Skate Icon's Malibu Wagon Lowrider Mixes Bosozoku With Louisiana Soul

How does a skateboard icon in New Orleans end up building a Japanese-inflected Chevy Malibu wagon lowrider? For Philly Santosuosso, there simply was no other way.

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“I don’t know where that attention to detail came, but when it comes to the cars, for me it’s like nah, it’s gotta be this way. And most people have no idea what I’m talking about,” he says. “They’re like, ‘what, you spent three grand on used Japanese wheels?’ I’m like yeah, but you don’t understand. You can’t do this any other way.”

Philly owns Humidity Skate Shop in New Orleans, and he’s been on the scene for decades now as a skater, designer, and all around creative force. Skateboarding was first a refuge from a chaotic home life, then a second family, then a career. Lowriding? That’s his next chapter.

“I want everyone to, when they meet me, be like, oh nah, like this dude put in work to get where he is at. I really respect the game and I want to earn everybody's respect,” he says. “When I started like showing up, I threw a barbecue for everyone before I even had a car cut.”

The path to the Malibu wagon started when he discovered lowrider bikes as a kid and was immediately obsessed with the style. That naturally led him to lowrider cars, but as he got older, he couldn’t afford his own. Instead he got hooked on JDM culture [“A Civic was like 1500 bucks.”] as discovered through old Option VHSs a skate friend used to carry around in his trunk.

One day, he saw photos of an old slammed Chevy C10 pickup in Japan, and it sparked something in him. He sold a bunch of his stuff and went all-in on buying and building a Monte Carlo lowrider and getting into the lowrider scene in New Orleans.

Not long after, he found this old Chevy Malibu wagon on Facebook and knew it was the canvas he’d been looking for. He decided to build it with his own personal mix of New Orleans and Japanese Bosozoku style, and man, it’s beautiful. Almost as beautiful as Philly finding a new family for a new stage in his life.

“It's just that growing up and being 39 and still skating, a lot of people my age aren't doing what I'm doing or living that life of being a skateboarder and putting that first,” he says. “The overall camaraderie and brotherhood of lowriding is another thing that I think was missing in my life.”

Follow Philly on Instagram →   / wavytrillbaby  

Produced, shot, and edited by →   / tomgorelik  

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