Sugar Bear Choppers - "If It Ain't Long, It's Wrong"

1n 1969 where were you or how old were you? Did you see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon or were you out on some farm in upstate New York rocking out at Woodstock? Maybe you were home watching ABC's new show The Brady Bunch or you could have been luckily spending $1.50 to see the Easy Rider premier in 1969? What does all of this have in common with each other? Well, this was the same year a new magazine called Street Chopper hit the newsstands.

Most of us trying to recall experiences 40 years ago are like having a memory with as many holes as Swiss cheese. But then you run into guys who were around that time and say things like, "it seems like it was just yesterday" or "it was such a good time, it's forever etched in my mind." Then you have someone like the one and only Sugar Bear who was not only around at that time but can remember things pretty clearly and is a great story teller, Sugar Bear was also there since the birth of choppers and has witnessed the evolution of these bikes.

If you ever get the chance to sit down with Sugar Bear and ask him about the bikes and frontends he was building in 1969, you might be surprised to find out that they are the same style of choppers and forks 40 years later. The motors might be a little different, but the bikes are still the long, low, rideable choppers that Sugar Bear became known for. Leading the way are Bear's Springer frontends with his hard-to-miss rockers, which without a doubt, are the most recognized rockers in the industry.

In 1969 Sugar Bear got the bike bug and started building a 750 Honda chopper, and this build lead him to meeting and becoming a lifelong friend of Ben Hardy. Needing some help and advice on his build, Sugar Bear was around when his friend and mentor, Ben, designed and built the two most famous choppers in the world that were seen in the movie Easy Rider: The "Captain America" and the "Billy Bike." The experience and love for building choppers is what influenced Sugar Bear to want to start his own shop.

In 1971 Sugar Bear opened his shop doors in Los Angeles, California, where he perfected his frontends. Then in 1972 when most Springers were tubing, Sugar Bear made his out of solid steel. This enabled him to construct a quality Springer to achieve a strong and long look that his customers were after at the time. Sugar Bear's first Springers were made in lengths up to 18 inches over stock, and throughout the decades he mathematically tweaked and perfected his work from short to long-length frontends to extremely long fork lengths, and he eventually made a name for himself with his signature Springers.

It was just about that time Sugar Bear was seen for the first time on the cover of Street Chopper just cruising down the road on his Honda chop.

Over the next 20 years Sugar Bear worked on and built bikes and frontends for people looking for choppers that could be ridden with one hand with no bounce and zero flop, the kind of bike that you ride all day and feel comfortable on. His list of customers kept growing as did the list of different bikes he built. Sugar Bear worked on all things chopper from Hondas to Harleys and anything else that could be bolted in between the framerails. Almost all of Bear's work came by word-of-mouth. He said he was not trying to get famous, but he was just trying to make a living doing what he loves.

In 1995 one of Sugar Bear's long-time customers told him that he seemed to be one of the few people that were still building choppers the same way as he had from the beginning. It seemed most of the bikes seen in the magazines and at shows were low, fat, Pro-Street style bikes, and Sugar Bear just kept making choppers the same way he always had.