How much do you, the reader and motorcycle enthusiast, know about Sugar Bear? How familiar are you with his frontends, the choppers he's built since the late '60s, or his influence through the evolution of the custom motorcycle industry? Chances are, not much, if any.
Somewhere in CA (at least that's what his shop shirts indicate) are black and white and old color photos of chops and time-frozen snapshots of a riding camaraderie that line Sugar Bear's walls. But sorry, Sugar Bear; the Gardena, CA-based time capsule not only captures the early beginnings of choppers, it tells the history of an individual who has been there since the birth of choppers, and to whom these pages cannot do total justice.
"If it ain't long, it's wrong," says Sugar Bear, which frankly sums up the style of choppers he builds. Tastes change over time, bike-building trends go in and out of style or come back full circle again like history repeating itself-well, not with Sugar Bear. His intent when the shop opened in 1971 was to build long and low street-rideable chops with a little extra power. Thirty-six years later, his intent has remained unchanged. Sugar Bear's belief that "All bikes were meant to have scrapes, chips, burnt pipes, dents, style, and smiles-per-miles," has been the shop's aim since the beginning, and is still about rideable choppers today.
The year was 1972, a time when most Springers were tubing, and Sugar Bear constructed his out of solid steel. This enabled Sugar Bear to construct a quality Springer to achieve his customers' desires for a strong and long look. "Our first Springers were made in lengths up to 18 inches over stock," and throughout the decades Sugar Bear has mathematically tweaked and perfected from short to long to extremely long fork lengths, and made a name for himself with his signature Springers and hard-to-miss rockers. "Most people think I only make long Springers, but I do make different lengths, including short ones," he said. How comfortable and safe are these Springers? You'd have to sift through decades of repeat customers to understand.
What's interesting is that Sugar Bear became more known for his Springer frontends than his bikes, even though he has been building both since the early '70s. "I've always built bikes and frontends, but maybe that was little known 'cause I wasn't in the press or something," Sugar Bear said. "My frontends spread by word of mouth." Word of mouth has served him well, as word eventually traveled, but the length of time it took for Sugar Bear to receive the recognition he earned and deserved is inexcusable. In a time when ignorance and racial differences affected Sugar Bear's career, the mild-mannered, laid back, kind-hearted Bear pushed past it all and doesn't dwell on it.