Rebel Without a Cause

This is Svarten Asplind. He is the president of The One And Only V8 Cruisers. Which is a "raggarklubb". It's kinda hard to explain the term raggare, but I found a very good article of the subculture in The Guardian, well worth a read. Svarten is the oldest active "raggare" in Stockholm. He is sixty three years old and still going strong. I figured he would know the President of The Moonshine Cruisers and he said he had known him since Robban was a kid. Svarten loves Elvis Presley. He drives a 1960 Chrysler New Yorker. It's worth around $27 000, and is in mint condition. His t-shirt says Home is good, but the garage is best. The original proverb says Away is good but at home is best.

Different People

Three people photos from the cruiser meet in Handen. On the top photo you can see Patricia and Jari, they are an item, and they are members of the club Moonshine Cruisers. Last year I met their President, a guy called Robban at the event. After the meet at Vegabaren the party continued all night at the Moonshine Cruisers headquarters closer to Stockholm. Second photo inst your typical raggare. It's a guy with a head tattoo. We talked for a bit. He told me he wasnt too happy with people taking his portrait, but when I asked him for a few shots he happily posed for a few snaps. The third photo shows the variety of people at the meet. Meet Tommy and Tina. They were at the meet with their two kids Moa and Johanna.

1950's all over again

Together with Jimmy I walked around the cruiser meet looking for some of the babes that had entered the hottest greaser girl contest. And here are two of them. The top photo shows Anna. One of my favourites to the title. I didn't get the name of the girl on the second photo, as Jimmy was the one asking for a photo here. You can see his version over here. He had never before asked anyone for a photo, but after a few hours in my company he seemed to have figured out how to do it!

The smell of burning rubber

There's nothing better than the smell of burning rubber. At least that was the opinion of many of the raggare at the cruiser meet last Saturday at the famous Vegabaren. During my visit the air filled with burning rubber every ten minutes or so. Some of the visiting cars had travelled a long way to get here and celebrated in style when they arrived. Some of them even produced a pink smoke cloud! Every year you can vote for the worst cruiser car at the meet. To enter the contest you must show that the car has passed the compulsory periodic inspection done by the Swedish Motor Vehicle Inspection Company. And believe it or not, both these vehicles with the resting raggare on the car hoods has been here for the last couple of years. And has obviously passed that test!

At the Cruiser Meet

Here are a few more shots from the cruiser meet. The first photo shows Rebecka, Teddy and Madde, three of the people that I met and asked to pose for a portrait. As you already know by now there was a Greaser Girl contest, and I'm sure both Rebecka and Madde got a few votes. If you are wondering about Rebecka's tattoo, I believe that it depicts Hylonome who was a Kentauride (a female Centaur). The second photo proves that you can drive a Swedish car when you are a raggare. This is a customized Volvo Amazon, now a convertible with a very cool paint job. On the last photo you can see a beautiful 1958 Ford Fairlane parked across the road from the famous Vegabaren. Which is very fitting as it was in 1958 that Sweden's first ever Drive-In Kiosk opened here. And a few years later, in 1964 it became the country's first Hamburger Bar. The man behind it all was Erik Engström. After him the Italian Carlo Taccola took over and he has done a great job with the place. Today there is even a hotel here. For more than forty five years Vegabaren has been the place to be for the lovers of the Raggare culture, and anyone else hungry for a burger in the day or late a night. I started coming here when I was eighteen. Me and my friends would drive up to Handen for a meal and sure enough there would always be a few Raggare around. Later as we started visiting night clubs and bars in Stockholm we often took a taxi home, and a stop at Vegabaren was obligatory as it was also a favourite place among the taxi drivers.

The girl in the red dress

My camera was working overtime at the car meet on Saturday. There were hundreds of classic cars to shoot. And as you can expect the place was filled with photographers. I had only just arrived when one of them walked up to me and introduced himself. His name was Jimmy and he knew me from flickr, so we started talking, and had a really good time photographing the cars, the girls and the occasional dude. Here is a link to his photos. I mentioned in my first post from the meet that there was a Hottest Greaser Girl competition going on. This was one of the prettier girl I met. I don't know if she won, but she got the attention from many photographers. As I asked her to pose in front of one of the more trashier cars, I could hear the sound of the cameras behind me. At this time I had taken so many photos, and talked to so many people that I forgot to ask her name. So she will forever be The Girl in the Red Dress.

