I grew up around custom cars, my Dad “Leo Perez” owned a custom paint and fabrication shop. We would do everything: chop tops, French antennas ,suicide doors and custom painting .My dad would show me how to
fabricate and paint. I would then experiment with these techniques until I got the effect I was looking for .He was the first person to introduce me to pinstriping. He showed me how to hold the brush and a few techniques. There was not much information or how to books on pinstriping, so I would just experiment and practice on my own. Pinstriping is addicting once you start practicing. It is hard to put the brush down, you just want to keep on striping and striping . I would pinstripe everything that would stay still long enough. I striped all the cabinets in the shop, tool boxes ,and cars sitting around waiting to be painted. I even pinstriped my grandmother’s refrigerator. There was a Chinese restaurant next to the shop, some of their customers were surprised when they came out and found that their car had been pinstriped .I pretty much stayed out of trouble because I was always working on my techniques and trying to get better at pinstriping and custom painting . The shop was located on Central Ave. in downtown Phoenix which just happened to be the street where everyone would come to cruise on a Friday and Saturday nights .The shop was the place to hang out. I would work late at the shop and all my high school buddies would come and hang out and watch the cars cruise by .All of this working late was starting to pay off. I got a pretty good following of customers at the age of 14. I would paint street rods, lowriders and motorcycles. Lowriders were my favorite because anything and everything would look good on them. I could use metal flake, graphics, pinstriping, and gold leaf on them. The more you had going on the better .So I could really use all these different designs on the same car to create this wild paint scheme.
