Lowrider Magazine Pimps Out Pages With Pix of Phoenix Event

You might have missed this spring’s “Lowrider 2009 Tour” in Phoenix, but you can check out pictures of some of the sweet rides that were showcased there in a just-published online story.

The March 1 event at the Arizona State Fairgrounds impressed Lowrider Magazine’s Saul Vargas, who says its popularity proves that lowrider culture is experiencing a “resurgence.” Vargas’ article also praises Phoenix gushingly, as if he didn’t get the memo that writers are supposed to scorn the place.

Vargas begins by telling us Phoenix is “considered by many to be the crown jewel of the southwest…”

Then he notes:

The lowrider following is strong here, so it’s easy to see why many regard Phoenix as the “City of the Future.”

Compare Vargas’ enthusiastic spin to the passage about downtown Phoenix from the novel President Obama’s reading this summer:

The general vacancy was relieved by the slow and for some reason distinctly sinister movement of automobiles from street to street, as if these machines’ careful, orderly roaming was a charade whose purpose was to obscure the fact that the city had been forsake; and all the while the radio ceaselessly reported crashes and emergencies in the streets around us.

Hey, Holmes, there’s nothing sinister about it — we’re just cruising.

Click here for more pictures of lowriders from New Times’ April slideshow of an exhibition in Guadalupe.