KQED’s Silicon Valley Unseen is a series of photo essays, original reporting and underreported histories that survey the tech capital’s overlooked communities and subcultures from a local perspective.
Editor’s note: Angel Romero is the founder of the all-women’s car club Dueñas, which has been featured in lowrider events and exhibitions around the globe. Here, Romero shares her personal history with cars, her mother’s influence and the pains of gentrification.
As told to Alan Chazaro.
I
’m proud to have grown up in Sunnyvale, where I’ve lived for most of my life.
Starting with my grandparents, who were Mexican immigrants, my family first settled down in Texas in the late ’50s and early ’60s. That’s where my mom was born in 1963. My grandpa came to Sunnyvale later that year and found a job at a cannery, then sent for my grandma, mom and aunt Juanita. I lived here with them after I was born.
The reason I got into lowriders was because my mom hung around her cousin Gustavo, who had a 1964 Impala. He started the Midnite Classics car club. My mom was always around that culture. It was all a family thing, you know?
On her quinceañera, my mom was given a brand new 1977 Monte Carlo. My grandparents ordered it with a custom paint job. It had swivel bucket seats. A sunroof. Such a beautiful car. But my mom was like, I want it to be a lowrider. So she got some Truespoke rims and hydraulics, and had it lifted.
Shortly after, when my mom was still very young, I popped out, and then my brother and sister. We’re each a year apart. My mom was a single mother who divorced early. She didn’t have a lot of money.
Growing up, we would just cruise around in her car for fun. Three little ones — 3, 4, and 5 years old — just jumping around, messing with the switches. We did everything in that car back then as a family when we didn’t have much else, so I cherish it.
At times, we’d go down to San Jose, and there were lots of lowrider events going, especially back then. San Jose doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for being the lowrider capital. Lowrider Magazine was originally published by Sonny Madrid, a student of San Jose State University. It doesn’t get more obvious than that. People want to fight about where it all started. I get it. But Lowrider Magazine was our social media back then. Seeing the cars and the drivers, where it’s from, that all came out of San Jose. And we got to see all that growing up here.
That’s really when I fell in love with cars. I didn’t have money to get my own when I was younger, but my cousin had a mini truck with hydraulics. He would pick me up from high school in it and on weekends we would go cruising. There used to be these popular cruises on El Camino in Santa Clara in the early ’90s. The first time I really got in trouble was cause I went cruising there in my mom’s car and I got pulled over. I was driving with the high beams on. I was only 12 years old.
One day when we were teenagers, we were in downtown Sunnyvale playing hooky, and we were looking through an old-school magazine that had advertisements. I saw a ’65 Impala for sale on Fair Oaks in Sunnyvale. That was close to where we lived. We called the number and the owner was a lady, and she confirmed that it was still available. We pulled up and I immediately fell in love with the car. It was all original and needed some work — the paint was scratched and it was on stock wheels — but I fell in love. It was cameo beige with original fawn interior, even though it was all ripped up. I was too scared to drive it, so my sister test-drove it. She pushed me to buy it, and later, to paint it. I’ve had it for 21 years.
That car is my true baby. Anyone who knows me knows about that ’65 Impala. My sister is on her sixth or seventh lowrider now. But I’ve only had that one. When I took it home, I immediately showed my momma. She absolutely loved it.
Back then, we didn’t see a lot of women driving lowriders. People would joke that the lowrider was my boyfriend’s or Daddy’s ride. My mom had a jumpsuit she kept with her, and if something happened with her car, she would work on it. We got into this lifestyle and culture very differently from most people. It wasn’t our dad or a male role model who taught us about cars. It was our mom.
My mom passed away in 2019. Nowadays, lowriding is even more near and dear to my heart. It’s always a big reminder of her. My mom always instilled hard work and respect in us. She was doing things back then that weren’t really being done by women — going back to college to get her degree, and working full-time while raising three kids as a single mom and fixing up her lowrider. Meanwhile, my grandparents were working at a bar they purchased when they retired. They made a life for themselves in Sunnyvale. They worked hard their whole lives and always pushed us to earn what we’ve got. I think that’s something that we don’t see as much these days. We forget our struggles and where we came from.
For nine years, I kept my ’65 all stock. One time, my brother Junior drove it during a Cinco de Mayo cruise and blew the rings. So I rebuilt the motor. Got a new interior, a new paint job. I wanted purple, since that’s my mom’s favorite color, and I wanted everyone to know it was a woman’s car. Then I joined my first car club, Aztec Creations, about a decade ago. A cousin on my dad’s side was the president. I didn’t know much about car clubs, and I learned the basics — the do’s and don’ts. But it seemed a little bit like a disconnect for me. I love my family and the car club was great, but I went back to being a solo rider.
A few years later, I missed the whole camaraderie and unity of a car club, just riding with other people. So I reached out to a friend who was in the Str8 Riders. I became the first lady of that club, and I hoped to take it to a whole different level. More community, more things we could do like fundraisers and drives, bigger events. Giving back. My mom always told us from a young age that when she didn’t have much, other people helped her. Sunnyvale Community Services helped pay our bills and helped us on Christmas when we didn’t have much. Later on, when my mom got a better-paying job, she would always donate things and help people. My mom was very giving and loving, always helping the less fortunate.
I wanted to honor her sense of giving and take the car club in a new direction, but it didn’t feel like a good fit for me at the time, so I decided to leave. After that, I started to help with the United Lowrider Council of San Jose. In 2018, me and another girl helped to get the council started. Even then, lowriding still seemed to be male-dominated. Sometimes it felt like a woman’s voice wasn’t being heard. Nowadays, it’s great to see so many women on the council.
