Chapter Three:
News Stand Menace
In Hell’s Angels, Hunter Thompson asks, “Where were the media for 18 years?” Why, in 1965, were the Hell’s Angels elevated to Public Enemy No. 1? Between the Hollister riot of 1947 and the release of the Lynch Report in 1965, bikers and outlaw clubs received little attention outside the state of California. Thompson suggests that the increased media interest in outcasts and non–conformists was a direct result of the fact that they had no place, no function, in the Great Society. (1) The Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club, demonized by national news magazines and newspapers, was caught up in the country’s “reformist zeal” and nearly harassed out of existence by the law enforcement community.
America’s mainstream news media discovered early the utility of bikers and outlaw motorcycle clubs. (2) As society’s watchdogs, it was their duty to identify purveyors of crime and random violence. As moral entrepreneurs, they took the high ground, employing consensus definitions of right and wrong as the standards by which bikers would be measured and judged. The publications educated readers about the outlaw biker subculture and defined just how it was deviant and dangerous. At the same time, America’s citizens could be certain that they were safe, that law enforcement was effectively dealing with the situation, and that they remained superior to the hoods and hooligans who pledged allegiance to their motorcycle club.
The reality presented by the Hell’s Angels was not just anti–social, it was frightening. In The Shook–Up Generation Harrison Salisbury notified the country that increasingly violent youth gangs ran wild in the streets of the nation’s cities and suburbs. (3) By 1968 crime and violence were important campaign issues and the subject of a national debate. (4) Describing San Francisco’s hippie culture, Thompson wrote that it existed in a “nervous society where a man’s image is frequently more important than his reality.”(5) The statement also applied to outlaw bikers who found themselves suddenly thrust into the national media spotlight in 1965. When they arranged themselves against middle–class ideals and turned their backs on society, it became necessary they be taught a lesson.
The Hell’s Angels were accustomed to being misrepresented by California’s news media. They had scrapbooks containing everything that had ever been written about them, most of it wrong by their account. Thompson notes in Hell’s Angels that they quickly became “all–American bogeymen,” but from the club’s very first appearance the mainstream media used outlaw bikers to further particular agendas. Initially they were symbolic of youthful irresponsibility. Later, suggestions that bikers were eccentric, or just anti–social, gave way to “gangbusting” rhetoric and less favorable metaphors. Outlaw bikers eventually gained notoriety as terrorists, and in the 1970s and 1980s the law succeeded in linking them to racketeering, prompting most news organizations to focus on arrests for conspiracy, drug dealing and physical and sexual violence. Throughout the evolution of the media–made image of bikers, they were always beyond the pale.
It is worth noting that California was not inspired to a serious investigation of its homegrown outlaw motorcycle clubs until they ventured into major cities. For years the Hell’s Angels and their predecessors terrorized small towns and resort areas; indeed, the Hell’s Angels felt they were doing those towns a favor by “putting them on the map.” (6) But the Angels crossed a fine line between irresponsibility and criminality. Once it became obvious that they and other outlaw clubs such as the Mofos and Gypsy Jokers were a problem for police departments in Sacramento, Richmond, San Diego and San Francisco as well as Oakland and San Bernadino, newspapers and the nation’s foremost news magazines made them an issue, giving the state’s law enforcement officials their approval to crack down on motorcycle deviance.
