 All my cars have to have good steriles. I mean loud steriles. You got to feel the music. Hey, do some hopping. Your ban on cruising in National City is over. In just two weeks, many men and women are planning to join the low and slow cruise in the streets of National City. Keep going. My name is Vincent Palacios. I grew up in Paradise Hills. I moved here in 1976. I have a lowrider shop. It doesn't take care of all the bills, but it's an enjoyment to see people drive away like they got a new toy on Christmas. All my kids have all cruised with me. My youngest son helps me at the shop and is like really involved in the lowriding community. This one doesn't hop. I mean I can play with it, but it doesn't hop. Not meant for hopping. Yeah. Oh my God. Now she's going to get stuck. You're going to see a bunch of other cars like this. So go there. Y'all know the address? I can type it in my phone. I think if you look up Chicano parking, it should. Yeah, bring this girl. All right. Back in 82, the lowriding, yeah, it was a lot more funer. This whole area right here on your right would just get packed with people. All the lowriders were parking this parking lot and it would get crazy over here. So lowriding was really born, you know, after World War II and there was a sort of rise in car culture activities and cruising and demolition derbies and custom culture. Chicanos have definitely been key in popularizing lowriding, but I think you begin to see in the 90s, particularly here in LA like anti-cruising ordinances, cracking down right on cruising, cracking down on if a certain amount of black men or brown men would be hanging out in the street. We called those gang injunctions which they could be gang members or it could just be a group of friends or a club hanging out. The police could use that to sort of crack down. So that's when you sort of see those cruising ordinances really being put into effect here. It wasn't until like the 90s the police started harassing us. They put signs up on Highland Avenue and said cruising is prohibited and they would actually measure with a cigarette pack. If it was lower than a cigarette pack, then you were illegal. Why pick up one style of car or one race? It's unfair, big time. I've grown up seeing the cruising ban and always wondering why really was it banned and why my dad's generation of low-riding wasn't able to express themselves anymore. I think one of the reasons about like cruising is that it's sort of slowing down traffic. Just even during the pandemic it got shut down. People that come and do the donuts and motorcycles and then it became this public nuisance and so I think it's always attention. I couldn't even tell you the age of when I started going cruising. It's been all my life. It goes from cruising with your dad in the back seat with your parents to building model car kits. This weekend is Chicano Park Day coming up this Saturday one of the biggest events in San Diego in the low-rider community. After three years of either no celebrations or a virtual one, Chicano Park Day is back in full force. The ban in Highland. It made Chicano Park even more popular because nobody wanted to go down to Highland because of the cops. Straight now, straight now, straight now. Okay, now straight. Hey, did we get a good spot or what? Chicano Park, that was the people's park. So cruising on Chicano Park that never stopped. Chicano Park Day is really to commemorate the fights all those years ago back in the 70s to keep this park here. If this park wasn't here, you wouldn't be able to show off your car or your Chicano culture. Tell me about that. This is kind of the epicenter in San Diego for low-riding. So we enjoy coming out here and we don't go to harass or nothing. It's beautiful out here. Awesome. Thank you so much. It's good to have today. I've only been going since the late 80s. I can tell you for sure because of the community it's in. That community has really evolved. Today I think what is different with cruising is that low riders are trying to work with their local cities to sort of end the anti-cruising ordinances. Like they've been successful in Sacramento, in San Jose, and also in National City just recently, which is out there by San Diego. But there's still a California anti-cruising ordinance that's in existence. So the work right now is to sort of end the anti-cruising ordinance in California and then for local cities to find a way for low riders to work with law enforcement to have sort of a cruising space that is not a public nuisance. We are off to go see Jovita and Rabbit. Rabbit I've known probably 20, 30 years plus. He used to be in a car club called in Alvita. She's more of the person who talked to me about the repeal in National City. How was he kind of like? Crazy, crazy, crazy. But everybody's been craving it for four years because of COVID. It was even hard to walk down the aisles to look at cars. Mr. Rabbit Vincent This one's a hard one to get right here. Yes, that was especially after the mayor took them all down. People were stealing them. They invited everybody over there and it becomes like a community really fast. Literally we had papers and questions and we wrote down I think number one was do we bring crime? Do we cause problems? That's what we're trying to address so that when we do go to like a community event that doesn't happen no more. You know, when we started all we wanted to do was repeal the ordinance. Yeah. We got text messages within seconds Congratulations, congratulations. Wow, you guys did it. What a historical moment. Well, you know, so my son's so younger, right? So I've been like saving the paper and little things because he'll be able to brag or whatever. My dad helped repeal the criminal cruising and all that stuff. Owning a car is like injuring your house, your car and I think that low-riding is a great example to me just like hip-hop right of like people use culture to tell their stories to mark space in the United States to say this is what makes us unique. Everybody to downtown Paradise Hill so we just thank you for the sunny afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen let the cruising begin. For me low-riding is just enjoying going out on a nice day and hanging out with my friends and hearing great music. It's a way of life. I don't think low-riding is ever going to die in our family it's just something we've always loved and enjoyed expressing ourselves.