This train's been a-rolling for more than four decades and is on track to keep on keepin' on for years to come. For over the past 40 years this magazine has taken many twists and turns and has seen every up and down the chopper industry has ever experienced, yet Street Chopper has stood the test of time. From early home-build jobs, to gazillion-dollar builds in huge warehouses, Street Chopper has kept you entertained, informed, and enlightened to what the chopper of the moment is, but it also kept a foot firmly planted in the good old days.
Speaking of the past, in this commemorative anniversary issue we have concentrated on who or what has influenced the realm of the chopper. To lend a hand in getting the story straight, we have past editors breaking it down in their own words about the time they served at the helm. To bring you the true history of how this magazine came about, Chris Shelton worked day and night separating fact from fiction to find the real story of how AEE Choppers came to captain Street Chopper magazine, while our other contributors spent countless hours lurking around myriads of shops and garages to dig up even more of the past.
Adding further to the retrospective theme of the 40th issue, we have also hunted down bike builders both famous and infamous to tell in their own words the past experiences they have had with us. We have also dedicated pages upon pages to photos from back in the day to feast your eyes on. Some pages are past feature bikes, others are former covers, and some are photos from our archives that have never been printed before.
When it came time to figure out what motorcycles we were going to include in this commemorative issue, we decided to include many bikes that were formerly featured, so a world-wide search was launched to see what choppers could be found that were left intact. The results came back fairly slender, but the bikes we did unearth are dynamite! Not to be name dropping, but we dug up some of Arlen Ness' early bikes, Sugar Bear and his long bikes, Bob Cecchini's show stopper, Mike Vils' Panhead, and more than a handful of carefully restored Denver's Choppers bikes, to name a few.
Gracing our centerfold is Ruby, our anniversary bike build that is being debuted in her completed form. Packed with many of the world's top fabricators' parts, the bike melds both past and present chopper trends into one far-out freedom machine.
It took 40 years and a ton of hard work from hundreds of people to bring you what you are holding in your hands. Feel free to turn the page and see for yourself what has been amassed for you in this anniversary issue. Thanks for reading.