![]() Despite the pandemic, the event drew 6,500 spectators to Glendale over the course of two days in 2021, he says, and even more this past February. In addition to his shop, Castillo is renowned in lowrider circles for the annual Super Hop event he hosts in February, in which car owners unleash their hydraulics and compete to see which vehicles hop the highest. Spring is a special time for Castillo and the larger Valley lowrider community, when most of the big car shows and cruises happen, shining light on a cultural phenomenon that has deep and enduring roots in Greater Phoenix. When you’re younger, you’re hustling, hustling, hustling, trying to do everything.” ![]() “ now, I get to kick back and really enjoy it. I mean, I always did it for fun,” he says. Taking a break from a tricked-out 1990 Chevrolet Blazer, the lowrider legend – who was profiled in MotorTrend magazine in 2010 – says he gets a bigger kick out of the job now than he did during his most productive years. At Frank’s Hydraulics, the whole vehicle is reconceived, from the rims to the moon roof.Ĭastillo is nearing the valedictory phase of his career. Despite its name, the shop doesn’t only focus on hydraulics, which is the equipment that allows a driver to raise or lower the frame, “animating the car and giving it life,” in the words of Roger White, a curator for the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Having trained himself in the art of lowrider conversion in the garage of his childhood home in South Phoenix, Castillo founded Frank’s Hydraulics in 1986. A keychain bearing the likeness of rap legend Snoop Dogg hangs from the ignition, a nod to the intertwinement of the lowrider and West Coast hip-hop cultures. One of the cars parked in the lot on a spring afternoon is a maroon early-’90s Cadillac DeVille. Some of the cars here are relatively unmodified, biding time until it’s their turn to experience Castillo’s expert ministrations, while others are already full-fledged lowriders, adorned with colorful paint jobs and the crests of their respective car clubs. Around the corner, the parking lot is full of lowriders – mostly early-model Cadillacs, Chevrolets and Buicks, customized so their frames ride precariously, almost acrobatically low to the ground. Known as the Valley’s longest-operating and, by many accounts, most respected lowrider conversion shop, Frank’s Hydraulics sits in the back of the building, away from the street. He says his work keeps him young – specifically, tearing apart stock Detroit automobiles and rebuilding them into lowriders, those bucking, blinged-out, hydraulically enhanced mainstays of Latino cruise culture. Other than the salt-and-pepper coloring of his hair and goatee, Castillo, who turns 60 this year, doesn’t look his age.
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