What's left of my Big Bike collection. A few have mysteriously disappeared?
Big Bike was cool for only about 1 1/2 years. You can generally spot the good issues by the early logo. The new publisher changed the logo, the art direction, the type of bikes featured, and it went downhill. Last one I bought was Sept. 72. Joe Teresi (the technical editor), split along with some others to start Easyriders in 71.
The Street Choppers in the middle row are the weakest. I had every issue from 73 to 80 but, tossed most of them 25 years ago because they just plain sucked. From that period, I only kept the ones that featured something cool. All the ones I have from 70 and 71 are all really cool.
By the mid seventies, the bikes and the art direction of the all the magazines started to tank. When Big Bike and Street Chopper started to decline, I dug Custom Chopper for a short time. Eventually they all started to feature too many Hondas for my taste.
One for Chopper Dave: Cool bikes and a civilian T-33. I believe it was Tom Mc Mullen's jet. (Tom died in a plane crash in 1995). This is a perfect example of the period. The only thing cool about this issue was the cover so, I ripped it off. Boxes of magazines take too much space and I didn't care to read about Honda 4 turbos or Kawasaki Mach III's.
I also have 9 of the small digest sized Roth's Choppers Magazines, some old Easyriders, and also a bunch of pre-LFP Supercycles. In the future, I'll post cool stuff from all of them.
