looked, so we started building front ends and changing frames
and customizing them, and pretty soon people came in and
wanted us to do that to their bikes.”
That was shortly after 1967, the year Denver’s Choppers opened
its doors, which made it one of the very first businesses in the
slowly emerging custom motorcycle industry to manufacture
and sell custom parts. “Back then, there were no catalogs
to order parts from, so within a short time, we were known
worldwide as the guys to go to for custom parts for choppers,”
Mondo explains.
Soon Denver’s began building complete custom bikes and
shipping them all over the world. It got to the point, according
to Mondo, where “you couldn’t pick up a custom bike magazine
without seeing a Denver bike in it.” The Denver’s Chopper style
is uniquely its own, according to Mondo, who describes it as
long and low. “I’d call it Southern California style.”
It all came to a tragic end in October of 1992, when Denver, who
also dabbled in drag boats, drowned during a test run with a
safety capsule he and Mondo had designed. For the following
year-and-a-half, Mondo stayed at the shop to settle outstanding
accounts and take care of legal matters. “What I did was focus
more on the drag boats but was still building bikes in the shop
as well,” he says.
On June 30, 1997, Mondo re-opened Denver’s Choppers,
having moved to Henderson, Nevada, just outside of Las
Vegas. “During that time some of the things I am most-proud
of happened to me,” he says. “First off, my association with
the legendary Easyriders Magazine. I could not have done it
without the magazine’s support and help over the years. In
2001 I was awarded the trophy for Best Custom Bike Fabricator
from Easyriders. I also had the very extreme pleasure of being
in David Mann’s last painting for the 30th anniversary of
Easyriders. This was a huge deal to me.”
Mondo was also honored to be awarded the first ever David
Mann Kind Award from the David Mann Chopper Fest, and was
installed into the Sturgis Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 2018, along
with being voted Cycle Source Magazine’s Man of the Year.
In 2012 he moved to Reno to be near his daughter and her
family and try to slow down a bit, running his one-man-shop in
a strip mall near the city’s airport. “But slowing down has not
really happened. I still work seven days a week because I love it
so much,” Mondo says.
After more than 50 years in the business, Mondo still adheres to
the old Denver philosophy, and his front end, rolling chassis, and
complete bikes are as innovative, old-school, and mind-blowing
as they were during the early days. “Most of my customers
The TRUMP RALLY Publication 185