Hot Rod Club Paraphernalia

A couple of years ago, I found myself at LAX waiting on a delayed flight while sitting next to a young kid in a very old denim jacket. I made no efforts at small talk… or any talk at all really… and just did my time while I read my book. Eventually, the boarding call rang out and we all filed onto the airplane – packing it full.

As luck would have it, my assigned seat was on the very last row of the airplane – right next to the kid with the jean jacket. Further luck lead to more delays and we ended up sitting on the tarmac for close to two hours.

Somewhere around the one hour mark, either me or the young kid broke the silence. I don’t remember which of us met our breaking point, but I do remember the talk going to the old denim jacket pretty quickly. He mentioned he collected denim and that particular jacket was from the 1940’s and was considered a classic worth hundreds of dollars.

I used the door to history that he pointed towards and mentioned that I too like old shit – mostly old cars. That’s when he broke out his phone and started showing me old Levi’s jackets with chain stitched motorcycle club logos on the back.

“Rad,” I said. “You know car clubs had jackets as well, but they were mostly patterned after letterman’s jackets and made of wool.”

He then started swiping madly at his phone while he explained that there were a few “low class” car clubs that did denim through the years as well. Before too long, he had the pictures to prove it pulled up on his phone. As he flipped through, he gave me stories for each.

The next hour went pretty quickly. Commonalities tend to break down walls, right? I got a full history lesson on denim, but more importantly I got to watch a young kid glow in passion. That shit motivates me…

Anyway, I hadn’t thought about that interaction in a long time. And then, this weekend I saw one of the jackets he had shown me on eBay. It’s just an old sleeveless Levi’s jacket with chain-stitched art from Riverside County. The Car Club? The Street Racers. Check it out:

Within hours, the auction was pulled. I assume someone payed the “buy it now” price and is now eagerly awaiting their Levi’s with a pocketbook that is $3,000 lighter.

Further research didn’t pull up much on the “Street Racers,” but I did find some evidence that Levi’s actually recreated this very jacket a few years ago. They only made a few, but they did it with painstaking detail – even to go as far as to chain-stitch the original art again.

And that kid? I’ve got reason to believe he’s now a VP at Levi’s. Always love your work, right?

***

Anyway, I thought this would be a cool opportunity to start an image thread. If you’ve got obscure paraphernalia from obscure car clubs – post those images here. I want to see them!