It happens once every two or three months. The car clubs meet in a valley of Elysian Park. Car clubs have a long history in the area, predating the term “low-rider,” though it is the low-riders who come out in force to see the rows of antique and lovingly adorned auto machines. On Sunday it was Chevys. I got a call from my friend Angela Wood who had stumbled onto the car show while trying to sell her Westphalia VW bus. She said, “I am standing next to a car with naked women painted all over it.”

Up and down Stadium Way, in the shadow of Canary Island palms planted over a hundred years ago, Chevys dating from what looked like the ‘30s to the present sat on display. By far the most numerous, vintage Impalas were king for the day. The first Impala I noticed had two elaborate ventriloquist’s-dummy-sized dolls propped on wired supports at the front and back of the car. One of the dolls looked like a possibly white stoner guy; the other looked like a Latino dude, with a baseball cap. The black car had delicate pin striping. It gleamed.

The crowd – gasp – was mostly male. I’d say about two thirds had shaved heads, though the biker crowd was there as well, with hair. There were also a small number of short-sleeved button-down shirt fifties-style guys. The atmosphere was tense, with cops at both ends of the closed-to-through traffic stretch of road. A guy rapped while being videotaped. There was a large number of young sons with their dads. A lot of milling around, and waiting by cars. Waiting to have yours noticed.

Many of the cars had teeny wheels, a sign of tilt-and-bounce capability. One Impala 327, a bright yellow convertible with a cut-out metal sign that read “Millennium,” had five or six toy ants about the size of my hand propped up on the dashboard. The chassis of the parked car was lifted so you could see between the white wall tires and the undercarriage.

At 3-something, one police car started driving down the block lights flashing and siren blurping – a sign it was time to disperse. A second car (among several) remained parked but started flashing its lights. People started pulling their beauties out of their parking spots. (Though, to my surprise I did notice that not all of the cars were perfect or even restored. Some had been restored years ago, it seemed, and were due for a bit more restoration. I assume they either were for sale, or their beauty was on the inside, or their owners simply wanted to come to the party.) As the squad car moved its way slowly down the block, a guy in a black Super Sport blared rap: “Shoot first and ask questions latah.” The only women drivers I noticed drove behind the Super Sport. The women had a tangerine Impala with a white interior. After that came a car named Top Dollar. It was green, with pinstriping and a dent on the right hand side. Because there was a guy with a large video camera it began bouncing and tipping, lifting the wheels on one side off the ground, high enough that the passenger in the car looked very nervous.

I could have walked to the car show, but I drove. So I got in my car and joined the procession out of the park. On my way down Morton, I saw that a house that had been used in the movie L.A. Confidential was having an open house. (It’s the one where Russell Crowe finds the body of a corrupt cop underneath the house. The woman who lives in the house calls out to Crowe, “Was it a rat?” “Yeah, a great big one.”) So I pulled over to take a look inside. Most of the people I saw inside were Echo Park neighbors, including one friend, Rick Morton, who had worked on the film as a still photographer. I remember when they were filming L.A. Confidential on the block. It was ’95 or ’96, and for several days (it seemed) old cars – similar to the ones that were now making their way down Morton – had been driving on Morton as they filmed at the house. One of those coincidences that make you feel there is some sort of thematic design to your life, like an arabesque.

I went down the Chango coffeehouse to have a mint lemonade at a table on the street. Jesus Sanchez, who had been at the open house, sat with me for a few minutes with his lemonade. I wanted to see which way the vintage cars were going, whether they would turn in both directions and scatter through the neighborhood, or whether they all would head toward Sunset and possibly out of the neighborhood. They all headed toward Sunset.

Photo: Stadium Way, September 2006
By Angela Wood

Photo: 4 cars, September 2006
By Angela Wood