiple ways life was segregated in the American mid century. The reflection is a little clearer after some of the exhaust fumes of that era have cleared. It has, again, taken nearly 70 years to note the trends. It wasn’t necessarily that any of these Impalas were ‘good’ cars; Plymouths inherently were better known for their durability and engineering. Fords always had the ‘we were first’ manifest destiny prestige of being the company that put mostly white America on wheels. Chevrolets were originally upper middle class cars that found themselves at a loss against the more established Buick and Oldsmobiles when General Motors was formed. Chevrolets were barely a Sears equivalent, despite the equally conspicuous placement in almost every town.
Today, a new Chevrolet is basically vehicular Wal-Mart. Ford can still tout a bit more prestige as perhaps the Target equivalent. In the middle period of a full century, Chevrolets were easily bought to support the burgeoning white middle class. Thru a Cadillac-like annual styling change, however, it became very apparent when you didn’t keep up with the Joneses with a new Chevrolet. Engineering wise they could be pretty solid bets; there were often strong bones. Too often tho, planned obsolescence rears its ugly head in basically every Chevrolet.
The early Stovebolt Sixes had splash lubrication, which could lead to oil starvation. Don’t get me started on the oft paper-thin to literal thin paper gaskets that lead to legendary oil leaks decade after decade. The Corvair I just bought came with the warning to seal the footwell vents before the rainy season starts. Now I know the source of some more terminal Corvair rust. I wonder if the fleet of 1965 Impalas here are among the few that didn’t have motor mount problems. Ain’t no way I was gonna see a Chevette, Vega or Corsica this Saturday. I’m surprised Chevys aren’t more of a punchline than the mullets associated with Camaros or the erectile dysfunction associated with Corvette ownership.
All of these figurative and quite literal societal dick measuring contests are purely about how white America has consumed Chevrolets. It mirrors how most white people live in San Francisco. They bring the world another round of compulsory heterosexuality produced children and flee back to the Suburbs unless they discover in the process they’re queer. Then they go to rope tying courses, hoping to tie everyone else up in their hedonistic consumer madness, never really reflecting that they aren’t more than a cycle of commerce, not human beings. I stand among these Impalas and realize I’m not a ghost.
I realize that they’re reflections of making art of what you had. Black men with a good job and benefits my age were choosing that last generation Impala. That one had hints of the buxom hips that were on the 1965-68 models. It throwback that stayed on the market too long, almost as a form of neglect. SUVs and EVs that lagged behind the competition as much as the Camaro and Monte Carlo did got priority to chase white consumer dollars. Everyone kinda laughed at the fact that while I was trying to fit in to during snooping around Philly for housing, I rented a 2024 Malibu. By my observation, it is the official car of whatever the Lisa from Temecula equivalent stereotype is in West Philly. It was refreshing to be finally in a non-Altima dominant part of working class Black culture.
Similar, due to many societal statuses, Chicano culture in particular didn’t have access to the credit, or hell, citizenship to move beyond the discarded Chevrolets that the white middle class discarded. What I witnessed is one came into a family well worn. From there it was refurbished to be serviceable. While most Black folks ended there, waiting for their own opportunities to move up to a Olds or Buick, Chicano culture paid reverence a bit more deeply, a bit more often. Sometimes it was candy paint. Sometimes it was making it as stock as possible. The biggest thrill was the twitchy sensuality of hydraulics.
Chicano culture breathed life into what were ghosts of the white American middle class. The culture pridefully parades what was everyone else’s table scraps like its Beluga Caviar every chance they get. It was weird to realize legislation against that pride has mostly fallen off the books. There’s a molasses heavy ignorance by the overwhelming number of new ghosts on the land these common deities in metal rolled on once upon a time. I clocked how many had for sale signs on them, as I thought of the economics of this time.
I saw a lot of 559 area codes on those for sale signs.
This parade of common royalty had dynasty members that came in from Fresno. There’s a lot of defiance in spending 4 hours in dreadful interstate driving through the Central Valley and the insanity of Bay Area freeway traffic just to state “we’re still here, motherfucker.” I saw a similar thread at East Palo Alto’s Juneteenth in 2023. We’re still here but we actually aren’t. We aren’t dead, but the theme of trying to reclaim graveyards of ‘California Dreaming‘ makes the September sun feel like a winter’s day.
I finished my last frame. I decided to turn in the roll at Photoworks. I really wondered how much garlic I’ve been eating cause I made the whole trek without bite wounds on my neck. I went home, and finished the little zine I should have finished long ago. The same day the negatives came through, I negotiated to see what is now my 18th but honestly I’ve lost count, car. It’s another Corvair, as if Mike cast a spell of finding them in and around Baltimore. I knew I was saving that roll of Ektachrome for some reason.
I’m not here for long, but I’ll make sure to take all the pieces of this place that make me who I am with me. Chevrolet Impalas will always define defiance for me. I will not be disposed of.
