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Lowrider Space By Ben Chappell |
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 >>
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