While they voiced disapproval of outlaw clubs and their activities, however, the news media were also adept at appropriating “safe” aspects of the culture, making them palatable to a middle–class audience. In Where the Girls Are, an analysis of feminism in the United States, Susan Douglas makes an observation applicable to a discussion of bikers. Of coverage of women’s rights and feminism, Douglas writes:
Because the news media cover what is new, disruptive, and threatening, they also provide publicity for alienated rebels who regard the status quo as something to be destroyed. The coverage such rebels get, however, is a mixed blessing, for it usually seeks to discredit their more extreme positions (even if they’re right) while folding into the mainstream what can be carved out and held up as moderate. (7)
Despite increased attention, a few persistent clubs outlasted their detractors long enough for some of their eccentricities — big motorcycles, leather and male bonding — to be embraced by the mainstream. More importantly, such ideological positions as freedom from responsibility and government interference likewise came into broad social acceptance, re–making modern biker outlaws as true trendsetters. All of a sudden they were less frightening and, as Raney Stanford suggests, more akin to the anti–hero trickster who “suffers so that society may be purged.” (8)
In a country obsessed with cars, rehabilitating the motorcyclist’s image was not an easy task. A month after the Hollister riot Life displayed “law–abiding and respectable motorcyclists,” but even so the article suggests there was something disconcerting about the “cult” of motorcycle enthusiasts. No longer could they be characterized as hare–brained youths: “Today’s 200,000 ‘bike’ riders are organized like so many Panzer units into well–disciplined clubs with costumes and emblems.” (9) The fact cyclists, some of them female, were enchanted by the fumes and snorting of motorcycles, and enjoyed competing in “strange” contests, seemed odd to Life’s writers and editors. Two years later, in 1949, another Life article apposed respectable “amateur pleasure riders” with the “hip–flask element of cycle cowboys who like to get drunk and shoot up the town,” a colorful if inaccurate reference to Hollister. (10)
Because motorcycles were supposed to be temporary infatuations for the young, simply owning one after a certain age was viewed as odd. A 1954 issue of The Saturday Evening Post featured an article on the peculiar nature of motorcycle racing and the “clannish outcasts” which made up the subculture. The motorcycle, a “plaything for youngsters between the ages of sixteen and twenty–two,” is for a few years the focus of a boy’s social life despite its seeming inconsequence; Hal Burton terms the years “the short but merry life of the average motorcyclist.” (11) With marriage and children comes the necessity of putting it away and joining adult society: “By now twenty–two, with $1000 to $1500 invested in a thirty–horsepower machine, the typical youngster disposes of his most cherished possession without a visible sign of regret.” (12)
Respectable motorcyclists were recognized in the 1950s — when they worked toward acceptable goals. A 1955 Popular Science article praises the efforts of citizen cyclists to clean up their image and end the “undeclared war” between California police and motorcyclists. Some went so far as to organize teen clubs, volunteer patrols and police auxiliary units, and then worked to bring non–club members into the group and make them responsible. A Ventura group, the article notes, “has full police powers, and can make arrests anywhere in the state. When Johnny’s boys, resplendent in two–tone uniforms, show up to handle traffic at some public event, they get plenty of respect and obedience.” (13)
The release of the film The Wild One in 1954, however, created a bad–biker image that would be impossible for motorcyclists — outlaws and otherwise — to escape for many years. Periodicals used bikers to draw a moral line between deviance and socially acceptable behavior and to identify those who did not toe the line. Because outlaw clubs generally invaded small towns with small police departments, the news media could for a time reassure most California residents that outlaws were not a real threat. The hellraising delinquents could be handled by the police, even if the forces of law occasionally had to call for help.
In writing about Students for a Democratic Society, Todd Gitlin alleges that the media’s excessive emphasis on conflict between SDS members was at least in part responsible for the organization’s failure. (14) A similar result can be seen in reporting on bikers’ activities as the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) doggedly attempted to distance itself from those who eventually became “one–percenters.” Because outlaw clubs and their members were not immediately distinguishable, all motorcycle riders were painted with the same broad brush and tarnished by the same bad behavior. Both sides were quick to disavow the other, and it is possible the outlaw few became ever more outrageous in their behavior as a means of distancing themselves from AMA members who they considered “citizens” and “squares.”
