Meet Your Neighbors: A lesson on lowriders from the Mission's past

Last month we brought you an interview with local filmmaking team Peter and Benjamin Bratt about their latest film, “La Mission”:

LA MISSION TRAILER: The thing about lowriding is that we don’t really go anywhere, we just take our time getting there, you know what I’m saying? Low and slow…

The film shows off the Mission District in all its splendor, highlighting the colorful murals, local musicians, quirky neighborhood characters, and a vibrant lowrider subculture. That last one puzzled KALW’s Martina Castro, because she has lived near the Mission for over a year, and she’s never seen any of those lowrider cars.

The Bratt brothers explained that the lowriders in the film were more of a throwback to when they were growing up in San Francisco:

BENJAMIN BRATT: The lowriding phenomenon had its heyday in the mid to late 70s, and then all left turns off Mission street, from 16^th up to 30^th, were completely illegalized.

PETER BRATT: And they were put there specifically to stop the lowrider trains that would happen every weekend. I mean, the lowrider trains were so long you couldn’t even see the end of them, and it was where a lot of young Latinos came and gathered.

One of those young Latinos was John Castillo. Castillo was born and raised in the Mission, and for this segment of Meet Your Neighbors, Martina asked him to give her a lesson on this vibrant subculture from the Mission’s past.

*     *     *

MARTINA CASTRO: I live on a busy block of shops and restaurants right on the border between the Castro and Mission Districts. My apartment is above the local coffee shop, the Church Street Café. And you can meet most - if not all - of the local characters right there. Every day a group of regulars – mostly men – sits at a couple of tables out front, and they stay there for hours.

When I leave in the morning, I say hello, we exchange a joke or two about where I’m headed. And then at night when I get home, often the same guys will be sitting there, so I tell them how my day went.

And like that we’ve kept an almost daily back and forth going for over a year. We’ve talked about my life, my job, my roommates. On the days they see me lugging my surfboard, we’ll talk about the waves and someone will invariably make a shark joke. When they see me carting in my laundry, they’ll hold open the door. One of them calls me mija, which literally means “my daughter” in Spanish. He was the first to comfort me when my purse got stolen at the restaurant two doors down.

These guys know more about me than some of my co-workers or friends. And until last week, we didn’t even know each other’s names.

I figured it was about time to start sticking around for more than a quick hello or goodbye.

CASTRO: Okay, let me test it out…tell me your name…

JOHN CASTILLO: John Castillo.

So that’s the guy who calls me “mija”, but everyone calls him Johnny. He’s the jokester with a quick wit and easy sense of humor. We sit down to chat over a cup of coffee.

CASTILLO: I grew up and was raised in the Mission. Like 24^th street…

Castillo tells me that back when he was growing up, the Mission was a very different place. There was a movement afoot, and he says it all started in the late 70s, with a movie called Boulevard Nights.

CASTILLO: So this movie came out Boulevard nights, and all the latinos in the mission, they wanted to see this, what was this crazed movie all about, and right there was the lowriders.

The lowriders he’s talking about are the cars and subculture that Chicanos in Los Angeles had started in the 60s. Guys would supe up classic Chevys or Cadillacs, and redesign them to lay as low to the ground as possible, hence the term lowrider. They typically had state of the art stereo systems, and flashy artwork on their hoods. They also used hydraulic shocks get over speed bumps, or to just jump up and down to the music.

CASTILLO: The invention of the hydraulics for the low riders was in San Francisco. Why? San Francisco had a lot of hills, and they needed to get the cars back up and down the hills.

Well, there’s no way to be totally sure of that. But the fact is, lowriders did slowly become the center of social life in the Mission, and Castillo says it was a happening scene.

CASTILLO: We had theaters, we had drive-in diners, and the lowriders would go to these places, and they would park their cars and play their boom boxes. And people were out there playing their music, old-style music, like the 50s, you know, it was a hip era!

There were car clubs…

CASTILLO: The Low Creations, The Low and Slow, Las Estrellas, Frisco’s Finest…

They would work together on their cars during the week, and come Friday night, it was time for the cruise:

CASTILLO: The cruise on the Mission, first of all, was about a mile long, okay? You’re talking 19^th street to Army Street, and to get from one end to the other took you about an hour and a half.

CASTRO: How slow were they going?

CASTILLO: How slow you wanna go?

CASTRO: Was that the whole point? Go as slow as you want to go?

CASTILLO: The stoplights, they were great! They helped us. Buses couldn’t go through, ambulances had trouble going to the Mission, police department didn’t know if they were coming or going -- it was great!

Cruises ended up at empty lots where the party continued, until the police would arrive and break it up.

CASTILLO: it was a cat and mouse game between lowrider and cop, and cop against lowrider. Aw, it was beautiful!

Johnny Castillo confesses that his car was more of a jalopy than the works of art that were in the lowrider car clubs, but he said it was enough to get him in the scene. Besides, he was there for one thing, and one thing only:

CASTILLO: My main thing was hanging out!

That’s still Castillo’s main thing these days here at the coffee shop, but he says these are very different times.

CASTILLO: It was an interesting era, people were family-oriented, people knew each other, neighborly-wise, and that flavor is gone. It’s gone.

Nowadays, there’s no sign of that vibrant lowrider culture in the Mission, and the theaters and diners that Castillo grew up going to are long gone.

CASTRO: But you’re still around. Is there a piece of it that is still alive for you?

CASTILLO: Memory lane. Memory lane is the only thing that keeps me alive.

Castillo went on from his days in the lowrider scene to a long career as a pressman with the San Francisco Chronicle. Last year the Chronicle decided to outsource its printing, so Castillo was laid off after 28 years on the job.

CASTILLO: It was my career, I was into the printing business, and I loved the art of printing, which now is a dinosaur trade, just like the lowrider. It’s a dinosaur. We are now dinosaurs.

The Mission District is experiencing a new wave of culture today, but Castillo isn’t interested in that. He’s preoccupied with the Mission’s past and keeping it alive through conversations like these.

CASTRO: Well, it has been so nice talking to you Johnny…

CASTILLO: No problem, mija, and I hope we talk again about the Mission.

In San Francisco’s Mission District, I’m Martina Castro for Crosscurrents.