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The south
HOUSTON CAR CULTURE DOCUMENTARY (SLABS)
- Thread in 'General' Thread starter Started by servechilled81,
- Start date
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Lowiders and Slabs will always have a special place in my heart.
Nothing like listening to 3am N The Morning , in a low slab , on a clear breezy night with a car full of friends.
Same thing can go for Texas Country on a backroad, in a lifted truck.
Damn I love Texas.
Nothing like listening to 3am N The Morning , in a low slab , on a clear breezy night with a car full of friends.
Same thing can go for Texas Country on a backroad, in a lifted truck.
Damn I love Texas.
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Those wheels r
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I just purchased a 1977 Fleetwood Broughham in great condition. Mild rusting, but nothing a nice paint job won't handle.
Have some elbows in the garage.
The white walls on it with the factory lac caps still hold too.
Have some elbows in the garage.
The white walls on it with the factory lac caps still hold too.
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:30-1:00
"It is what it is and it ain't what it's not."
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Ugly *** rims. This guy in my apartment complex got his car put on blocks in broad daylight.
I do remember this one time though, I was on the highway and there was a long line to get off the exit and you know how people would try to ride the freeway as long as the can and swerve in at the last second? I seen this dude lurking from behind and I was trying to cut him off, but he managed to get in front of me. Dude just started swanging and swerving in front of me real slow. All I could do was 
But yeah, to me, this trend is stupid.
I do remember this one time though, I was on the highway and there was a long line to get off the exit and you know how people would try to ride the freeway as long as the can and swerve in at the last second? I seen this dude lurking from behind and I was trying to cut him off, but he managed to get in front of me. Dude just started swanging and swerving in front of me real slow. All I could do was
But yeah, to me, this trend is stupid.
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:x
to each his own i guess...
to each his own i guess...
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big *** american luxury cars...this scene looking like how da US looked pre-honda/toyota small car invasion.
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swangin gone wrong
RED LINE! Never seen a Maserati on em
Blue line
I understand most people aren't going to like the way it looks, but I don't get what is stupid about it
it's no different than any other hobby cars
RED LINE! Never seen a Maserati on em
Blue line
I understand most people aren't going to like the way it looks, but I don't get what is stupid about it
it's no different than any other hobby cars
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Humbled
formerly whatslosinlike
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Stay ridin to this
MY ***** J-DAWG
Classic fam, classic.
^yeah the one from VICE from a long time ago, they had him drinking syrup and everything
My hood, spent 15 years here.
God damn I love my city
ice city fc
Banned
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I respect Texas car culture.
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H-town heads kick some game to me, so red and blue lining. Is it gang affiliated? Or just a common color?
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On another note damn I miss Pimp C
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I always love the Texas car culture swag at its finest once in a while u see em in ny
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I think its cuz of da texas flag
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different neighborhoods/parts of town have different colors that they ride
Gold Line
the area where i'm from (northside) is Green
Went to school with this guy and his brother, he's from the same neighborhood
Marcus Bannis also known as M Beezy, , shows off his 'All About My Green' neon slab during a gathering of slab cars to be seen, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Bannis said he painted his vehicle green to represent his Fontaine neighborhood and his love of money.
5th ward green line
Gold Line
the area where i'm from (northside) is Green
Went to school with this guy and his brother, he's from the same neighborhood
Marcus Bannis also known as M Beezy, , shows off his 'All About My Green' neon slab during a gathering of slab cars to be seen, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Bannis said he painted his vehicle green to represent his Fontaine neighborhood and his love of money.
5th ward green line
[h2]Slabs are hip-hop on wheels[/h2]
Nick De La Torre, Staff
Big Poppa, Willis Harris, opens up his six wheel slab during a car get together, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Big Poppa id 'holding' six wheels because he has the four under the car and two decorative spare tires on the trunk. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
By Lisa Gray
January 7, 2013
On Houston roads, I watch cars the way that I watch birds: with stupid, wordless appreciation, unable to tell an Elantra from an Optima, a willet from a dowitcher. Often, I know that I've spotted something extraordinary, but I have no idea what it is.
