More than 10,000 people attended the Annual Arizona Lowrider Super Show at the Phoenix Convention Center near the Downtown campus this weekend.
People from all over the Southwest attended the event, which celebrated its 30th year, showcasing hundreds of lowrider vehicles and live musical performers.
Event coordinator Johnny Lozoya, a Phoenix resident, said the lowrider movement has made unprecedented strides with hosting its 30th annual motorsport show.
“Arizona is the second biggest lowrider market in the world,” Lozoya said. “We have generations of folks who have been coming to this event for many years. They used to bring their wives here, now they bring their kids and grandkids here.”
Lozoya said he has never before seen the lowrider movement have so many generations involved. He said lowrider culture now transcends at least four to five different generations.
“This [event] gives you a sense of community of what is going on not only in Phoenix, but the Southwest,” Lozoya said. “It’s a culture within a culture.”
He started putting together the Lowrider Super Show when he worked with Lowrider Magazine in the late 1970s. His interest can be attributed to his involvement with car clubs early on in his life. His passion for cars led him to develop a progressive image for lowriders.
Sonny Madrid, a San Jose, California native, founded Lowrider Magazine in the late 1970s to accommodate the growing lowrider culture. He said there was a strong need for a publication that served young Latino and African-American youth.
“Thirty years ago, it was a lot different,” Madrid said. “The hip-hop culture has diversified the young Latino look.”
Today’s lowriders put more of an emphasis on personal style, but they still support the classic lowrider vehicle, he said.
Phoenix resident Michael Lopez said the image has changed but thinks people involved with lowriding are still like a family.
“The impact is big,” Lopez said. “A lot of people come out. It’s a family event.”
Lopez said lowriding has always been a part of his life since he started building models when he was younger. As he got older, he worked on saving money, investing $25,000 and one-and-a-half years of his life into the lowrider car he has now.
“I love to build cars,” Lopez said. “For the car to come out to something nice, to start from scratch, it’s so beautiful.”
He built the car from scratch and brought it independently to showcase its interior and stereo system as well as to see some of the other cars involved with the event.
Lozoya said a lot of planning went into the event to make it successful, but contributes its success to the number of visitors who came out.
“The most important part of this event was the visitors, because without them we wouldn’t be here,” Lopez said. “We could be without a convention center, we could be without a lot of the entertainment here, but we could not exist without the exhibitors.”
Reach the reporter at dbjoraas@asu.edu.