Conflicts between the AMA and the outlaws who aggravated motorcycling’s poor reputation received most of the national news media’s attention between Hollister and the 1960s. It is curious, though, that skirmishes surrounding AMA events would be considered newsworthy let alone receive such attention. Bikers were a greater danger to themselves and to each other than to the general public, and the events themselves would only have been of interest to local readers or to a specific audience. Criminal activities were uncommon when the clubs first made their presence felt, so it was brazen and unseemly acts of drunkenness, irresponsibility and carelessness which defined bikers as deviant and outside the mainstream, put AMA–sanctioned events on the news pages and earned the outlaws public disfavor.
Though the motorcycle had long been associated with eccentricity, Hollister created a connection between bikes and criminal behavior. Continued reporting made the connection stronger, singling out motorcyclists as an identifiable example of out–of–control youthful rebelliousness. The headline beneath Life’s Hollister photo reads, “Cyclist’s Holiday. He and friends terrorize a town.” (15) Without discriminating among the 4,000 bikers present at the meet, the caption notes that the bikers “quickly tired of ordinary motorcycle thrills,” but does not explain what those thrills were. (16) It is assumed readers would be familiar with cyclists’ activities. Turning to “more exciting stunts,” bikers brazenly raced their bikes on the streets, disobeyed traffic signs and damaged a restaurant; a few were arrested for drunkenness and indecent exposure. In the end, the cyclists were guilty of a lack of decorum, endangering others and disorderly conduct. (17)
Defiance of authority, disregard for property and the necessity of calling other law enforcement agencies for assistance are consistent elements in the reporting of violence at AMA events. So too are military metaphors emphasizing the conflict. The Associated Press’ story on Hollister noted that 32 officers augmented the town’s seven–man police force, and that trouble started when cyclists raced down a “main thoroughfare, paying no heed to orders from police to stop.” (18) A year later, during a similar riot in Riverside, California, the AP reported, “Every police and sheriff’s officer this citrus–belt town could muster was called out tonight to defend the town against more than 1,000 cyclists.” (19)
Besides racing through the town’s business district, they “manhandled” an Air Force officer and trampled the hood of his car. At Angels Camp, California, in 1957 bikers “overwhelmed” the two–man police force and 48 lawmen were brought in to quell the disturbance. While the article notes “main street was not safe for the townsmen,” the last paragraph admits that “except for hundreds of beer bottles and cans littering main street, no damage was done during the disturbance. (20)
The Los Angeles Times includes mane of the same details in its reporting of Hollister, Riverside and, in 1963, Porterville, California. It closed its Hollister story with a quote from a rioter: “The attitude of the cyclists was expressed by one youth today in these words: ‘It’s a convention. We’re just having a convention.’” (21) The Times describes “veterans” of Hollister invading Riverside in 1948, and when Sheriff Cal Rayburn took offense at his treatment he “blasted them as ‘riff–raff and hoodlums.’” (22) Bikers stormed a Porterville hospital to effect revenge on a local resident, but they were forced out of town when faced with water hoses and attack dogs. The three–hour riot began when 200 motorcyclists and others visiting the town were asked to not block the streets.
The editors of the Los Angeles Times warn of “mounted hoodlums” in a 1948 editorial. Though it likens the experience of Hollister and Riverside to “guerrilla warfare,” it allows that motorcycle events have “as respectable a following as most other sports.” (23) They require more police protection than other events, however, which is where promoters were deficient. The editorial suggests local police departments be forgiven for not being able to handle the riots, but that in the future they should know what to expect. Citing details from the news reports, it concludes, “The hoodlums come riding in with malice aforethought. . . . The intention in these convocations is clear.” (24) In other words, if a town invites motorcyclists, it must be prepared for the possibility of violence.