Fairly often, I've seen shiny cars painted the jewel colors of Kool-Aid with rims protruding far out from their tires like spiky medieval weapons. And on the back of their trunks was something that resembled a spare tire, but was proudly nonfunctional - really just a setting for yet another shiny rim, like automotive jewelry. It's the kind of spare tire that King Tut might use in the afterlife.
Even a doofus like me knows that those cars didn't come from the factory that way. And even I can tell that they are all part of something larger, a style all their own. But until recently, I didn't know the style's name, much less its rules and what it means. Those cars weren't art cars; they weren't classic cars; and they weren't lowriders. They were something else entirely.
I know now: They're slabs.
Born in Houston
If I listened to hip-hop, I'd have known that. I'd have known that slabs were born in south Houston in the late '80s and are now spreading through the nation. Or, as Langston Collins Wilkins puts it, they're "the visual image of Houston hip-hop," the cars that "index black-youth culture here."
More photos: [color= rgb(234, 74, 1
]Take a look at slabs around town[/color]
Wilkins is the world's leading authority on slabs, which is to say, as far as I can tell, he's the only person who's ever systematically studied them. A soft-spoken Ph.D. candidate in folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University, he makes me smile when he applies formal academic language to those glistening, mean-rimmed cars. It seems funny, but it's also high time that someone gave slabs their due.
At first, I thought that Wilkins seemed born to study Houston hip-hop. He grew up on the south side of Houston, the blue-hot epicenter of the city's slowed-down, chopped-and-screwed rap scene. But he explained that he wasn't part of that scene, and as a kid, he didn't think much about it. His dad was an arts administrator, the kind of guy who staged jazz shows and taught creative writing. In the '90s, when DJ Screw ruled "Screwston" and the earliest slabs were cruising MLK Boulevard on Sunday afternoons, the Wilkins family, caught in the traffic, was annoyed by those showy cars. In the backseat, the boy never imagined how much they'd matter to him someday.
Nick De La Torre, Staff
King Fish jokes with on lookers as he represents 4th Ward with his car, a five wheel slab painted red to represent his team, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, at Cloverland Park in Houston. Teams are made up of people from certain neighborhoods. King Fish says he buys and fixes up cars for people in his neighborhood. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
In high school, the hip-hop that Wilkins listened to came from New York and California. Some of his classmates drove slabs, but he didn't hang out with those guys. Of course he knew about "drank" - Kool-Aid mixed with codeine cough syrup, a drug that is to Houston hip-hop what heroin was to jazz, or LSD was to psychedelic rock - but he didn't partake. He majored in English at the University of Texas, then went to grad school at Indiana University.
Indiana University? I asked him at a coffee shop in December, while he was home visiting family. You left Houston for one of the whitest states in the nation, so that you could study the culture of Houston hip-hop?
He grinned. "I had to leave Houston to appreciate it," he said. And now he's trying to make more of Houston appreciate what he himself once missed. During Christmas break, he went to meetings at the Houston Arts Alliance, which aims to launch a slab parade this spring - a parade not just for the hip-hop world or car-show fans, but for all of Houston.
Representing
I'd asked Wilkins where I could see slabs. He called a guy who called some guys, and on a gray Wednesday afternoon, slabs from all over town began arriving at Cloverland Park in Sunnyside, the neighborhood where the style was born. They drove low and slow, as if they were in a parade, and they assumed their places in the parking lot the way that kings take their thrones.
Sunnyside isn't the kind of neighborhood that hip-hop brings to mind. It's overwhelmingly black and low-income, yes, but it's also surprisingly rural, surprisingly old Texas. Rundown apartment complexes mix with fields where cattle graze, little suburban neighborhoods with auto-repair shops and dollar stores. While the slabs were gathered in the park's parking lot, a man on a palomino rode through, checking out the cars. The drivers hardly noticed.
