Concept
A lowrider bicycle is a highly customized bicycle with styling inspired by lowrider cars. These bikes often feature a long, curved banana seat with a sissy bar and very tall upward-swept ape hanger handlebars. A lot of chrome, velvet, and overspoked wheels are common accessories to these custom bicycles. The bikes are typically a highly individualized creation. Early modified bikes have been crafted as a part of lowrider culture by Chicano youth since the 1960s. They were at first stigmatized by mainstream U.S. culture, even as they were a symbol of pride in Chicano communities. They later became accepted and popular elsewhere. Lowrider Bicycle was a magazine dedicated to the bikes first published in 1993. The bikes are now popular internationally, such as in Japan and Europe. Despite the fact that these bikes originated within the poverty of the barrio, lowrider bikes can be expensive. Some of the bikes are not rideable and exist only for aesthetic purposes. Early modified bikes first appeared in California alongside Lowrider car culture popular in Chicano communities. Mexican American youth would emulate the craft of lowrider cars with their bicycles as a canvas for creativity, usually starting with common muscle bikes. This allowed those who were too young to drive a car to have a custom vehicle. Similar to lowrider cars, the bikes were stigmatized as a part of "gang culture" by mainstream America simply because of their origins within the Chicano community. In 1963, the Schwinn company released of the Schwinn Sting-Ray. George Barris, who moved to Los Angeles to "become part of the emerging teen car culture" opened a shop in Bell, California, a Mexican American neighborhood. He used the Schwinn stock frame to create a modified bike for The Munsters set in the mid-1960s. This bike had a chain body to fit the macabre style of the show, but did not have an elongated body. This was for the character Eddie Munster, yet the bike did not appear on the show and was largely unknown at the time.