In 1957 Time used similar details in reporting events at Angels Camp. The town suffered bikers now sporting club names such as Vampires, Huns and Tartars emblazoned on their leather jackets. The article begins to differentiate between AMA riders and the more dangerous “black–denim trouser set,” and a sense of sexual menace is added to the framework of outlaw biker lore. As they “took over the community” one group “trailed” a girl, others yelled obscenities and “the rest of the pack twirled waist chains menacingly to discourage interference.” (25) The article notes that bikers can be violent, but despite threatening gestures they still seemed more of a danger to each other. Officers harassed the hoodlums out of town by writing tickets for minor infractions and arresting those who were intoxicated. (26)
Though it was in no way a mainstream news publication, Ace, “The complete man’s magazine,” provides another perspective on the events of Angels Camp and shows how the biker image was already in a downward spiral. The magazine treads a blurry line between fiction and journalism in its article “How Hell Hit Angel’s Camp.” The details of the riot are more or less correct, but John Malcombe throws in a heavy dose of melodrama by exaggerating the amount of violence the town incurred, and for some reason the magazine illustrates the story with still photographs lifted from The Wild One.
But what is most interesting about Ace’s story is its description of bikers as “motorcycle mobsters” who invaded the peaceful mining town “on their machines of death and left a trail of blood in the streets.” (27) With references to Capone and Dillinger prominent in the first paragraph, every aspect of the story is designed to elicit maximum rage in the reader. With very little proof, the magazine concludes, “The shocking truth of Angels Camp’s days of death and destruction is that it will happen again and again as long as the motorcycle mobsters are allowed to ride unchecked.” (28)
Discerning readers would know from reading the story, however, that only two people were killed at the rally when two groups of riders collided and that the races went on as scheduled. The magazine follows the course of other publications by praising the get–tough action of law enforcement. Few bikers who were not AMA members were allowed into town, and police officers and sheriff’s deputies directed their efforts at outlaw bikers, issuing 300 citations for such criminal acts as “jaywalking, loose license plates, tilted headlamps, inadequate equipment and ‘talking back.’” (29) The last eight paragraphs of the story endeavor to assure readers that AMA riders were not to blame for any of the events, that they were friendly and cooperative, but it was too late for damage control. One AMA member said, “We’re objects of suspicion . . . . One look at our bikes and leather jackets and everybody lumps us with the hoodlums.” (30)
The ubiquity of the Hell’s Angels in the 1960s eroded the few positive elements which remained of the outlaw image. The drunkenness and childish antics which endangered the lives of others, the one–percenters’ disheveled and sloppy appearance, a general oafishness and a suggestion of homosexuality finally betrayed them as undesirable, even among other bikers. Reporting the Big Bear Run in Victorville, California, in 1961, Sports Illustrated advances the idea of the AMA’s separation from the “sideburned delinquents” who made the event a shambles. Opposing respectable motorcyclists were “bearded tough guys in top hats and young swaggerers in black leather jackets with ‘Hell’s Angels — Berdoo’ painted on the back. . . . In short, enough certified kooks to show that the romance had not gone out of California motorcycling altogether.” (31)
What Sports Illustrated meant by “romance” is not immediately clear, but it is doubtful the adjective still applied at the end of the decade when the nation had seen all it needed — and more than it wanted — of the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. The incidence and severity of violence at biker rallies and AMA–sponsored events escalated steadily, so much so that a 1963 Labor Day blowout in Porterville and the alleged rape of two underage girls during a 1964 Hell’s Angels run in Monterey inspired California Attorney General Thomas Lynch to investigate the Angels and other outlaw clubs. His report’s conclusions focused yet more attention on bikers and gave law enforcement greater authority to clamp down on outlaw clubs.
At some point the outlaws, now just criminals in the assessment of many, crossed another line. Their eccentricity and enthusiasm, especially in their sexual aggressiveness, became more difficult to tolerate. Their existence was a “mockery of public decency,” and in Monterey they were linked to rape. In Hell’s Angels, Thompson explains the difficulty in defining the club’s pragmatic understanding and use of rape, but the Angels nevertheless fell victim to the country’s “rape mania”: “The appearance of the rape omen was a clear and present danger to property values; the block had to be purified.” (32) Disturbances in tourist areas, and the accumulating evidence that the Hell’s Angels MC was spreading its influence into middle–class communities inspired the Attorney General’s investigation. More importantly, however, it further invoked the news media’s role as finger–pointing moral barometer.
