PILSEN — Over the course of a year Juan Franco spent $20,000 to personalize his '65 Impala with hydraulics, a new paint job and a new interior, among other things.
It was only natural that he come to Pilsen's fourth annual Community Low Rider Festival to show it off.
"Other than money, there's love and pride that we put into our cars," said Franco, 28, who lives in Blue Island with his family. "We do most of the work ourselves. We do our work with pride."
Franco has a day job working for a company that removes asbestos, but he spends his free time doing what he loves: working on cars as part of the Amistad car club.
"I help my friends with what I know, and they help me with what they know," Franco said of the car club, which is basically a collection of his friends who love working on cars.
The festival, which Franco calls "the best event of the year," has been giving car lovers like Franco, who are not necessarily car mechanics by trade, a chance to show off their hard work for the past four years. This year's event was the biggest yet, according to festival organizer Peter Ketha.
"Don’t assume that everyone is a working class mechanic," Ketha said, adding that some of the car owners work in finance or law, and he heard one of them won the lottery recently.
A combination of over 250 low riders, hoppers and show cars were on display at this year's festival, and more than 3,000 people came out to admire them. Several cars showed up at the festival at 7:30 a.m. to claim a spot, but the festival didn't even begin until 11 a.m., Ketha said.
When Ketha and his sister, Lauren Pacheco, hosted Pilsen's first Community Low Rider Festival four years ago, just 50 low riders showed up.
The festival "is a huge beast now; it can't be stopped," Ketha said.
Francisco Bardas, who lives on the South Side, has been coming to the festival since its inception.
He owns what's called a hopper, or "one of those crazy jumping cars." In other words, the car is propelled into the air using hydraulics so it bounces.
But on Sunday he got a flat tire. A combination of the heat and the pressure caused the tire to pop, he said.
Low riders are heavy in the back so they might not be able to stop, which makes them more dangerous to drive around, Bardas said.
When he's not fixing up cars as part of the Sick Life car club or working a day job as a tattoo artist, Bardas is driving his hopper around town. He said it fills him with pride to drive the car or show it off at festivals because it represents his community and his Mexican culture.
The biggest "hurdle" the festival has faced, Ketha said, is trying to eliminate the stigma associated with low rider culture.
"They’re trying to leap over the stigma that everyone is a gangbanger in low rider culture," Ketha said. "People have pasts, but [they] get judged on the way they look."
A low rider is akin to a piece of artwork, he said.
"I always say that when you sell a piece of artwork you’re selling a piece of your personality along with your artwork," Ketha said. "With these guys, the car is the artwork, and the way they look is their personality, and if they draw you in and you want to talk to them, then you fall in love with the car a little more."
In addition to admiring cars, festivalgoers enjoyed live music, local food vendors, spoken word performances, Mexican folk dancers and more Sunday. Ketha and his sister spent $7,000 on the community event; the rest of the funding came from donations and sponsorships.
To cap off the event, people gathered for a fire show in which low riders created back-fire from their exhaust pipes. Car owners and festivalgoers alike watched in awe as the flames rose to the sound of revving engines.
Juan Franco's labor of love: his '65 Impala with its $20,000 upgrades.
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