Nick De La Torre, Staff
King Fish, facing, has a word with B.G. Porter, with his son B.G. Porter Jr., , Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Porter, who owns a body shop, explains how he made a custom grill on his Jaguar and that he painted it Baka Blue. Baka blue is a tribute to a man wit the last name Baka who died recently. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
I suspect that the slowed-down country/urban feel of the area has something to do with the hypnotic slowness that distinguishes Houston hip-hop: the defining "chopped 'n' screwed" slowed-down mix tapes that DJ Screw sold in the '90s; the codeine syrup that has become Houston's signature drug; or the stately slowness with which slabs move. They are known for "swangin' and bangin'," driving in slow sine-wave patterns and playing music loudly. They were status symbols in a poor part of town that the rest of the city knew little about; they were demands for respect, or at least attention. "They're all about being seen, being heard," says Wilkins.
In the park, I couldn't take my eyes off them. Against the dreary sky, the jewel-colored cars glistened like Jolly Ranchers. With remote controls, some of the owners popped the trunks, revealing neon signs - yet more color and light. The signs proclaimed nicknames, neighborhoods, slogans, things like "Poppa Back," "4th Ward" and "Scenic Wood BG." A few had slogans with the kind of words you hear all the time in hip-hop but don't see in newspapers.
It's impossible to separate slabs from hip-hop, and musicians showed up, too, even though some of their cars were in the shop. There was Yungstar, whose "Knockin' Pictures off the Wall" takes its title from a slab's thumping stereo system. There was the Bloc Boyz Click, whose "If Ridin' Swangas Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right" reworks the old soul song "If Lovin' You Is Wrong," switching out a forbidden lover for swangas: a love song aimed not at a person but at those protruding, scary-looking rims.
I'd expected the tattoos and gold teeth. But I didn't expect the half-dozen or so little kids hanging out with their dads, or the slab owners' anxiousness to appear "positive," like good role models - only a little tough, only a little hip-hop macho.
Willis Harris keeps a school picture of his son, Willis Jr., stuck in the odometer behind his Charger's steering wheel. The picture's background is emerald green, like the car. The boy, Harris says, calls the slab "his" car and loves to go riding in it on weekends. And when the Fifth Ward flag football team that Willis coaches wins a game, he rewards those boys, too, with a ride.
It's safe to do that now, Harris said, to take kids out in your slab. Ten years ago, when he started driving one, he would never have done that. "You had to ride with all your guns then," he says. The north side and the south sides of Houston were at war; a guy like him, from the Fifth Ward, would never have ventured down here to Sunnyside. And even on his home turf, he worried constantly that someone would try to steal his expensive rims: "People wanted what you had."
Things are better now, he says. Rims, though still not cheap, are much cheaper than they used to be. And tension between north and south Houston is largely gone: "We can go to the south side, and the south comes to us."
Harris often travels with the Green Line, a group of roughly 25 other emerald-colored slabs, to car shows in places such as Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. (There also are lines of other colors: red, blue and so on.) At those shows, Harris and the other Houston drivers aren't just representing the south side or north side. He represents all of Houston, the birthplace and center of slab culture, a city as inseparable from slabs as New Orleans is from Mardi Gras. A Houston line's mere presence lends a slab event in other cities the glow of authenticity. And the Houston cars are generally the most astonishing.
"We get attention," Willis says, proud. "When we come in, they say, 'Here come the Houston dudes!' "
Nick De La Torre, Staff
Big Poppa, Willis Harris, opens up his six wheel slab during a car get together, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Big Poppa id 'holding' six wheels because he has the four under the car and two decorative spare tires on the trunk. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
By Lisa Gray
January 7, 2013
On Houston roads, I watch cars the way that I watch birds: with stupid, wordless appreciation, unable to tell an Elantra from an Optima, a willet from a dowitcher. Often, I know that I've spotted something extraordinary, but I have no idea what it is.
Fairly often, I've seen shiny cars painted the jewel colors of Kool-Aid with rims protruding far out from their tires like spiky medieval weapons. And on the back of their trunks was something that resembled a spare tire, but was proudly nonfunctional - really just a setting for yet another shiny rim, like automotive jewelry. It's the kind of spare tire that King Tut might use in the afterlife.
