It's amazing how tightly packed the cars are at 941 Kustomz, a little garage sitting right behind the fabled Hob Nob burger joint on 17th Street in Sarasota. Mere inches separate one car from another here, many of which are outfitted with custom paint jobs, specialized speaker combos and, of course, big, shiny-ass rims.
The biggest monster here is a '96 Chevy Dually, which, with its extended cab, Lamborghini doors, 60-odd speakers, glow-in-the-dark paint job and dual rear tires, makes it one of the most remarkable, if not all-around most intimidating rides on the lot. It belongs to Muta Hawks, 941 Kustomz's owner.
Asked how much the truck is worth, he says calmly, "$70,000, at least." As for how much of that is invested in rims? Sixteen grand, he estimates. That includes the two inside rear tires, the ones that most people don't see.
Hawks' friends, a collection of young guys who are also customers, are hanging around the shop this afternoon. I ask one, Rick "Hard Time" Riddle, why rims are important.
"You can't have a car without rims," he says, standing next to his 2000 Ford Expedition outfitted with 24-inchers. "All cars deserve rims. An automobile without rims is not a car."
For Riddle, rims are a particularly urban phenomenon. You adapt to your environment, he says, and his is the inner city. "If you are in the country," he says over the din of bass-heavy hip-hop emanating from his SUV, "you see big trucks. Here, you see big rims."
But is bigger always better? Not always.
"Some go for classy, some go for bigger," says Hawks, a fit, heavily tattooed 28-year-old guy with cornrows and a set of gold teeth. "With a Lexus, you don't want big rims. With big rims, you gotta change a lot of other shit, so everything gets customized." A Lexus, he notes, shouldn't have too much customization — it comes with status, simply by virtue of being more expensive — whereas an older truck like his all but begs for it.
But the men in the parking lot are quick to point out a fundamental rule of rim culture: You don't want to upgrade your blades before you've fixed up the rest of the car.
People who put rims on beater rides are simply wrong. "They're rushing it," says Funny Sonny, a boxing gloves-wearing kid who refuses to give his real name. "First you do paint, then interior, then music, then your rims." The wheels, he says, are what turn heads, which is something you don't want to do if your car is sub-par.
You've got to take care of your ride, Sonny says. And if you're a man who looks like you're half-assing it (as people do when they put nice rims on old, fucked-up looking vehicles), it reflects on your ability to provide. By contrast, if you can take care of your ride, he says, you can take care of a woman.
"It's what the hos want," Sonny says, when asked why he has 22-inch rims on his '93 Chevy Caprice. "If you got rims, you got money."
And if you've got money, he adds, "You got pussy."
This article appears in Jul 5-11, 2006.