How much credence reporters and their publications gave the Lynch Report varied. Some accepted at face value reports of erratic and anti–social behavior. Others, like Thompson, noted discrepancies and attempted serious analysis. Newsweek used a few of the 16–page report’s findings to introduce a barroom description of the Hell’s Angels, complete with open–mouth kisses between Angels and the sharing of marijuana and women. Ralph “Sonny” Barger and Michael “Tiny” Walter do not deny the report’s conclusions. Instead, they extol the pleasure in being Angels. “We’re kiss–me–baby angels from hell, man,” is one quote, followed by a description of the “thrill when you see that ground going by under your feet — when you get your knees locked on that gas tank with all that power ‘twixt your legs, when the wind’s hitting your face like a great big wave, when your chick’s on your back digging her nails into your belly.” (33)
Time was much more accepting of Lynch’s findings, freely citing facts and eschewing initiative reporting. Its conclusion that “no act is too degrading for the pack” is stated as fact, and is followed by descriptions of the Angels’ deviant sexual practices and thievery, all performed between “drug–induced stupors.” (34) New York City did not have a Hell’s Angels chapter until 1969 so it is not surprising that the New York Times story depends on Lynch’s facts and figures. The Times reassures its readers by mentioning the report’s “intensive” investigation and the new surveillance and intelligence efforts to be implemented in California. (35) The Lynch Report gets the final word, predicting stronger measures will be taken to investigate and arrest those bikers “‘who threaten the lives, peace and security of honest citizens.’” (36)
The Los Angeles Times put that threat at the top of its story concerning the “long–awaited report,” followed by a description of the “voluminous incidents for which club members were responsible” and law enforcement’s proposed new tactics. (37) The import of Lynch’s findings is indicated not only by the weight of the Angels’ legal infractions, but by the amount of work that went into compiling the facts and statistics which paint an ugly picture of outlaw clubs. The “mass investigation” entailed “six months of work by the attorney general’s office, the California Highway Patrol, 22 district attorneys, 15 sheriffs and 67 police chiefs.” (38)
In reporting a 1965 Laconia, New Hampshire, riot for Life, Michael Mok is less critical of the bikers believed to have instigated the violence. He points out that “crew–cut college kids whose immaculate chinos could only have been laundered by Mother” joined motorcyclists in the melee. (39) Mok also notes that the town knew what it was in for when it hosted the racing event. One man reports he had spent $400 to repair damage from the bikers’ previous visit, and a sign in front of the Baptist church welcomed the bikers and their money. A motel owner boasted turn–away business, and another was happy to sell the bikers beer. Mok’s story also describes how “brawlers and bystanders alike” were injured by National Guardsmen and how the soldiers left “the fuzz to mop up the laggards” somewhat indiscriminately. (40)
Descriptions of outlaw bikers as less than human and outside the scope of social acceptability remained the rule, however. A focus on appearance and their bizarre appetites made them easy to identify in a decade when riots and demonstrations were weekly occurrences. The Hell’s Angels gained singular notoriety as the instigators of rioting, and outlaw clubs in general represented something other organizations did not. They had no agenda other than lawlessness and self–gratification, it seemed, and their definition of fun was unsettling. Their use of random violence and casual intimidation was the nation’s worst fear realized. In Laconia rioters set fire to a car while a family of six was still in it, faced down National Guardsmen armed with bayonets, and “unfurled a Nazi flag and set up a chant of ‘Sieg Heil.’” (41) The Hell’s Angels, though they denied being anywhere near Laconia, were blamed for inciting the riot. (42)
Thompson treats the Laconia reports as another example of the mainstream news media’s focus on outrage stories and their inability to divine the truth amid contradictory official accounts of events which involved outlaw motorcycle clubs. Thompson favors Life’s suggestion that many of the rioters were acting in self–defense. The National Guard, he writes, expected violence in Laconia and had practiced riot control for 10 weeks. Though it was not stated in news reports, Thompson points out that damage from the riot was minimal, the races went on as scheduled the next day, and townspeople believed the event would be welcomed back the next year. Finally, of the Laconia mayor’s unfounded claim that the Hell’s Angels, in league with communists, were to blame for the violence, Thompson, with some derision, concludes that Mayor Peter Lassard “was a man who marched through life to the rhythms of some drum I would never hear.” (43) Unfortunately, by the time all of this information was available, no one cared.