I always dreamed of having an all-female car club — how badass would that be? — so me, my sister, my niece and some friends got together and said “Let’s do this. We’ve been in the scene for years, it’s our lifestyle. We cruise and go to car shows already. We might as well put a name on it.”
We ordered plaques. We put things together. The hardest part was coming up with the name. We wanted people to know we were female owners of these cars. We were tired of the whole, “It’s your man’s ride.” Dueña means “owner” in Spanish. And we’re the proud female owners of all these cars.
When I told my mom, she was so excited. When we used to go out to events, I would be in the hallway bathroom getting ready, and my mom would always say I looked so beautiful. We’d wash our cars, polish them, and my mom would stand in the garage doorway cheering us on.
In the beginning everyone was like, whatever. We were just more cars on the road, people didn’t really pay attention. But eventually when we passed through, people were like, wait. We knew people on the scene and everyone started to get excited. It’s all females, so we didn’t know what to expect. But we’ve been happy with how much support we’ve gotten.
After the ’65 was involved in an accident, I wanted to get a ’63 Impala convertible to dedicate to my mom, since she was born in ’63. I kept looking around for one. They’re very pricey. I decided to sell the ’65 to my brother. When I told her I was getting the ’63, she said “Those are effing ugly.” It broke my heart. We talked about it, but we didn’t get to finish our conversation, because we were in a rush, getting ready to hit a cruise. My mom stayed home. That night, she had a complete heart block and ended up on life support. She didn’t make it. That was one of the hardest times of my life.
So many things have just changed since she’s been gone. One thing is that I feel like lowriding isn’t just lowriding. It’s something I did with my mom, a love we shared. After that, me and the girls in my club, maybe five or six of us at the time — all of us close family friends for 30 years, sisters, nieces, cousins — we wanted to do something. It was our first year as a car club, and my mom was so big on giving back. We decided to do a toy drive. We got in contact with the San Jose Earthquakes who allowed us to use their parking lot to have the toy drive. We had an outpouring of support from the lowriding community, and the community in general. We donated to some of the local shelters and camps for union workers, for farmers. That was amazing. We couldn’t believe it. We got to do what we love with lowriding, being with my sisters, but also got to do things for the community. Helping people.
We have a good relationship with all the car clubs around here. The lowrider community is all about unity. What most people don’t realize about our lifestyle is the family aspect. If you look at these car clubs, it’s dads, moms, grandpas, grandmas, grandchildren. It’s truly our family. The women in the lowriding community were extremely supportive when we first came out. We weren’t being passenger princesses who only helped to cook and get the kids dressed. This was different.
When I was growing up in Sunnyvale, people had classic cars here and there. There were more lowriders and more Chicanos in the area. Of course, that all started to change a little bit throughout the years with Google and Yahoo! and tech and all that stuff. People started to be driven out, or bought out. Neighbors could no longer afford those weekend cars, and maybe had to sell their rides or sell their homes. Sunnyvale changed.
At the same time, San Jose’s love for lowriding was growing. It felt like more people were buying cars, and more women became involved over the years. Now, I go cruising and there’s so many women with cars. Women in general have evolved. I think tech had something to do with that around here, too. There are women CEOs, women out there doing more and getting more education, not just being a housewife. Now with technology you go on Facebook or Instagram and you can see lowriders here, or over there, everywhere. So it’s easier to network. That technology had a big impact on lowriding and where it’s at today going worldwide.
I recently saw a video about two sisters who built their car in Texas. That’s badass. When I work on my car, I get help from my family and I use YouTube. I learn stuff. Technology and the internet has really impacted the lowrider community in many good ways. Google sponsored an event I attended that was put on by Ricardo Cortez. He’s known as “Mr. Lowrider Fever” and he has hosted a few of his workshops in the area. But tech also makes it hard to live here like we used to.
To this day, I visit my family home in Sunnyvale, even though we had to sell it. The new owners rent it out for $800 a night on Airbnb. It’s sad. It’s crazy, what the neighborhood has become. We used to go cruising in the Bay every weekend. Now, I feel like you can’t buy a house and build a car, it’s too expensive.
With all this money here, how can we not do more for the middle class? You have all these rich techies moving in. When I visit my friends who are still in Sunnyvale, it’s just so different. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Last Friday we hosted a bake sale at a local high school as a fundraiser to help kids on the football team to get their helmets and equipment. Where is Silicon Valley for that? These kids don’t even have the proper equipment.
I would’ve loved, loved to have stayed in Sunnyvale around my family and friends. It’s impossible. So here I am in Modesto — it’s okay, but it isn’t home. There should be another solution. I wanted to move back, but I can’t even afford an apartment with a garage for my car (laugh out loud).
When I moved to Modesto, everyone asked if I was going to create a Dueñas chapter here in the Central Valley. But we feel that what works for us — as we celebrate our five-year anniversary — is quality over quantity. Keeping it small with close friends and family who really have the passion for this. My sister is in Hollister, a few of us are in San Jose, I’m out in Modesto and the rest are in Sunnyvale. Nine total members. We also started a lowrider bike club. Our daughters were interested and helped us in building it.
They wanted to cruise with us, too. They enjoy it just as much as we do, and it reminded us of growing up with our moms, aunts and older sisters. Let’s do something for them, for our girls. Something they can build and be proud of.
