Sissy Bar

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History Of Choppers As I See It

No one knows who exactly built the first choppers, but it is generally agreed upon that they were built by soldiers returning home from WWII. Soldiers who had ridden bikes in Europe found that the Harleys being produced in the US were slow and bulky, something that is still true today. In an effort to lighten these bikes up the riders started to remove unnecessary parts and "bob" the fenders. Had the European motorcycles been readily available in America I believe that these bikers might have abandoned Harley right then and we would have a completely different biker scene than what we have today.

These early modified bikes were called Bobbers and the term Choppers actually didn't get popular until the sixties and early seventies. Most sources reference the movie Easy Rider as the start of the cultural phenomena, but national news about the antics of the Hells Angels certainly had the image of the biker outlaw already fixed in the public's eye, a much badder version than we saw in the movie The Wild One from 1953.

The new generation that was chopping bikes made their own style by not just bobbing the bikes but by adding additional rake and longer front ends and of course the obligatory sissy bar. The bikes we know as choppers were born. I think it's interesting that even though the two terms "bobber" and "chopper" became distinct 40 years ago they are now being used interchangeably, mostly by people who don't really understand the terms at all.

The choppers of the late sixties went from just being bobbed Harleys with no turn signals and mirrors to being also modified bikes with ape hanger handle bars, like Sonny Barger was using back in the late 50's, skinny front tires and the already mentioned sissy bar. Now we were no longer just removing unnecessary parts but were also adding a few touches of our own. Back then there were no "custom bike builders" and most of the work was being done in the rider's own garage. As we went into the seventies, builders began to get really creative and the bike as a form of art was born.

Artist David Mann captured the entire chopper lifestyle in his work, and builders actually tried to now build bikes based on Mann's more extreme artistic interpretations of what choppers could look like. The bikes that Dave imagined soon came into actually being. The seventies were definitely made for custom bikes.

Interest in motorcycles kind of fizzled out around during the 80's when young people were more interested in building muscle cars out of models from the late sixties and seventies than they were in motorcycles. At the same time a lot of riders were converting to Japanese sport bikes and moving away from the Harley scene and any choppers you did see just seemed like relics from a bygone era. The biker scene didn't go away by any means, but it definitely went underground as far as the general population was concerned.

Of course, everything we know today about custom motorcycle building as been brought about by cable TV trying to fill the dead air with stories about anything they could and the first show done about Jesse James was never intended to turn into a new television genre, but it did. The well-to-do suddenly decided they needed a custom bike and not knowing any of the history of motorcycles they immediately started calling every custom motorcycle a chopper, even though by definition it wasn't. In fact the bikes made popular by builders not on TV were usually more in the style of Pro Street motorcycles that were run on the drag tracks then by anything that resembled a true chopper, with a few notable exceptions.

As the desire for custom bikes and motorcycles in general bloomed in more middle class citizens, these new riders were more likely to take the time and understand their bikes, many of which had to learn to work on them out of pure necessity, like the original bikers did. Motorcycles and custom bikes became an acceptable form of fun for everyone and the image of the outlaw biker as been converted into the lawyer or plumber biker.

Even though we still have some real choppers being built, the true meaning of the word has probably been lost forever, but not the spirit of those that built them. As custom bikes go out of style we're left with a very large core group of new riders who will now ride the rest of their lives, and many of them will be also building choppers.

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Okay... if i get a VLX 600, i want the handlebars to be the straight kind that have a short bar.?

I like the idea of the having my arms more tucked in than having them flaired out. Is this something i have to modify myself, or can a dealer do it. I don't wanna go complete bobber (definitely not chopper), but jsut the handlebars, remove front fender, but keep the rear stock in case i want to use saddlebags or a sissy bar. ANy advice?

What's the big deal? Pick yer bars, order 'em and install. Dealer? C'mon man up pard.

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