William Murray makes a similar observation concerning the exploitation of the Hell’s Angels in his 1965 Saturday Evening Post article. He disputes the Lynch Report’s claim that there were 446 identified Hell’s Angels members in California, putting the actual number at fewer than 200 active Angels. The disparity can be explained, Murray contends, by the fact that part of the club’s “role” in California politics was to serve as fall guys: “They are in a perfect position to be exploited by politicians anxious to impress the electorate, by policemen unable to put a stop to high–level crime, by hustlers looking for a new teen–age fad to launch, by reporters and commentators hungry for headlines.” (44) Everyone, even entertainers and filmmakers, wanted to exploit the Angels and the powerful emotions they inspired.
A low–angle photograph of a Hell’s Angel, lending him larger–than–life stature, graces the cover of The Saturday Evening Post issue which includes Murray’s piece. The photographs of Angels and their “old ladies” do not necessarily verify a negative image of bikers, yet they are appropriate in that they illustrate the outlaw dichotomy — attractive yet repellent, hero and anti–hero — which is central to Murray’s article. Murray tries to make sense of what he sees and what he is told by Hell’s Angels and by San Bernadino police officer Larry Wallace. At one point Murray wonders if he should stay and speak to the seemingly friendly Angels alone, to which Wallace responds, “‘Don’t ever make the mistake of underrating the Angels. They’re tough and they’re mean, and that’s the truth. I don’t think they’d be dumb enough to stomp on a journalist, but you can’t count on it.’”(45)
Murray, like Thompson, tries to give the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club a serious look in a prominent national publication. While far from a positive portrayal, he uses the relative freedom allowed by the Post, a popular general interest monthly, to look skeptically at the club and its reputation. He allows otherwise inarticulate men a bit of dignity when they are on their bikes, describing one Angel as handling his machine with “consummate ease.” They can reduce the machine to its “essence” in two hours, he notes, but they can also so completely destroy a house that nothing is in one piece. In the end, Murray’s Angels are illiterate and befuddled by their new–found celebrity, but they are survivors.
Murray links his skepticism of the Angels’ reputation to criticism of the way the media and law enforcement groups handle the club. In describing events surrounding the Monterey rape story, he points out that even though charges against the four bikers were dropped, “the impression lingered on that foul deeds had been committed and the authorities had been aroused.” (46) He also criticizes the Lynch Report’s finding that the club had been brought up on numerous criminal charges in the past even though none had resulted in a major conviction, and that a majority of the 1,023 misdemeanor convictions reported in the document were mainly for traffic violations. “This wouldn’t qualify the Angels for Good Conduct medals,” Murray writes, “but it did make for slightly less dramatic reading.” (47)
The Angels in Murray’s piece accept their reputation for mechanical skill, toughness, meanness and masculinity that comes with being a member. They also accept — or at least do not deny — their physical repulsiveness and total lack of personal hygiene. They do deny being racist and they adamantly deny being homosexual, however. (48) Indeed, the Angels are surrounded by women in the articles and photos. Murray writes that they “are followed by coveys of sad little girls, mostly in their early teens or early 20’s. There is one girl to every four or five Angels and the turnover is terrific.” (49) But in attempting to subvert the image of homosexuality by describing their various sexual escapades, detailing the roles of “mamas,” “sheep” and “old ladies,” and by agreeing that women are often sold or auctioned off, the bikers merely compound the sense of sexual deviance which surrounds them.
