Doin' Donuts
Buying tires on the cheap for our hoopties
By Kathy Y. Wilson

The good thing about living in a city so distinctly separated by class is that there are plenteous goods and services for wage slaves living in poor and working-class neighborhoods.

Lower Price Hill, Evanston, Over-the-Rhine and Northside all have discount shops selling tires and doing rapid-fire tire repair on the cheap for people like me. These places go hand-in-hand with shade-tree mechanics, those gifted journeymen like my dude, Chocolate, who perform basic car repair without garage affiliation.

For those of you who have fancy, top-tier insurance with the bells and whistles of roadside assistance and who take your rides to the dealership for every nick and knock, the concept of a $10 tire is foreign and reprehensible to you, I know. But for we raggedy-ass drivers with minimal or no insurance pushin' barely roadworthy tin cans that have grey electrical tape somewhere on the body, these spots are life savers.

I have depended on Uptowne Tire Co. (3401 Montgomery Road, Evanston, 513- 281-3135) for as long as I've been the broke-ass owner of secondhand cars. That's 17 years, three cars and counting.

I don't count my dead mother's midnight blue 1994 Mercury Sable I'm driving now because my rich brother outfitted it with a good set of Uniroyals when our mom first got it from Tom Maniaci less than two years ago. While she lived in Forest Park, Mom called anything south of Tri-County "downtown" and rarely drove farther than that - so the tires are solid.

But I keep my eye on Uptowne. You never know.

These ghetto tire shops are butch. The stench of acrid cigarette smoke mixes the air with music from a tinny radio speaker.
There is no complimentary coffee. There are no written guarantees.

Sturdy, greasy men jack up a steady succession of cars all day long, kicking and knocking stubborn deflated tires off their rims and wrestling Twizzler-sized rubber cords through puncture holes. They bring tires back to life.

Uptowne Tire is a drive-thru set-up, the same configuration as, say, Kold 'N Kwik Drive Thru. But instead of coolers of beer and flavored water, Uptowne is a dark castle of tires stacked in spires where tire technicians (my terminology) get to work on your ride after asking one simple question: What's the matter?

For me it's always been unevenly worn tires due to catawampus alignment or that I was unknowingly driving around with a nail lodged in a tire. The change/repair itself moves as quickly as a stop at the gas pump, and the wait is generally no longer than if someone was in front of you refueling at the pump.

If you catch a flat running errands, dropping kids off or on your way to work, Uptowne is a lifesaver because it's open seven days a week and on holidays (!), so ride the rim to your rescue.

Once, in the late 1980s when I was driving a 1973 VW Super Beetle that I'd let languish, I pushed it from my Victory Parkway apartment until I kick-started the clutch. Blowing out stagnant fumes, I made it on dry-rotted tires to Uptowne and copped four new tires for some insanely cheap amount.

I never rode on a fully matching set of tires between an early 1990s Subaru Justy and a 1994 Ford Taurus. On the Taurus there was a time when no two tires were alike because tires just weren't my priority; however, when they needed replacing Uptowne hooked me up - between $10 and $25 apiece - with substantial enough tread to get me through another season.

And there was the time I'd been driving with a huge construction nail wedged between the treads of the right front tire. I didn't see it until one day I was putting air in it, refilling the umpteenth slow leak.

When I got to Uptowne, the tire tech pulled it out slowly with pliers like it was a stinger lodged in a kid's arm. He then threaded a strand of rubber that looked like a black gummy worm into a tool that he punctured through the existing hole, pulling it back through and burning the end of the rubber strand until it was flush against the hole's opening.

He refilled the tire with the proper amount of air, checked the air pressure in the other tires and sent me on my way for $3. I never had another problem with that tire.

I assumed these cheap tires at these spots were retreads, but an Uptowne Tire Co. tire tech told me selling retreads is illegal. He also couldn't tell me where the tires came from or why they were so cheap.

Don't ask/don't tell.

Who knew the notion of ghetto tire shops could be so clandestine? I love it; makes being poor seem edgy. ©