Chopper festival honors KC artist who shaped custom motorcycle culture
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- Kansas City hosted its first David Mann Chopper Fest honoring the iconic artist.
- Mann’s motorcycle artwork heavily influenced bike builders across generations.
- Local and regional builders gathered to celebrate custom bike culture and legacy.
Hundreds of custom motorcycles and choppers lined the streets of the West Bottoms in September in honor of a man once called “the biker’s Norman Rockwell.”
The David Mann Chopper Fest is in its second decade of hosting custom motorcycle festivals, with the primary location being in California. This year, organizers decided to host the event in Kansas City, the hometown of one of the most influential artists of motorcycle culture, David Mann.
Mann, born and raised in Kansas City during the 1940s, was an artist from the age of seven. With an affinity toward drawing cars, Mann traveled from Kansas City to the West Coast in 1959, where he saw his first “chopped” motorcycle.
He was hooked. Mann returned home and studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, creating drawings and paintings of motorcycle culture often from memory.
Mann would set up his artwork next to his bikes at custom motorcycle and car shows. In 1963, the publisher of Choppers Magazine purchased a piece of his artwork for $85 and thus began his career. For 30 years, Mann drew biker lifestyle illustrations for Easyrider Magazine until his retirement.
A massive influence on the styles of custom motorcycles, some said that Mann “created” choppers himself.
Builders across the country, inspired by Mann’s paintings, often took his artwork and physically built the parts from scratch to modify their motorcycles. As time passed, Mann saw his artwork reflected through the work done by custom motorcycle builders.
“He came up with his own form of art. He would draw an extended front end on a motorcycle, and as soon as someone saw the artwork, they would build it,” said Jacquie Mann, the wife of the late David Mann. “He was amazed to see that people would build what he drew.”
Inspired by real riders, biker gangs, and based on actual events that Mann encountered throughout his life as a rider, he lived to reap the benefits of his fame, something rarely afforded to many artists.
That fame was not always welcomed. Some in the biker culture felt that Mann showed too much of the outlaw scene. Rumors swirled that some gangs wanted to ‘cut off his hands’ because he revealed too much of their world.
An avid rider himself, Mann was the founder of a group known as the KC Weasels, a “social organization on wheels.” The group still exists in Kansas City today.
At the festival, in September, the group showcased several of Mann’s original art pieces, some of which featured scenes from Kansas City dating back to the 1960s and 1970s.
Mann died in Kansas City in 2004. He is survived by his wife, Jacquie Mann, who still lives in Kansas City. Yet, the massive impact he had on the culture was still very much alive in the West Bottoms on that day.
Custom motorcycle artists from across the Midwest turned out in droves to show off their hard work in September. Elongated front ends, custom tanks and rakes, and different wheel sizes are just some of the modifications that were on display.
Choppers Magazine saw the Kansas City chopper fest as an opportunity to bring the event to Mann’s hometown. It also allowed individuals who could not make it to California a chance to check out the plethora of custom bikes in Kansas City and to show their respect to a motorcycle legend.
“It was something that was really important for us,” said Manny Ochoa, general manager of Choppers Magazine, the group partially responsible for continuing the David Mann Chopper Fest in California.
“Dave Mann is such an influential character and personality in the chopper and motorcycle world that we wanted to bring the show to him,” Ochoa said.
This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 6:00 AM.