The Hell’s Angels were not the only sexually deviant outlaw biker club to elicit media attention in the 1960s, however. The 1967 crucifixion of “pretty, freckle–faced Christine Deese” by an Outlaws MC chapter in Florida drew the attention of the state’s governor, who took the opportunity to declare war on the state’s biker gangs. Deese was nailed to a tree as punishment for not giving all of her money to her biker boyfriend, Norman “Spider” Risinger. Risinger and three other Outlaws were arrested after a cross–country manhunt to capture everyone indicated in the “punishment ceremony.” Newsweek reported the incident in a short article that concluded with Governor Claude Kirk’s warning, “This bunch of bums has got the word they’re not welcome in Florida. . . . I hope young, thrill–seeking girls who go with them know they can get their fingers burned — or in this case, their hands nailed.” (50)
Front Page Detective, which did an exhaustive report on the incident, was equally willing to blame the victim. But in a 10–page article, the magazine that billed itself as providing “the latest crime news first” praised the actions of the law enforcement officials while making it clear that the bikers’ brand of evil had been no secret to many in the community and that it took “an atrocity of revolting proportions to shock the nation into a knowledge of the problem’s size and character.” (51) By using the first few pages of the story to describe the utter decadence of motorcycle clubs and the relationships they had with local women, it is clear that Murray’s intent in the story is, at least in part, to explain how good girls get involved with bad men. The owner of a bar where the Outlaws partied, Bertha Randall, receives much of the blame for overlooking the club members’ sordid behavior. Billed as “the house mother for the Outlaws,” she claims that the bikers were well–behaved in her presence, and that their girlfriends never complained of being beaten.
But Murray’s article indicts everyone who stood mute while the club terrorized an isolated Florida city. Of Deese and the biker women, the sheriff is quoted as saying, “‘These females seemed to follow blindly any direction of the men. She [Deese] just stood there as they told her to and they just nailed her hands to the tree.’” (52) The article is even more leery of Randall when she changes her story and claims to be a victim of the bikers. Tolerating the Outlaws’ behavior is the greater crime, at least in the estimation of Murray and Front Page Detective, and all it takes to bring the bikers to justice is for honest citizens to take a stand against terrorism. Once adroit and well–meaning authorities are armed with signed complaints and arrest warrants they are able to act quickly and decisively to round up the guilty and protect the innocent.
Marginalized groups and outcasts who at one time might have supported or at least tolerated outlaw motorcycle clubs began to distance themselves in the late 1960s. In 1970 Newsweek suggested the existence of a long–running alliance between California hippies and war protesters, but the Angels’ disruption of a 1965 peace march and their offer to Lyndon Johnson to fight in Vietnam as a “crack group of fighting gorillas (sic)” ended the possibility of a coalition.
