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. Cruising may be a modern form of a traditional Mexican courtship, the paseo, in which young, unmarried people would walk around the central plaza of a town, women in one direction, men in the other. Attracting attention is a major aim of lowriding, Medina says. Medina, now a husband and father, still cruises with his wife and daughter. Martinez believes low-riding deters teens from trouble.