Alofa

Less than two weeks before stay-at-home orders were issued across the country in response to COVID-19, more than six hundred heavy hearts crowded an exhibition hall in Sacramento to mourn the loss of a giant in lowriding, Kita Siliva Lealoa.

His broad and tattooed frame, firm embrace, and intensely loving spirit embody his leadership style that has molded his club and the wider culture of lowriding.

Kita Lealao co-founded Uso Car Club, a model for integration, at a time when many clubs were built or expanded along color lines. His oversized influence on lowrider culture spans from Carson, where Uso Car Club began in 1992, to Sacramento, where his sunset was celebrated, and beyond.

The club’s first chapter, founded in the LA Harbor area, laid the foundation for Uso which has grown to more than 30 chapters across the U.S. and internationally including Canada, Sweden, Australia, and Guam. This growth was fueled by Kita’s passion for people.

As Uso’s high chief he emphasized family values within the club framework and considered the character of prospective members as well as the quality of their cars while mentoring new chapters, sealing the deal with his warm and welcoming embrace.

In 2008, Kita was officially recognized for his contributions to the lowrider community when he was inducted into the Lowrider Hall of Fame, an honor cementing his legacy as one of a small circle of pioneers and innovators that have contributed lasting impact to lowrider culture.

Hundreds of unlikely relationships born of his life’s work, united through lowriding, convened to celebrate who he was in these accomplishments—because they are what brought us together from Kentucky’s hallows to LA’s Harbor Area, from St. Paul to South Central and everywhere else present throughout the weekend.

Reflecting on Kita’s life in community together with those whose lives he touched was his parting gift to us all before a long year ahead.

This year has brought many losses, including the passing of Makerita, the Lealoa matriarch, only months after her husband Kita. We are being forced to evaluate how and why we connect with each other and innovate ways of being together because our health, safety, and thriving depend on it.

A year later, Kita’s gift still shines as brightly as the glistening golden patterns on his famed 1981 Cadillac Coupe de Ville built by his club in tribute to him.

The Lowriders: From Detroit to LA and Back

Coupe DeVilles, as with many of the cars that serve as traditional lowriders, were originally designed and built in Detroit before being sent around the world. These cars eventually inspired a number of automotive customization cultures, many of which worked their way back to the Motor City itself. 

Late 1930’s Pachuco culture popularized the low slung stance that came to be emblematic of lowriding as a social and stylistic statement. Los Angeles eventually innovated hydraulic suspensions in the 1950’s, later a qualifying modification of lowriders, to adjust to the cars’ ride height while still driving in response to law enforcement’s targeted crackdowns on cruisers.

Since then lowriding has traveled across many bridges—through time, cultures, communities, and geographies—and has developed its own unique characteristics in various locales on its round trip voyage back into the heart of Detroit where we climbed in, buckled up, and hit the switch.

Kita Lealao was one of those bridges. When it was time to add a plaque to the rear deck we formed Uso’s Detroit chapter as an expression of our values as well as a model of mentoring and achievement to grow into.

Alofa, A Way of Life

Kita’s life is well summarized in the simple expression “Alofa ia te oe”, Samoan for “I love you”, and was about bringing people together.

“No Color Lines”, an early motto of Uso, pushed his club and lowrider culture as a whole beyond boundaries of the color of flags—those of ethnicities and of neighborhoods alike. If lowriding is our reason to gather, Kita’s contributions center on who we are once we do. His vision went beyond cars to the community they can help create, past paint as a point of pride to plaques as an expression of family.

Kita’s word was the gospel of lowriding as family. The club name itself means “brothers” in his native Samoan language and is informally interchangeable with “sisters” as well as a general expression of familial ties. He evangelized a brand of riding that grounded us personally as members, and built us a home in the national lowrider community while inspiring countless riders from coast to coast.

Kita’s Last Ride and Legacy

Some traveled minutes from home to offer final respects while others journeyed hours or days across states, time zones, and seas—from Lima in Ohio, Montreal and Minnesota, Hawaii, British Columbia, Miami, Alaska, Arizona, Texas, and North Carolina to California.

Relatives, friends, members, and riders from clubs everywhere came out to support one another at the picnic, funeral, final cruise, and burial honoring Kita’s legacy. The family that he built with Makerita and Uso Car Club had come together to say talofa from near and far in late February 2020, mere days before we realized this kind of gathering would not be possible again anytime soon.

Ages, affiliations, and skintones of the celebrants spanned the spectrums of time and color.  Elaborately tattooed guests with braids mingled with young and old, some untouched by needle and ink, many clothed in the event’s red tee wrapped in white screenprint remembrance of Kita. 

Hosts cloaked in traditional Samoan robes and beads embraced their brothers and sisters of countless cultures and backgrounds in receiving lines, passing plate on top of plate to share favor and food with all who came to remember. 

The uniting element in the void where Kita’s body lay is a spirit larger than the sum of the differences. He crowded us in over the years as kindreds, biological and adopted through inspiration, teaching us about the reward that lies beyond the differences that divide in favor of a focus on love.

It is truly a celebration that we have lived our lives together—connected by Kita—in a lifestyle that has distracted us from our differences for long enough to find ourselves in deep relationship with one another. We say this is lowriding, but this is love. Lowriding helped us get there.

We say Kita was a lowrider, but Kita was a lover who, through lowriding, drove us into the arms and lives of one another.