San Jose Banned Cruising for Decades. Now It Closes Santa Clara Street for Lowrider Day

For most of Raul Peralez's life, cruising in San Jose was illegal. "I never knew a time when cruising wasn't illegal, because I was 4-years-old when it became illegal," the former councilmember told ABC7 in 2022, the summer the city finally took down its last "No Cruising Zone" sign. Four years later, San Jose does not just allow lowriders downtown. It closes Santa Clara Street for them and proclaims a day in their honor.

At its Tuesday, September 1 meeting, the San Jose City Council proclaimed Sunday, September 6, 2026 Lowrider Day, according to San José Spotlight. The fourth annual event was set for noon to 6 p.m. on Santa Clara Street between Third and Seventh streets, right in front of City Hall, with lowriders, live music, food, local vendors, community resources and performances. The offices of Councilmembers Anthony Tordillos and Peter Ortiz host it with the United Lowrider Council of San Jose.

From ban to proclamation

The date is not random. Lowrider Day marks the anniversary of the council's 2022 decision to repeal a cruising ban that had stood for decades. Peralez, a police officer as well as a councilmember, pushed for the repeal after experiencing discrimination under the ban as a young man, San José Spotlight reports. Critics had called the law blatantly racist, arguing it let officers single out people of color, and the council voted unanimously in June 2022 to repeal it, ABC7 reported at the time.

When the last sign came down that summer, hundreds of lowriders filled the City Hall rotunda and East Santa Clara Street. "It's a historic day! It is a historic day! And it feels like the City of San Jose has embraced us," solo rider Tim Carrasco told ABC7. Ricardo Cortez of the United Lowrider Council put San Jose's tech-capital reputation in lowrider terms: "While they were innovating personal computers, we were personalizing our rides."

San José Spotlight's history of the culture gives context for why that moment hit so hard. Cruising has been part of Chicano culture since the 1940s and became a symbol of Mexican American resistance during the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s, it had been tied nationally to gang violence and illegal activity, and cities across the country, San Jose among them, passed laws against it.

Building the relationship

The first Lowrider Day was held outside City Hall on September 1, 2023. That same month, the council voted to donate a retired San Jose Police Ford Crown Victoria Interceptor to the United Lowrider Council to be built into a lowrider and displayed as community art through the San Jose Police Historical Society, San José Spotlight reported. The council, a collective of nearly 70 local clubs led by president David Polanco, now works with SJPD on events and cruises.

The Crown Victoria project was meant as a symbol. "The Crown Vic (car) project is a symbol of the collaboration that is beginning to happen," Ortiz told San José Spotlight in 2023. Then-Police Chief Anthony Mata called the car "one example of our continued partnership with the United Lowrider Council of San Jose." Spotlight noted that Latinos make up 31 percent of San Jose's population, according to the 2022 Census, and that the collaboration between the lowrider council, the police and the city had been in the works for five years.

The relationship has had friction. After road closures during Cinco de Mayo in 2023 drew criticism, councilmembers including Ortiz proposed better communication, which led to a committee with the city, police and the lowrider council. "As lowriders, we're role models for a lot of these kids," Polanco told San José Spotlight in 2023.

By 2025 the event had grown to more than 300 lowriders lining the street in front of City Hall, NBC Bay Area reported.

A pillar, not the capital

The people running it are clear-eyed about what the day is for. Cortez, who handles history and youth education for the lowrider council and wrote the children's book "The ABCs of Lowriding," told San José Spotlight the event is about taking back the negative narratives that have surrounded the culture for a long time. "I think every year it gets bigger. It gets more popular," he said. He credits the older generation meeting young people where they are.

“

(San Jose is not) the capital of lowriding, but we're definitely a pillar of lowriding here within the lowrider world.

Ortiz, who grew up in East San Jose and remembers lowriders around King and Story roads, was blunt about what has not changed. "We still, unfortunately, have a stigma in the greater community against lowriders," he told San José Spotlight. Then he described what the proclamation means to him: "I'm just excited for our Chicano community to be full front here at City Hall, at the people's house."

Other cities were watching from the start. At the 2022 sign removal, National City councilmember Jose Rodriguez told ABC7, "It gives us inspiration. It gives me inspiration and hope that this is possible." San Jose went further than a repeal. It turned its repeal into an annual street party at City Hall, with a council proclamation and the same police department that once enforced the ban helping to run it. For a culture that spent decades being told to keep moving, getting the street closed for you is a different kind of statement.