For Luis Martinez, competing in lowriding bike and car competitions is about more than glory and bragging rights. The lowrider clubs in the Chicago area have become like one big family and a source of mutual support.

“It just starts with the metal,” said Martinez, who got his introduction to lowrider culture when his mother took him to a flea market. He had his first bike when he was 12.

“To me, it’s about expressing my art and what I can do with my own hands,” Martinez told The Associated Press as he polished a shiny red bike at his home in Mishawaka, Indiana.

It’s a legacy that Sonia Gomez wants for her 8-year-old son, Daniel Marquez. His late father, Alberto Marquez, had been a member of a Chicago area lowrider club. Too young to drive the car left to him by his father, Daniel has a lowriding bike that is more of a memorial to his dad.

“The bike is what he’s doing to build it up,” Gomez said.

The family will do an ofrenda, a display often associated with Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebrations, when local lowriding festivals are held. As part of the ofrenda, Daniel takes an image he has with his father on a lowriding bike and places it next to his actual bike, which he named “Wishing on a Star.”

“We would either go on a (lowriding) cruise with my uncle, or we would go to actual car shows,” Daniel recently recalled, while sitting at the driver’s seat of his dad’s lowriding car parked in the driveway of their home in Frankfort, Illinois.

“My mom would be there,” he said pointing to the passenger seat. “And I’d be back there all squished.”