Slapping together Back in the Day always starts out the same way: I go pawing through stacks of old STREET CHOPPER issues and select a handful for the month we're working on. Then I have to dig back through recent BITDs to make sure we haven't already used it. And then I get to write the thing, usually utilizing as many witty comments I can come up with to impart to you all.
Historically, June is when we run the Daytona stuff, and the '79 issue was packed with good Floridian fun. This issue was no exception, featuring the 7th annual Run to the Sun and, of course, Daytona itself. In a nutshell, the "RTTS" made the run to Daytona with 1,200 bikers over the course of three days. Just call it party central: From the drinking and wrestling to the custom bike show to the topless contest (yes-STC used to feature nudity. See what I've gone and dug up for you?), all culminated in the wet and wild week in Daytona.
Writer Steve Stillwell had a bone to pick with the Orlando Sentinel Star, who were "interested in some shots of the run. Needless to say, that's what they took, both with a camera and editorially." He wouldn't go on about what, exactly, the Star printed, but said that some people should "stick to wrapping fish, not reporting false news." We speculated on what exactly went on, and eventually settled on the idea that the Star reporters were simply taken aback by the badassery of the STC crew and the 1,200 bikers trailing along behind them.
The Daytona coverage itself received a good six pages that were blissfully uninterrupted by ads. Bike racing, babes, beachcombing, and the Boot Hill Saloon dominated the text, as talk of shopping came up, ("My wife still hasn't figured out a way to use her new set of leather saddlebags, but we'll work something out.") followed by the behavior of bikers in the rain ("They avoid it like the plague for a day or two, then take the so-what attitude...ignoring the fact that they are being drenched.").
Back in the days of biking yonder, STC was happy to feature metric choppers-and often did. An article on Showroom Choppers did feature a blurb on the Harley-Davidson Low Rider and XLS Sportster, but mainly it focused on a batch of imports from Yamaha, Kawasaki, and Honda. The "ready-made custom" came at the tail-end of those flashy and "unsophisticated" custom choppers, which were generally looked down on. But as the Japanese and Milwaukee started in on the custom market, one firm rule developed: "A bike must have its own individual personality...a passerby must be able to tell, at a glance, that he is looking at no ordinary home-to-work-and-back commuter." We think Brad Grote, who wrote this article 28 years ago, would be quite pleased to flip through the pages of STC's present incarnation if that's the case.
Or maybe not. The '79 cover bike, Charlie Brown's Fantasia is radically different from what we've got as a cover today. The gas tank and paneling, the shininess, the characters from Star Wars and The Hobbit painted on it (try as I might, I could not find anything resembling that galaxy far, far away, but I'm sure it was there). The Fantasia, touted as SoCal's answer to the ubiquitous NorCal style, was designed to get the Southland off its rear and back into the big bike-building competitions. How would it do if it ran today? Hell if I know. Times have changed; what's in style goes out, and vice versa.
Maybe that's part of the chopper lifestyle, though. Things change and evolve, giving builders the freedom to try radical new ideas and present to us their own interpretations of the motorcycle-and the beauty of the bike.