Supervisor John Avalos was scarfing down a burrito from El Farolito on Mission Street Saturday before getting down to business: leading a caravan of flashy vintage cars with lowered suspension through the Mission as a stunt to get his name out just before the start of early voting, which began Tuesday in San Francisco.

“We’re going to ride lowriders, low and slow,” Avalos said between bites. Then he quickly added: "But I don't know how many there'll be."

It was a moment that seemed to capture the mood in Avalos-land this year: ebullient and ambitious one moment, a little tentative the next.

Eight months ago, weeks after his progressive camp lost big in the power play to name the interim mayor, Avalos admitted in a frank moment that he feared for his chances of winning re-election as District 11 supervisor, much less the mayor's seat.

“Sometimes," he said in his second-floor office at City Hall, "I feel even people in my district don’t know me."

But Avalos opted to join the mayoral race, and now he's feeling the wind at his back. With help from the likes of former Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Avalos has scooped up endorsements from the San Francisco Democratic Party and a handful of left-leaning political clubs.

Avalos' goal this election season has been to demonstrate to all voters, not just the lefties who form his base, that he’s a reasonable, mature candidate — a gentle former social worker with none of the petulance of former Supervisor Chris Daly or the spite of Peskin. But his challenge has been overcoming his lack of name recognition in a city where hours spent knocking on doors count for a lot.

And so the freshman supervisor found himself assembling a group of drivers on Florida Street that he hoped would help him boost his exposure. Lowriders, after all, hold a special place in the culture of this neighborhood, where showstopping caravans of the cars would often parade up and down the drag on weekends in the 1970s.

The first driver who showed up, Mario Jimenez, rolled down the windows of his 1967 Impala and demanded that Avalos fix the potholes on Mission Street. 

“Because to me, Mission Street, man, that’s the heart of San Francisco,” Jimenez said.

Avalos nodded, then told Jimenez his vision for the neighborhood — which, he said, was a little bit like his vision for the rest of the city.

“I want more trees, more open space,” Avalos said. “And, you know, not just for rich people.”

A campaign aide whispered to reporters: “Don’t write that.”

Avalos says he’s been making inroads in getting his name out in left-leaning parts of the city, starting with his base of working-class and union voters, the Latino population, and youngsters of the fixed-gear persuasion.

“I’m picking off bits of the Westside — while being realistic about it — the Tenderloin, the Excelsior,” Avalos said. “We do well in SoMa.”

“But we do really, really well in the Mission,” he added.

Just before 2:30 p.m., Avalos jumped into the caravan's lead vehicle, a black convertible, and the cars rolled out one by one. Subwoofers thundered. Hydraulics pumped. The sun glinted off 30-spoke Cadillac rims and paint jobs so fresh they might as well have still been dripping.

A minivan blaring rap music and filled with young men in Mexican wrestler masks dancing wildly followed the cavalcade, along with a few guys on bikes.

Some Mission denizens ignored the procession with practiced nonchalance. Others waved to Avalos. Two women holding babies on the side of the road chanted his name.

At a red light at 24th and Mission streets, men approached Avalos to give him a fist bump. Others took out their smartphones to record the moving spectacle: the cars, the bikes — and Avalos, perched on the back seat of his convertible, preening in the sunlight and smiling from ear to ear like the neighborhood belonged to him, if just for today.

Then Avalos noticed the name of a competitor stuck to the side of a taco cart. It was a sign for Cesar Ascarrunz, the brassy nightclub mogul who has run for mayor in every election since the early 1990s. Even if his campaigns have boasted outlandish claims like “I invented the Mission,” there's no doubt Ascarrunz has put in time around these parts, having driven up and down these streets in a pickup truck blasting Mariachi music for the better part of a decade.

“Cesar Ascarrunz, hah!” Avalos exclaimed in apparent disbelief at spotting an Ascarrunz supporter in the flesh.

The woman in the apron behind the cart returned a polite smile. The candidate cruised a little farther, turned onto 18th street toward Dolores Park, and before long, vanished altogether.