What Happened To West Coast Choppers After Their Controversy?
When "Monster Garage" first premiered on Discovery in 2002, Jesse James was a relatively unknown former music industry bodyguard with a famous outlaw's name and distant bloodline. The show was a quick hit, and James became an equally instant celebrity. He married actor Sandra Bullock in 2005 after two years of dating, but they divorced in 2010 after several women said they had affairs with James.
That was far from his only public controversy, however, as James and his motorcycle customization shop, West Coast Choppers, ran afoul of the California Air Relations Board in 2007 for the sale of more than 50 non-compliant motorcycles. James and the board ultimately settled on a fine of more than $270,000. James and the CARB went back and forth as to who was to blame for the violations, with James claiming that he was unaware of changes in emissions laws. CARB communications director Jerry Martin acknowledged that the board's standards had changed in 2000, but said it was not his agency's responsibility to alert manufacturers or customizers of such changes. "There was no notification because none was required," Martin said.
It wasn't just air pollution that had West Coast Choppers in the news. in 2004, the Simi Valley School district forbade students from wearing West Coast Choppers merchandise, saying the Iron Cross logo the brand used was too similar to iconography in use by white power groups in Southern California at the time. In their own advertising, West Coast Choppers identifies their logo as a Maltese Cross, and Simi Valley School Board member Greg Stratton told the Los Angeles Times he didn't feel there was any cause for alarm. "We're just trying to raise some awareness with the parents about what's floating around out there," he said. "Kids are notorious for this, they grab onto symbols."
James closed the Long Beach West Coast Choppers location in 2010
The West Coast Choppers logo controversy was not James' only public hullabaloo involving white power imagery, however. Around the time of his divorce from Bullock, a photo of him surfaced wearing a Nazi hat and raising his right arm in a salute. His attorney, Joe Yanny, claimed the hat was given to James as a gag gift by his Jewish grandfather, and told CNN, "I would hope that by now this wasn't such a newsworthy story such that his basic rights and privacy aren't continuously invaded in an improper manner."
The publicity from the multiple scandals finally came to be too much for James, however, and he closed the doors of the Long Beach West Coast Choppers shop in 2010. Ironically, earlier that year James had welcomed the public's attention with open arms and kind words. The Long Beach Post reported on a ceremony where the city had renamed the street where his shop stood as West Coast Choppers Place. "Through all the 'Monster Garage' stuff I always thought we were kind of a thorn in the City's side," James said. "It's nice to be seen as an asset."