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The United States Postal Service will issue commemorative postage stamps celebrating lowriders.
The new set, out Friday, celebrates a counterculture movement rooted in the 1940s working-class Mexican American/Chicano communities of the American Southwest.
Featured in the collection are five models: a blue 1958 Chevrolet Impala named “Eight Figures;” an orange 1964 Chevrolet Impala named “the Golden Rose”; a green 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme named “Pocket Change”; a blue 1946 Chevrolet Fleetline named “Let the Good Times Roll/Soy Como Soy”; and a red 1963 Chevrolet Impala named “El Rey.”
Antonio Alcalá, an art director for USPS, designed the stamps using existing photographs by Humberto “Beto” Mendoza — editor in chief of Centerfoldz Magazine — and Philip Gordon. Danny Alvarado added the pinstripes to the stamps.
“ I’m gonna buy my stamps, but I’m never giving ‘em away,” said Jovita Arellano, president of the United Lowrider Coalition. “ I wanna keep ‘em, they’re forever for me.”
Each individual lowrider vehicle showcases its own unique art, meant to be displayed in public spaces or cruising low and slow down the street — which until 2024, was banned in most California cities with opponents claiming it was associated with gangs and violence.
The new USPS collection comes a year after AB 436 went into effect, which legalized cruising in California and lifted a ban on vehicle parts that extended below the bottom of the rims.
Arellano’s United Lowrider Coalition in National City was instrumental in fighting for the legislation. She remembers a time when she herself was pulled over, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed because her car had allegedly fit a description from a robbery that took place nearby.
“You knew that you’re taking a chance back in the 1980s to go cruising without being pulled over or accused of anything,” said Arellano. “But it was still, it was more of the good moments than the bad.”
Now with the lowrider collection designated as a Forever stamp — meaning the collection will always be equal in value to the current first-class mail 1-ounce price — Arellano says lowrider culture is being recognized as culturally significant to the United States, not just a hobby.
“That’s our lifestyle,” says Arellano. “So to have a forever stamp, it just signifies that we are lowriders forever.”
To celebrate the collection, USPS will hold a free outdoor event in San Diego’s Logan Heights Library on Friday at 11 a.m.
Another community celebration featuring a car show will take place in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood (1300 Evans Ave) on Saturday at 11 a.m.
