The Unique Ladies: Lowriding at the Library

Cruising low and slow down the streets of Chicano San Diego is the city’s only all-women’s low-rider car club, The Unique Ladies. Pat and Sherry turn heads for their super slick and tricked out vehicles, and cause a stir by challenging a gender norm–where traditionally, men rule the road, and women take the sidelines. Now the ladies want to expand their club, inviting another lady low-rider to their club, Linda. The transition isn’t proving easy, as the low-rider scene is still resistant to women taking the driver’s seat.

The Unique Ladies is a short documentary aimed to expose an audience to Low-rider culture localized around women’s work and participation. Using a hybrid style of verite footage with interwoven interviews, The Unique Ladies takes you on a funky ride down the streets of Chicano San Diego. Punctuated with multimedia animation and cut to a bass thumping soundtrack, the audience engages with lowrider culture through the eyes of Chicana cruisers.

                        

Filmed entirely in the densely Mexican American populated city of San Diego, The Unique Ladies specifies it’s lowrider community while highlighting that this sport maintains variations in it’s geographical practice. While focusing on women within the practice of lowriding, The Unique Ladies closely engages with women who are actively resisting passive roles in the lowrider hierarchy, it is through their practice of lowriding that they consistently contest their exclusion.

As an example of localized working class feminism, this film challenges these notions and critiques low-riding’s male hegemony while highlighting the trials and tribulations women low-riders encounter when navigating in a highly contested space.

                                       


The Unique Ladies will be here, Monday, October 22nd, from 6-7:30pm , for a special screening of their film and a Q & A session following.


If you can't join us in person for this event, please follow along online at www.livestream.com/CypressParkLAPL and/or tweet us at @CypressParkLAPL with any questions or comments you might have for The Unique Ladies.

Download and print this program's flyer here.