The lowriders are canvases that Arturo Medina spends countless hours painting with a technique called airbrushing, by which artists use tools such as stencils, spray guns, and paintbrushes to put images on the cars. His family parks lowriders in their yard when the weather is good to show them off. For Holy Week and Lent, I have a car that I park next to the Santuario de Chimayo, so when people come to pray, they can see it. But lowriders are the community's heritage. Tomas Martinez, a local banker and founder of the Vicious Dreams lowrider club, says lowriders are family-oriented.
Opinions differ on what makes a true lowrider.
Some say it can be a new car with small wheels, a nice paint job, and chrome rims. Others stick to the more traditional definition of late-model automobiles, lowered, with custom paint jobs, tiny steering wheels, and chrome rims. Everyone agrees the cars must be dropped as low to the ground as possible. Medina jokes that people drop wheelbarrows down to become lowriders. The Los Alamos National Laboratories is one of the area's largest employers, and others work at the Ohkay Casino, in retail stores like Wal-Mart, on cattle and sheep ranches, or in local apple orchards.