Nineteen seventy-two was the year Road Rider magazine decided to piss off its readers--dedicated touring motorcyclists all--by running a 12-page feature in their March issue on one of the first "production" choppers of that era. The Sunset Tripper was constructed by Triumph of Burbank, CA, from a brand-new Bonneville, and was  featured on the cover of that now defunct touring magazine. This is their story.

There are plenty of blogs that do a great job of recycling old magazine content, so we don't plan on taking ChopCult in that direction. However, we think today's chopper jockey will find this story interesting because the original writer's experience could have happened 38 years ago, or last weekend. Produced in the day when magazines were a hand-crafted affair and 68-page books like RR listed 21 souls on the masthead (including a "Camping Editor!), this was an in-depth look into the chopper phenomenon at the apex of it's social trajectory. It's a long read, but in the era of blogs, tweets, pokes and 2-second soundbites, we think it's worth the effort.

Ironically, one of our first feature bikes on Chop Cult was our friend Chris' Survivor, and original Triumph of Burbank chop.