AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The colorful, customized cars known as lowriders are celebrated in a lot of American communities. In New Mexico, efforts are underway to get state funding for a lowrider museum. Katerina Barton reports from Lowrider Day last weekend in Santa Fe.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: This is a little ranchera. This is called "Yo (ph)."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KATERINA BARTON, BYLINE: On the historic plaza at the heart of Santa Fe, more than a hundred brightly colored cars show off their candy paint jobs, chrome rims, custom detailing and hydraulics.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR LIFTING WITH HYDROLICS)
BARTON: Joan Medina from Chimayo, New Mexico, stands in front of a glittering, magenta car with a tank top to match.
JOAN MEDINA: So my car is a 1987 Pontiac Grand Prix, and it's all flaked out with, like, a magenta-color fuchsia with a little bit of blue flake in there, so it looks like purpley (ph). So it always turns heads. It's sparkling all over town (laughter).
BARTON: She's been lowriding since she was 12 years old, and now she's president of the Espanola Lowrider Association.
J MEDINA: Everybody has their own style. We call it estilo. And our style is very unique and different.
BARTON: Espanola, a town of about 10,000 people, calls itself the lowrider capital of the world. Other places, like southern California, might dispute that. But people in northern New Mexico have long been trying to build a lowrider museum, and now they're hoping for state funding to help. Joan's husband, Low Low Medina, is proud of the local estilo.
LOW LOW MEDINA: I call it a flavor, man, like cooking. You know, you got to put the right recipe in order to make it taste good. You know what I'm saying? And that's the way it's got to be with painting and working out with a lowrider movement.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing in Spanish).
BARTON: Casey Montoya, an organizer of the show in Santa Fe, thinks it's time the multigenerational lowrider culture here gets more recognition.
CASEY MONTOYA: Some of our great-grandparents have been driving the cars. Even if it wasn't with hydraulics and stuff like that, they've been customizing them and fixing them to a point.
BARTON: A study by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs this year found that a museum could attract tens of thousands of annual visitors. Local lawmakers are still searching for funding to keep the project rolling.
For NPR News, I am Katerina Barton in Santa Fe.
(SOUNDBITE OF WAR SONG, "LOW RIDER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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