The Hotel Chimayo's Impala dropping it down. But my Impala? She’s not only anonymous, but unadorned. It’s a part of the owner’s family, their story, and the paint job often reflects that, articulating stories of passion, sorrow, pain, and humor, iconographies of faith, struggle, redemption, and community.
Most lowriders are personal labors of love, painstakingly put together after spending countless hours and even more cash scavenging for parts. She doesn’t have a name, which is unusual for a lowrider, a term that refers both to a car whose suspension has been lowered to inches off the ground, and the person driving it. But ask nicely, and she’ll drop her back down low, and maybe-with the flip of a switch that controls her hydraulics-bounce it around a little. Walk past the Hotel Chimayó, just off the Santa Fe Plaza, and sweep your eyes across my ride: a sleek silver ‘64 Chevy Impala, bathed in the sun, a time capsule commanding the gaze of anyone that lays eyes on her lustrous yet understated carriage.
