Audio Geeks, Gear Heads, & Speed Freaks

I waited by a red light on the corner of South Dixie Highway and Old Cutler Road. Tan colored strip malls with surf shops and dive centers hide the setting sun, casting golden auras around the silhouette of palm trees positioned before a marbled pink and yellow sky. South Beach is the main nerve for every neurotic fantasy fulfilled by pill heads and drooling incoherent college students. The outskirts of town prove to be a desolate playground for those with dreams that are far too weird when compared to the socially accepted depravities, which contaminate the streets of our central social hubs…as the neon lights and twinkling sky scrapers vanish in the distance, we venture deep into the darkness of the Wild West. South Florida’s warehouse district is a wasteland at the helm of Audio Geeks, Gear Heads, & Speed Freaks. 

Most workshops lay with their gates closed shut, embellished by the sounds of muffled heavy machinery. My four cylinder engine purred like a house cat compared to the distant growls of these heavily modified beasts. Gil and I had agreed to meet in the lot beside love dub Audio’s center of operations, home to a crew of wild eyed technicians led by the God Father of Miami’s Jeep Swarm posse. By the time of my arrival, a portion of the group sat on beat down lawn chairs around the back of a lifted Ford F-250. I was introduced to DJ Flip, the head of this entire operation…Flip moved slow, but that's because Flip didn’t move for anybody. He lit a cigar the size of my forearm, the yellow tinted white of his eyes reflecting these multicolored light fixtures which outlined their latest work…

A set of four twelve inch drivers and eight two inch drivers sat mounted on the cargo bed, the auditory power of which is equal to sixteen times than that of a DJ at your average house party. Two of the crew members climbed on the back of the truck, tightening a handful of screws; two bottles of Coronas sweating, leaving a ring on the pavement besides the indentations on their ragged worn down seats. “I believe there’s an addiction behind this,” Flip continued, “It messes around with your body, your endorphins, your adrenaline…people will crowd around these and just stare at them. You’d think there’s a visual aspect to it but there isn’t, they're just looking at a bunch of speakers,”. 

Two shops down the lot, a member of the lowrider crew paced around with their hands on their hips, muttering something about their patriarchs incompetence. In this particular corner of street culture, one's reputation seems to be of utmost importance; your social status defined by the quality of your modifications. One of the other troops was breaking a sweat, before storming off into the open road with no real explanation. In this vehicular subculture, the fashion in which you parade your line of work will define how general audiences perceive the caliber of your craft. 

Amidst the still silence of rustling palm trees, scattered conversations, and the occasional mechanic clangor, an echoing pulse can be felt emanating from an unseen corner of this time in space. This menacing rhythmic vibration hushed all signs of life in the lot, even the trees seemed to stop and listen…it wasn’t so much a sound, rather a feeling in your chest. The ominous heartbeat seemed to multiply as it approached our vicinity. Soon enough, underneath the heavy noise, a roaring choir of V8 engines could be heard as a swarm of bassheads stormed past our line of sight. This group of depraved grease monkeys have proven to be a pest for people like Flip and his crew, who seek to make sound system culture a respectable line of work. “What they’re doing is chasing numbers,” Flip explained, “they build SPL vehicles, they’re not the nicest looking…they tear them apart, windows blow out…they’re not looking for a musical aspect, they’re looking for numbers,”.

Since the dawn of time, sounds have been used to induce supernatural sensations on the material body; from the Mayans at Chichen Itzá, utilizing sound to induce a sense of fear against the Spanish empire, to the northern Siberian tundras, where wolves howl as one to foster a warm vibration, deep within their loins. South Florida has come to be known as the basshead capital of the world, where these adrenaline junkies seek to achieve over a hundred and sixty decibels on a sound level meter. Bassheads use sub frequencies as a narcotic to stimulate parts of the body which can only be activated on a molecular level. Nikola Tesla breaks down the nature of reality to a matter of energy, frequency, and vibrations. To tame the foundations upon which our universe is built implies that the cosmic magi behind these metaphysical alterations are one step closer to playing God, than those who lack the proper expertise…what differentiates Flip and his crew from this group of heedless brutes is what lies at the heart of their mission. 

To PRV Audio, sound systems are a means to an end. A prodigious community of visionaries, connoisseurs, and wackadoos have assembled through the divine energy of carefully administered vibrations. Without the music, this herd of mechanical creatures would cease to exist. In an effort to pay things forward, the songs that inhabit these communal events are typically by up and coming artists…Crowds of up to three thousand people have come to gather to alter their state of mind through the use of subsonic frequencies, and in the process, discovering the talents of tomorrow. These automobile meets are an event by the people and for the people; a place for new ideas, a place for innovation, and a place to connect with our most primitive instincts. When once we gathered around controlled fires, discovering the first primal rhythms of mankind, in the age of science fiction, we gather around neon lined lifted trucks and high fidelity speakers…