Friday, October 2, 2009

Street Chopper 40th Anniversary issue, and a cool inclusion for me......

Any time an anniversary occurs, it's an important occasion. This issue just showed up at my favorite newsstand, and let me say, congratulations to Street Chopper magazine on their 40th Anniversary!

I remember perusing the newsstand, and seeing my first issue of SC on the rack. It was the March, '70 issue, and I was a senior in high school. It wasn't hard to miss- it had a bright yellow cover, and featured Rose McMullen on her custom sidehack, with Tom McMullen's pet lion posed in front of the hack. I grabbed it without even looking inside first. I thought, how cool is this? Another magazine along with Ed Roth's Choppers to read. I immediately sent off for the back issues I missed, and an AEE catalog. I still have all those early SC's, but sadly, the AEE catalog has long since disappeared over the years.

It's a very nostalgic issue, starting with the cover, which features a collage of 40 years worth of SC covers themselves (here's one for you trivia buffs - the cover featuring Jack Nicholson riding his metallic rootbeer colored chopper appears twice in the top row!). Moving to the tabel of contents page, there is a collection of AEE's trading cards as the background.

Inside, you'll find SC's full history (and AEE's as well), and personal recollections from all the magazine staff members, and a bunch of personal memories from a veritable who's who in the industry, as they recall what SC has been to them over the last 4 decades. It's a good read, and well worth the cover price. Go grab one while you can.
There's also an article entitled "Four Decades Of Photos". It's a 7 page review of feature bikes that have appeared in SC over the last 40 years. I was pretty surprised when I saw that not only one, but TWO of the bikes I've built were included in the collection. Pretty fucking cool.
Here's a photo from my feature article on the bike I built named BOB.......
.....and a photo from the feature article on my White Heat bike. Thanks to Street Chopper for including me in this 40th Anniversary issue, I think it's an honor, and a very cool recognition of what I do.

2 comments:

huduguru said...

Well Done Rich! You deserve a couple shots in this issue--! JW in MN

J-Rod said...

Awesome...you deserve it.