Even a doofus like me knows that those cars didn't come from the factory that way. And even I can tell that they are all part of something larger, a style all their own. But until recently, I didn't know the style's name, much less its rules and what it means. Those cars weren't art cars; they weren't classic cars; and they weren't lowriders. They were something else entirely.
I know now: They're slabs.
Born in Houston
If I listened to hip-hop, I'd have known that. I'd have known that slabs were born in south Houston in the late '80s and are now spreading through the nation. Or, as Langston Collins Wilkins puts it, they're "the visual image of Houston hip-hop," the cars that "index black-youth culture here."
More photos: [color= rgb(234, 74, 1
]Take a look at slabs around town[/color]Wilkins is the world's leading authority on slabs, which is to say, as far as I can tell, he's the only person who's ever systematically studied them. A soft-spoken Ph.D. candidate in folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University, he makes me smile when he applies formal academic language to those glistening, mean-rimmed cars. It seems funny, but it's also high time that someone gave slabs their due.
At first, I thought that Wilkins seemed born to study Houston hip-hop. He grew up on the south side of Houston, the blue-hot epicenter of the city's slowed-down, chopped-and-screwed rap scene. But he explained that he wasn't part of that scene, and as a kid, he didn't think much about it. His dad was an arts administrator, the kind of guy who staged jazz shows and taught creative writing. In the '90s, when DJ Screw ruled "Screwston" and the earliest slabs were cruising MLK Boulevard on Sunday afternoons, the Wilkins family, caught in the traffic, was annoyed by those showy cars. In the backseat, the boy never imagined how much they'd matter to him someday.
Nick De La Torre, Staff
King Fish jokes with on lookers as he represents 4th Ward with his car, a five wheel slab painted red to represent his team, Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, at Cloverland Park in Houston. Teams are made up of people from certain neighborhoods. King Fish says he buys and fixes up cars for people in his neighborhood. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
In high school, the hip-hop that Wilkins listened to came from New York and California. Some of his classmates drove slabs, but he didn't hang out with those guys. Of course he knew about "drank" - Kool-Aid mixed with codeine cough syrup, a drug that is to Houston hip-hop what heroin was to jazz, or LSD was to psychedelic rock - but he didn't partake. He majored in English at the University of Texas, then went to grad school at Indiana University.
Indiana University? I asked him at a coffee shop in December, while he was home visiting family. You left Houston for one of the whitest states in the nation, so that you could study the culture of Houston hip-hop?
He grinned. "I had to leave Houston to appreciate it," he said. And now he's trying to make more of Houston appreciate what he himself once missed. During Christmas break, he went to meetings at the Houston Arts Alliance, which aims to launch a slab parade this spring - a parade not just for the hip-hop world or car-show fans, but for all of Houston.
Representing
I'd asked Wilkins where I could see slabs. He called a guy who called some guys, and on a gray Wednesday afternoon, slabs from all over town began arriving at Cloverland Park in Sunnyside, the neighborhood where the style was born. They drove low and slow, as if they were in a parade, and they assumed their places in the parking lot the way that kings take their thrones.
Sunnyside isn't the kind of neighborhood that hip-hop brings to mind. It's overwhelmingly black and low-income, yes, but it's also surprisingly rural, surprisingly old Texas. Rundown apartment complexes mix with fields where cattle graze, little suburban neighborhoods with auto-repair shops and dollar stores. While the slabs were gathered in the park's parking lot, a man on a palomino rode through, checking out the cars. The drivers hardly noticed.
Nick De La Torre, Staff
King Fish, facing, has a word with B.G. Porter, with his son B.G. Porter Jr., , Wednesday, Dec. 19, 2012, in Houston. Porter, who owns a body shop, explains how he made a custom grill on his Jaguar and that he painted it Baka Blue. Baka blue is a tribute to a man wit the last name Baka who died recently. ( Nick de la Torre / Houston Chronicle )
I suspect that the slowed-down country/urban feel of the area has something to do with the hypnotic slowness that distinguishes Houston hip-hop: the defining "chopped 'n' screwed" slowed-down mix tapes that DJ Screw sold in the '90s; the codeine syrup that has become Houston's signature drug; or the stately slowness with which slabs move. They are known for "swangin' and bangin'," driving in slow sine-wave patterns and playing music loudly. They were status symbols in a poor part of town that the rest of the city knew little about; they were demands for respect, or at least attention. "They're all about being seen, being heard," says Wilkins.
