D.J. EAZY E patch from Lowrider Magazine

I just unearthed some old backpack patches that brought me back to my days in grammar school. On occasion I would buy Lowrider Bicycle magazines. Never getting too obsessed, I bought less than 10 in my entire life. I used to sweat the Lowrider face/head graphic with the mustache, hat and sunglasses.

Among the last few pages of Lowrider Bicycle Magazine was a catalog that had everything you needed to build a bike including stickers, accessories, clothing and other promotional ephemera.

Here’s a picture of some of the patches I bought from that catalog specifically to put on my Jansport, but never got around to it. Uncommon “D.J. Eazy E” & the “No Money No Talk” are definitely the stand-outs now…

Lowrider culture reaches back to 1930s Los Angeles, where it became popular for style-conscious Latino-Americans to load their cars with sandbags to bring it closer to the road. Style was everything, and when lowered cars were banned in California in the 1950s, it became necessary to find a way to raise and lower the car simply to avoid fines. The solution was to use hydraulics from old fighter planes left over from World War II.

The rapper Kid Frost showcased lowriding in the early 90s hit Lowrider, and since then, the cars are closely associated with hip-hop culture.

The drawing above is taken from recently published LOWRIDER COLORING book which is popping up on several blogs, get it cheap at Amazon.