Fernando Velasco, a member of the oldest car club in San Francisco, grew up in an era when low riders got pulled over for cruising. But on Saturday morning, he and some 500 other low-riding fans gathered at the U.S. postal office in Bayview to see their hobby unveiled as a set of new stamps.
A lot, he said, has changed. “Now, we don’t worry about the police getting involved. They actually block the streets off or we have police escorts when we do these big events now.”
Now, they also have a commemorative postal stamp that officially recognizes lowrider culture as having “a significant impact on American history, American society, and American culture,” according to USPS Pacific Northwest Processing Division Director Brian Gaines, who spoke at the event.
Three of the five photographs on the stamps were taken by Humberto “Beto” Mendoza, who was head photographer at Lowrider Magazine from 2011 to 2020. The other two were taken by Phil Gordon, who passed away in December 2025…