Where Elvis is still king

I guess I should explain a little about the subculture known as raggare (greasers or cruisers), in Sweden. It is people that love American cars from 1950s and 1960s. And everything else American from that era. Although there are of course also many raggare that drives a Swedish Volvo Amazon. Their preferred choice of music is rockabilly, and obviously Elvis Presley is the king. Every weekend they dress up and go for a cruise around their town. Or if it is summer they will drive to one of the big meets, like this one in Handen on Saturday. Raggare has been around since the 1950s. Back then it was more gang oriented, with fights between troublemakers from different cities and regions. These days everyone knows each other and the meetings are often big street festivals where you will find both the young and old as well as many families. I didn't count all the cars I saw at Vegabaren, it must have been a few hundred. The place was filled with Chevrolet Bel Airs, Crown Victorias, Thunderbird and De Soto Fireflites to name but a few. And the traffic came to a standstill every ten minutes or so, when someone decided it was his time to do a burn out! I have read somewhere that we import around 5000 classic cars from the US every year, and that there are now more restored 1950s cars in Sweden than in the US! More classic cars and people in the coming days.

Greaser Girl

For the last sixteen years there has been a big Greaser meet at Vegabaren in Handen. It's a great event. Greasers arrive from all over Sweden. In classy cars and in really trashy rides. There's usually a few bands playing, and some really interesting contests. Like best Greaser Girl. This is one of the contestants. She is The Girl With No Name. I stayed around for about four hours. Met a lot of people. Took around 300 photos. So you can expect to see a lot of pictures of classic cars and people who look like they are from the 1950s in the coming days. Or weeks...

The Vice President

This is Tony. I met him at the cruiser meet in Handen a while back. He is the Vice President of the Southern Streeters, a greaser club from Södertälje. The club has been around since 1994 and has 21 members.Tony drives a 1960 Ford Starline. He bought the car for 50 000 SEK three years ago. I have probably used another 100 000 SEK on the Ford since then he told me. He was at the meet with friends from the club, and with his girlfriend, their new born baby and his mother. In his professional life Tony works as a truck driver. Cars are his big hobby and his latest project is an old Buick. He also told me that the bass player in the band on stage as we spoke was a member of the Southern Streeters. And as it happened Kenny has a great photo of that same Bass Player.


This is my 81th photo for the 100 Strangers project. You can see the rest of my strangers in my Set

The President

This is Robban. His friends also call him Lång-Robban, or Tall Robert, which is weird since I'm not that tall, he told me. We met close to Vegabaren in Handen. The hamburger bar that was Sweden's first Drive-in kiosk when it opened back in 1958. Saturday saw a big car meet with greasers from all over the country visiting. Robban is the president of the biggest greasers club in Stockholm. It is called Moonshine Cruisers. The club has been around since 1985. We have 18 full members that have the club vest and around 90 other sponsoring members. Tonight we are holding a big party at our club house in Farsta for all our visiting friends. There are people here from all over Sweden, even from as away as Kiruna ( 1310 km), so it will be a fun night. Greasers have been driving out to this famous hamburger bar for forty years. This annual meet is the owners way of paying back for all those years, Robban told me. Professionally Robban works as an electrician. He has a few cars of course. He arrived with his girlfriend in his 1969 Chrysler 300 Convertible.


This is my 79th photo for the 100 Strangers project. You can see the rest of my strangers in my Set

2008 Cruiser Meet

Every year Raggare from all over Sweden meet at Vegabaren for a get together. There's live music and hundreds of cars and much more. On the wind shield you can read: Dare to be disgusting. They misspelled it, but I'm sure you get the picture. These guys were hoping to win the category for worst "Råttsoffa". The worst rat seat if you translate it to English. They were already drunk when I arrived. The TV crews were drawn to them and that made them very proud and even more drunk. Not sure if they won but they got my vote. I talked to another photographer who said that the car had all it's paper in order and that they had driven all the way from Värmland without any problems. If so that is very impressive! From the 2008 Cruiser Meet at Vegabaren in Handen on Saturday. 2008 Cruiser Meet at Vegabaren. I will probably show a few more photo in the coming week so stay tuned!