Between the church bells and train horns of a Sunday morning in downtown San Antonio, there is another sound echoing down E. Houston Street, for those who know to listen for it. 

From far and wide, every week, cars of this decade and ones long past hum their way to Estate Coffee. Settled evenly between Interstate 37 and Dignowity Hill, Slow Sunday Motor Club fills the cafe’s adjacent parking lots with about 200 cars, a vision Justin Roeser had long ago.

Roeser has been a car guy his entire life. He remembers hiding around the showroom at his grandfather’s Subaru dealership as a child, addicted to that new car smell. His father and brother shared the interest, but even then he could tell that it was more for him. He made a career out of it, importing vintage Porsches into the U.S and working in creative media, producing films and articles about the brand. Right now, he is traveling across Germany looking for a specific rare shade, Moonstone. 

Back in Seattle, Washington he had tried to start something like Slow Sundays, but it was difficult to find and feel a community. San Antonio embraced him in ways he hadn’t expected. 

“I think that’s a huge part of the story,” Roeser said. “How it’s become such a positive place for so many different people of all ages and generations and everything, to come together and they chill.”

It started small, with six people and an invite for coffee. 

He had met the group at a Six Flags car event, which the amusement park would hold once or twice a year in their sprawling parking lot, filled with corporate sponsor tents and thousands of cars. Roeser had asked a couple of the guys in the Porsche section, his section, if they ever met in town for coffee with their cars. The answer was no, but it didn’t deter him.

Their first meetup brought them to Shine Coffee on N. St. Mary’s Street, which Roeser quickly realised would not work. He started looking for cafes with big parking lots around downtown, which brought him to Estate, it had two. Inside, the shop is covered in automobile details. One of their glass tables rests atop a piece of an engine, and frames of hand-drawn retro vehicles line the eggshell walls.

“I’ve been a big enthusiast my whole life and it’s always what I’ve wanted is for the shop to be involved with something like that,” Estate Coffee founder Brian LaBarbera said. “So it’s been great for us, been great for the area and we’re just happy to have a little part in that.” 

The parking lot was lonely at first, just six cars sitting alone in a sea of spaces. They didn’t have a name yet; Roeser trusted the group to spread through word of mouth. A very Field of Dreams-esque plan: build it and they would come. But they did; the lot began to fill and weekends later, around twenty cars sat outside the coffee shop. That brought out the photographers, whose pictures Roeser posted on the club’s Instagram, which brought out more people the next weekend. 

The club has only continued to grow; in November they partnered with the Spurs for a popup outside of the Frost Bank Center, some members sport baseball caps and keychains embellished with SLOW from their latest merch drop and for those who can’t make it out on a Sunday morning, their social media has more than nine thousand followers and features curated photos and reels from the day. 

Roeser’s thesis for the club returns that hospitality.

There’s a little Toyota pickup truck sitting in the second lot, Roeser guesses it was bought off of a grandmother or something like that, that is to say it is not the most expensive or rarest or flashy car at the show. It is, though, his favorite. 

The silver car, a little bit patinated, belongs to a young guy about eighteen years old. He’s put the truck on air suspension, lowered it and added big wheels. As Roeser puts it, he made it his own. For everyone who stops and looks, they see a bit of themselves in that owner and a bit of the first car they ever worked on in that truck. They know exactly how much time it takes, can remember the feeling of sweat dripping off their forehead and the beading South Texas sun on their back as they try to mold metal and machinery to their imagination. 

For members of Slow Sunday, that appreciation is the currency of meets like this.

“The entrance is always a big deal,” said Jorge Garcia, who drove a 1967 Volkswagen Cabriolet in at around 9:30 a.m. “Because that’s when you get the thumbs up, the peace symbols. You get it on the way here on the highway, but getting it from other enthusiasts is always, always so good.”

He has been working on the car for fifteen years, a love for Volkswagen embedded in him long before that, from growing up in Mexico, where the two iconic letters are everywhere. The thing about vintage cars, though, is that some, like his, are one-year-only, meaning they were only produced for one year and the parts are hard to get. The classic car community at Slow Sundays helps each other out with sourcing problems; in the Volkswagen group, Garcia said, they have to.

It is not just the cars that take a step back in time. At the core of it all is connection, and Roeser is especially proud of the in-person space he has helped foster. Strolling through the lot, there are rarely phones out, unless someone is exchanging their number or taking a picture.

Part of the magic is that Slow only exists for two hours on Sunday; drive by at 11:00 A.M and it will be gone. Roeser knows that to keep that, to protect the world he’s made on E. Houston Street, he cannot demand too much. His members live in a world constantly vying to keep their attention all week; all that he asks is that for a couple of hours they slow down and smell the motor oil.