the history of the hood wheel – at least from where i’m sitting

okay, so now they’ve lost me…

…which i have to say, for a forty-one year old caucasian with no vocational skills i’m kinda proud i hung as long as i did. but now, i feel, they’ve lost me.

allow me to explain…

i’ve always been into “car culture” – even before i had a car. it always seemed like the goal in life wasn’t just to have a car, but to customize said ride to where it was still (a little) practical but uniquely “you”. how could you not want that? well, all that being said, i always too broke to live these dreams. still technically am, but i force myself to do little things here and there to make it happen with the current ride. but the one thing that always seemed to be the crown jewel of a ride, particularly when you were getting into the “hood rich” variety, was wheels. now at this point car culture, like all elements of pop culture, has spun off into numerous sub-genres that this site isn’t big enough (or it’s writer patient enough, to be honest) to cover. but the hood stuff was always had my eye as a kid, so i’m gonna look at this – partially because this is where i feel they’re kinda losing me as well.

chapter a – “wheels” before “rims”

this was the era i barely remember…the 1970’s to mid-1980’s. this was back when custom wheels were still called “wheels” and not “rims” or “chrome feet” or whatever the current terminology is. they were still the same size as what had been slapped on at the factory, they just looked cooler. looked cooler, but no effect on the ride of the car. believe it or not, this is what i’ll probably do with the bmw when it comes time – stick to just seventeens, like the factory put on, but cooler. and black. but never mind that now.

chapter b – fresh-ass daytons, or a cheap rip-off thereof

these seemed to start on the left coast, but spread. lowrider culture leaving behind the big boat cars of the 1960’s and 1970’s and going on mini-trucks and jeeps and shit. drop it low and see how close to a skateboard wheel you can get! it always cracked me up that people paid all that money to have LESS (as in much smaller) wheels. i guess you were paying for all those spokes. and the gold nipples. on the spokes, i mean – not on the hood-rat girlfriend you’d score with the car. okay, so maybe on her, too…

chapter c – bigger is better – in wheels, i mean. well, and tits, but never mind that now

at some point towards the turn of the millineum the pendelum swung the other way(that’s a hard phrase to read out loud i learned in the editing phase here) and wheels went from really tiny to where anything that was measured in the teens was considered bullshit. you still lowered, you just squeezed as much rim (and as little tire) as possible. if your tire could resemble a rubber band stretched over the rim that was a good thing. ever ridden in a ride with that set up? you can roll over a dime and tell if it’s heads or tails. it’s a rougher ride than a stripper girlfriend trying ecstacy for the first time. not that i’d know about such things.

chapter d – “they spinnin’, nigga, they spinnin’!”

for some reason there was a brief period (and the real thing was pretty bad, the cheap knock-offs were fucking hysterical) where it was considered a good thing if you stopped moving but your wheels didn’t. i don’t know why this was good. i don’t think the people that had it could tell me why it was good. it was just “the style at the time”, like wearing an onion on your belt. of course they had to be yellow onions – you couldn’t get white onions back then…’cause of the war. moving on…

(i should interject the graphic above DID have spinning rims when i found it, but somehow got lost in the translation coming onto this site)

chapter e – reach for the sky!

i admit, this was more a suspension evolution rather than a wheel one, but i felt it needed mentioning. it started in the “dirty south” and from where i’m sitting was hood folk tired of getting looked down on by “the man” literally because their cars rode so low and the rednecks trucks rode so high. this fixed that problem, but looked kinda stupid in the process if you ask me. but not nearly as stupid as where we close out…

chapter f – as that your rim popping out or are you just glad to see me?

this is the one i can’t get a clear explanation on – all i know is the guys i talked to at the barbershop in the hood (see the research i do for you people?) told me the bigger the rim isn’t necessarily the better any more – or the more spokes. now it’s how far it pokes out. the further it pokes out the better. “swangers”, they call them. reminds me of the shit that poked out of your wheels in “spy hunter”. great – so now wheels are as metaphorical to your cock as it can possibly get. times like this i actually pray the mayans are right and the reset button will get his in just a few more months…