Purple Slabs, Rain and Z-Ro: Houston Threw 713 Day a Day Early in the East End

Jon Martinez does not need anybody to explain slab culture to him. He goes by Bagd Lac on Instagram and on his license plate, and on Sunday he stood in front of his purple slab in an East Houston parking lot and put the whole thing in one sentence for the Houston Chronicle: "We hog the whole lane, you know what I mean?"

That was the mood at Giant Texas Distillers on July 12, when Hou City Fest threw its 713 Day party a day ahead of the calendar. The holiday is named for Houston's original area code, so it officially lands on July 13. Nobody seemed to mind the early start. The Chronicle reported that hundreds of people came out through rain, heat and humidity, with Z-Ro on the speakers and barbecue smoke drifting over the lot.

A bike ride, a parking lot and a lot of chrome

The day did not start with cars at all. According to the Chronicle, it kicked off at 11:30 a.m. at Market Square Park downtown, where the Clutch City Cruisers bike club led a ride out to the distillery. Once everyone landed in the East End, the parking lot turned into a block party: tacos, beer, watermelon, barbecue, deep fried Oreos, crochet, Rockets and DJ Screw T-shirts, henna and dirty sodas, all reported by the paper.

The cars were the reason a lot of people came, though. The organizer's own vehicle registration form pitched the event as a celebration of local vendors, "slabs, lowriders and live performances," and it let owners sign up under slab, classic car, lowrider, truck or other. The slabs ended up past the vendor row, with owners lounging in front of them and their social media handles painted right on the windows, which is about as Houston as a car show gets.

If you are not from here: slab stands for slow, loud and bangin'. It is the custom car tradition that took hold in Houston in the 1980s, built around big American sedans, candy paint, a trunk that pops open to show off a sign, serious sound and, above all, swangas. Those are the wire wheels with spokes that stick out past the fenders, sometimes by a foot or more.

"We poke out for a reason"

Martinez told the Chronicle he was born into it. He said he can remember the people in his life and the slabs they drove going back to when he was little, and that the appeal is hard to explain to anyone who did not grow up around it. He tried anyway.

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We poke out for a reason. We take control of the lane. We run our own vibe.

He framed it as something bigger than wheels. "One thing about Houston is that we create our own way," Martinez told the paper. Anyone who has watched a slab roll down a feeder road at 15 mph, trunk up and swangas glinting, gets it. The point is not to get anywhere quickly. The point is to be seen getting there.

Martinez also gave the most honest description of what it feels like from behind the wheel. "Oh man, we feel like we run the whole road," he said. That is the joke and the truth of a slab in one line. Those wheels physically take up more lane than a stock car, and the culture is built on owning that space with style rather than speed.

Remembering Mike

Not every part of the day was a party. Vendor Brittany Scranton, who runs Treatz Made By Thicca and was selling funnel cakes, hot Cheetos boudin balls and deep fried Twinkies, told the Chronicle she came partly to celebrate the life of Miguel Padilla, known in the scene as Mike. ABC13 had reported that Padilla was killed in a shooting outside the Paradise City gentlemen's club in April.

A GoFundMe for his family described Padilla as "lovingly known as 'Nawfside Linco'" and a "proud member of the Blue Line" slab group, according to the Chronicle. The fundraiser's own words were quoted in the paper: "Mike brought people together through his love for the scene." Seeing his name come up again at a summer car party says plenty about how tight this community is.

Scranton kept it upbeat, too, even as the drizzle started. She joked to the Chronicle that saying too much good about Houston only brings more people to town, then said it anyway: "Houston is the place to be, the place to grow family."

Not cowboys and ranchers

The best line about why slabs matter came from a food truck owner, not a car owner. Dennis Hagans runs the Chicken Coop HTX out of Humble, and he told the Chronicle that people outside Texas tend to picture something very different when he says where he is from.

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A lot of people, whenever I travel, and I tell them Houston, I tell them Texas, they kind of think cowboys and ranchers. But then whenever you really start thinking about Houston, they're like oh, the cars, and the rims and the music, right?

That is the real reason 713 Day keeps pulling slabs into its parking lots. The cars, the music and the city's identity are tangled together here in a way they are not almost anywhere else. Houston rap put slabs and swangas on records for decades, and the cars returned the favor by turning the music into something you could see coming down the street. Hagans also passed along the old local rule that explains why so many people showed up on a weekend afternoon: "They always say don't leave Houston on a Sunday, so you know, 713 Day today is only right."

Why it matters

Slab culture has spent a lot of its life on the edge of the mainstream, more likely to show up in a viral video from a confused tourist than on an official city calendar. A 713 Day party that builds a vendor festival around slabs and lowriders, and that starts with a bike club rolling out of downtown, is a sign of how far that has shifted. The Chronicle's coverage of the day did not treat the cars as a curiosity. It treated them as the main attraction, which they were.

For anyone planning to see it in person, the takeaway from this one is simple. Show up early, bring cash for the vendors, expect weather, and do not be surprised when the most photographed thing in the lot is a purple Cadillac with wheels that reach halfway into the next parking space.