mann in 1963?... part 2....a response....

Here is a response to my earlier post about when the david mann painting "hollywood Run" was painted, sent to me by Robert Shuman...this is cool...have a read...

robert mentions that i thought i saw a shovelhead in it but i meant that i had been "thinking" about shovelheads cause i was just about to get one...anyways this is a great read.

Hey,

Sifting through dormant brain cells haphazardly floating around in my head I believe that the Dave Mann Hollywood painting is from 1966.  Here’s the reasoning.  I believe that it was one of the first two images available from Mann.  I was at a Rod and Custom car and motorcycle show at McCormick Place in Chicago Illinois in January of 1966 and bought two copies each of both Hollywood Run and Tecote Run.  Myself and two friends had ditched school and rode the train to Chicago (pre drivers licenses)to go to the first day of the show.  We were there early and were the first three guys to buy the posters (paintings) from Big Daddy Ed Roth who had a small booth at the show selling his t-shirts and posters.  He had the Mann paintings as well.  I can only assume that Roth and Mann knew each other and Roth was helping Mann get some exposure.  At the time Roth had started to shift from the custom car arena to the chopper scene.  We had never seen Mann’s work before so as fifteen year olds who although were at the time living near Chicago, were insane about all things Chopper from California, so we were besides ourselves to have this gold from the promised land.  We too spent hours staring at them back then.  Brought a grin to see it again on your site….it’s been a few years…damn!    Your comment was that you felt the image was Shovelhead related.  I can’t pull that specific information up out of the tombs here but if you’re seeing “shovel” in it then ’66 would make sense as I believe that was the first year of the shovelhead….but you sure didn’t see many shovel engines on choppers right away.   I mentioned Tecote.  It’s a town just across the California border to Mexico near Arizona.   Before my time with bikes, late 50s and early 60’s,  a lot of weekend runs were made there to party hardy without getting hassled…beer, women, beer, women, repeat.  Quiet small town Mexico just too happy to have the gringo’s money.  If you haven’t seen the image, I just grabbed this one from the Dave Mann web site. 

That’s the best I can offer to your question.  Kind of cool to be one of the “someone’s who knows”.  A couple of old friends and I always laugh when we hear the term “old school”.

To us it was just High School.    Them’s were the days…… I thought they’d never end.

All the best,       Robert