Some of my earliest childhood memories center around choppers. When asked about them, I recalls things like my father, Tony, building a chopper in the basement of their Bronx home, going along to pick up his freshly painted gas tank and fender from a local eccentric painter, seeing him father featured in Iron Horse and Cycle Source magazine, waxing my father’s bike with turtle wax and a sock before a show, and flipping through dad’s chopper magazines (mom demanded the topless women be covered with sharpie before I could peruse them). Tony, my father even had the habit of pulling his chopper onto my little league baseball field during games. I knew from a young age that my father’s bike were different from the others; they sounded different, looked different, and they all seemed dangerous. As a child, I always thought it was the coolest thing! Most kids were riding home from baseball practice in a minivan, while I was riding home on a ’72 iron head sportster with ape hangers, a rigid frame, and a 45-degree rake. Chopper building is in his blood and was an ever-present part of his childhood, so the obsession and desire to build came naturally.