Car Clubs and Community Stewardship : Slideshow

Monday, May 16, 2011

This year marks Chevrolet's 100th anniversary -- all the more reason for "Them Chevy Boyz" to flaunt their rides.
Kateri Jochum/WNYC
Dr. Brenda Gross-Nixon, a.k.a. "The Church Lady", is a member of The Lady Ryderz SUV Club and the spiritual minister for 1,000 members of "the circuit" of car and truck clubs in Brooklyn.
Kateri Jochum/WNYC
Raymond Williams, president of the car club Swagga Like Us

Raymond Williams, president of the car club Swagga Like Us, sells dinner tickets at an event in Brownsville, N.Y. Members of dozens of clubs came to raise money for a gun buy-back program, to get weapons off the streets of New York's worst crime neighborhood. 

Kateri Jochum/WNYC

All club members have leather vests with their club insignia on the back, their name over their heart and the names of close friends and family members who have died on the front. But not many have as much "bling" as Scott "Skee" Killiebrew though.

Kateri Jochum/WNYC

Andrea McCarthy (right front) says her name in the Ladee Vixenz Social Club is "Ju' C Fruit" - like the gum. McCarthy's older brother was shot by a friend when she was just 9 years old, here in the neighborhood, and she wants to prevent the same thing from happening to her three daughters.

Kateri Jochum/WNYC
"Big Mike" is Michael Haley, founder of Them Chevy Boyz with his pride and joy - a 1995 Chevy Caprice with a custom orange and metallic paint job. When Haley was a child, he says he blackened the windows of his remote control car and put a stereo speaker on the top -  pretending he had wheels just like the bad boys in the neighborhood."
Kateri Jochum/WNYC

The windshield of "Big Mike's" 1995 Chevy Caprice reads "Orange You Jealous?". He says people stop him on the street in Manhattan to take pictures of his orange and silver chrome dream. It is his sixth Chevy.