In the park, I couldn't take my eyes off them. Against the dreary sky, the jewel-colored cars glistened like Jolly Ranchers. With remote controls, some of the owners popped the trunks, revealing neon signs - yet more color and light. The signs proclaimed nicknames, neighborhoods, slogans, things like "Poppa Back," "4th Ward" and "Scenic Wood BG." A few had slogans with the kind of words you hear all the time in hip-hop but don't see in newspapers.
It's impossible to separate slabs from hip-hop, and musicians showed up, too, even though some of their cars were in the shop. There was Yungstar, whose "Knockin' Pictures off the Wall" takes its title from a slab's thumping stereo system. There was the Bloc Boyz Click, whose "If Ridin' Swangas Is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right" reworks the old soul song "If Lovin' You Is Wrong," switching out a forbidden lover for swangas: a love song aimed not at a person but at those protruding, scary-looking rims.
I'd expected the tattoos and gold teeth. But I didn't expect the half-dozen or so little kids hanging out with their dads, or the slab owners' anxiousness to appear "positive," like good role models - only a little tough, only a little hip-hop macho.
Willis Harris keeps a school picture of his son, Willis Jr., stuck in the odometer behind his Charger's steering wheel. The picture's background is emerald green, like the car. The boy, Harris says, calls the slab "his" car and loves to go riding in it on weekends. And when the Fifth Ward flag football team that Willis coaches wins a game, he rewards those boys, too, with a ride.
It's safe to do that now, Harris said, to take kids out in your slab. Ten years ago, when he started driving one, he would never have done that. "You had to ride with all your guns then," he says. The north side and the south sides of Houston were at war; a guy like him, from the Fifth Ward, would never have ventured down here to Sunnyside. And even on his home turf, he worried constantly that someone would try to steal his expensive rims: "People wanted what you had."
Things are better now, he says. Rims, though still not cheap, are much cheaper than they used to be. And tension between north and south Houston is largely gone: "We can go to the south side, and the south comes to us."
Harris often travels with the Green Line, a group of roughly 25 other emerald-colored slabs, to car shows in places such as Austin, Dallas and San Antonio. (There also are lines of other colors: red, blue and so on.) At those shows, Harris and the other Houston drivers aren't just representing the south side or north side. He represents all of Houston, the birthplace and center of slab culture, a city as inseparable from slabs as New Orleans is from Mardi Gras. A Houston line's mere presence lends a slab event in other cities the glow of authenticity. And the Houston cars are generally the most astonishing.
"We get attention," Willis says, proud. "When we come in, they say, 'Here come the Houston dudes!' "
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For some, yes. They'll put the 5 or 6 point stars on their neon signs.
For others, they just like the color.
Sir San Diego
formerly brolic scholar
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Will watch later. Thanks for the breakdown dankenstien88.
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yambs & slabs
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Thinking about copping an old school Lincoln or caddy...
Drop maybe 3k For the slab... 2.5k for the swangaz... 1.5k for the paint job and interior...
Drop maybe 3k For the slab... 2.5k for the swangaz... 1.5k for the paint job and interior...
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Naw. Certain hoods got certain colors the abide by generally..
Its not set in stone though...
Also... "Draped up and dripped out"..
That's the old school lining in the whip (drapes) and the candy paint (it looks wet, so its dripping)
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Always liked this cause of UGK when I was little. I actually like the look of swangas when they not OD poked out though, but the old school look in general is dope as hell to me anyways. Got a couple on my list if I ever start getting a bunch of guap.
Shoutout to Texas.
Shoutout to Texas.
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I love Houston car culture, id love a droptop el dog on some swangas.
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DAMB I miss my city |I