THE JUNKYARDS, Willets Point, Queens. Among the body shops, tire shops, muffler shops and wrecking yards was a car-audio shop specializing in chucheros and the Dominican kitipó tradition — vehicles turned into rolling walls of speakers, amplifiers and light, with the sound aimed outward at anybody within range.
But the real theater came on warm summer nights, long after the repair shops had closed. At two in the morning a Jeep or van would open up the chuchero, the girls would be dancing their asses off in the street, and every few minutes another jet would claw its way out of LaGuardia overhead. Bass from the speakers, jet engines in the sky, scrap yards in the dark — it was a sight and sound to see.
One monster van carried the biggest system I ever saw. It became notorious well beyond the Iron Triangle; people in Bayside complained about the noise, and eventually the van was confiscated. In a neighborhood full of wrecked automobiles, this one had been rebuilt for exactly the opposite purpose: to make sure everybody knew it was there