I don't really remember how it all happened... Once conversation led to another and all of a sudden we just agreed on the most obvious outcome. Fredo and I would collab!
Las Calles being a Houston based brand and me being born and raised in Houston, we share a lot of the same cultural values from repping out favorite baseball team and being proud of the H! Or never saying no to some bomb ass breakfast tacos because that just reminds us of our youth. Lowrider car culture, Tejano/Mexican culture are so intertwined here in Texas and so I wanted to make sure y'all get to catch a glimpse of this.
Let me share a quick story and background as to WHY we went with the Lowrider theme and a serape wearing Dude for this collab.
It's a Summer night in Houston, TX and I'm probably somewhere around 6-8 years old.. What's now considered EADO was the East End neighborhood, Magnolia Park to be exact. One of the oldest Hispanic neighborhoods in the City of Houston. I digress, but it's dark and all I see shinning out of the car window are some lights on the ground. Then something shinny bouncing up and down and some weird piston noise banging.. I'm convincing so we pull over. There's a lowrider meetup happening in the parking lot of a shopping center and all of these cars look so freaking cool!! Some of these cars had Aztec warriors painted on their hoods and others had pictures of something I probably shouldn't be looking at but couldn't help but be fascinated by the art!
A car pulls up next to me as it's driving down the aisle and BOOM, it hits its switches and the two front wheels go up. BOOM he hits them again and it gets a little higher this time! BOOM!! It hits the switches a third time and this time sparks go flying! The rear bumper hit the ground and everyone started cheering!
At that age, it was hard not to fall in love with these cars! The awesome thing about it was that even kids were involved with the culture. Building Lowrider bicycles would become my introduction to the Lowrider scene.
The serape that's adorned on the coffee sleeve hints back to the interiors of some of these lowriders. It can be traced back to the indigenous people of Mexico who would wear the Serape as a poncho or blanket to keep them warm. Known mostly as a poor man's garment, it takes on a sense of pride and social proof that we know our roots and our culture. The struggle our families have gone through which have helped us get here today. The beautiful colors that make up the serape show off the history and vibrancy that can be found in our history.
Lowriders are just that. Living relics for us to marvel at and to continue to pass down our story and history to the next generations.
I hope you enjoy this collaboration between Las Calles and Coffee Dude. Like I said above, something about this just made sense and I'm glad we were able to bring it to life!
Be sure to catch the drop, it'll happen on both of our sites this Friday.
Friday, May 12th
7pm CST.
Las Calles
https://lascalles.bigcartel.com/product/sarape-lcxcoffee-dude
All photos were taken by me, @Joseph.ech in Houston Texas at the Chicano Boulevard meet up. If you like the images and want to share them, please tag me in all photos and if interested in prints I plan on having some available soon.