The debacle at the Altamont rock concert, where the Rolling Stones hired the club to act as security and they subsequently killed Meredith Hunter in their enthusiasm, signaled the end of any alliance. Newsweek refers to the pact as “bizarre and foolish” because all the groups had in common were “feelings of martyrdom and enthusiasm for drugs.” The Angels were bullies, plain and simple; the article confirms the label as the reporter quotes a resident of a Berkeley commune: “The Angels were more Fascist than the establishment pigs.” (53)
Estranged from other bikers and from anti–establishment groups that could have offered them support, the Hell’s Angels were even more alone. The news media used the two groups’ empathy to wedge them even farther apart. In 1971, increased crime and violence in an Atlanta area that was a home to hippies and vagrants led to New York Times stories by James T. Wooten which described the widening ideological gulf. His first piece casts biker gangs as “invaders,” displacing peace and love with death and fear. The area was a refuge for “young people disenchanted with more orthodox lifestyles,” and local police “tolerated” the drugs and narcotics, at least until the bikers moved in and established a parasitic existence. (54) The dichotomy is more obvious in Wooten’s New York Times Magazine article which apposes a photo of intimidating bikers on one page with one of a peaceful looking hippie on the other. Using only hippies and the police as sources, Wooten laments the death of the “gay, gaudy carnival, noisy and naughty, and with all the makings of a Greenwich Village South.” (55)
Focusing on differences between bikers and hippies, a 1973 Newsweek story, ostensibly about the arrest and trial of four Angels for murder, begins with the bald assertion that the club had been “lionized by the counterculture” prior to Altamont. The five–paragraph article recounts testimony of how the bikers murdered their drug supplier in a deal gone bad, then alleges that the Oakland Hell’s Angels chapter had long worked for police by “diverting guns and explosives from political extremists and then handing the contraband to police.” (56) Normally that is laudable behavior, but in this case it only proved the club could not be trusted.
It is only in the story’s final paragraph that the reader is told the jury found all four Angels not guilty of murder. To accentuate the inconsequence of the verdict, the article’s closing sentence reports that the Angels stand accused in another California murder case in which “three bodies were found in a well on what police call a Hell’s Angels burial ground.” (57)
Another Newsweek article casts doubt on the Angels’ efforts to clean up their public image. In the aftermath of Altamont and the murder trials, the club hired a public relations agent and involved itself in charity events. As described in Newsweek, an anti–drug campaign, blood drives and toy runs seem successful. But in the story “The Risen Angels,” the club is again likened to a Panzer battalion and some of the sources quoted are skeptical; one officer “speculates the new image may in fact be nothing more than a front for expanded narcotics trafficking.” (58) Newsweek’s lead confirms its own estimation that the “gang’s image has hit rock–bottom — even by its own less–than–lofty standards,” inspiring fear even while performing good deeds. (59) That they are carrying teddy bears instead of “switchblades and beer bottles” seems too bizarre to believe.
Thompson, Yves Lavigne and others believed that if authorities and the media had ignored one–percenters and the Hell’s Angels, especially during the 1960s when they were confined to California, they might have faded away with time. (60) Time, somewhat hypocritically, calls the Angels’ popularity undeserved: “Pop music and film romanticized such outlaws as tragic, misunderstood loners, giving the Angels a place that they scarcely deserve in American folklore.” (61)
But as America became aware of its growing drug problem, the Hell’s Angels’ involvement in drug trafficking assured the club continued front page play. Unsavory outlaws, easy to identify, they were examples of America’s violent drug culture and the deviance it spawned. A 1982 FBI bulletin linked motorcycle gangs to the manufacture and distribution of narcotics, prostitution, murder and a host of lesser felonies. Though it stopped short of calling outlaw clubs Public Enemy No. 1, “the amount of criminal activity is alarming. . . . Law enforcement officers conducting gang investigations see these groups as posing complex criminal problems.” (62) The complex nature of those investigations, understandably, required more man–hours and funding.
Beginning in the 1970s motorcycle clubs were tried under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act as part of the nation’s attempt to shut down the drug trade. Ten Hell’s Angels, including Sonny Barger, now the club’s “godfather,” were arrested on conspiracy and drug charges in 1979. (63) Articles in Time and Newsweek repeated pat descriptions which went back 20 years, but described as well the new sophistication which belied the club’s reputation. Time instills an ominous tone by noting that officers seized drugs and “a small arsenal of firearms, including some 1,000 rounds of ammunition.” (64) And though they face up to 20 years, one source makes it clear the danger is not gone: “‘There will be more of them out of prison than in, and you can’t change years of a pattern over night.’” (65)
The trial, which lasted eight months, was newsworthy in part because of the extensive, possibly exaggerated, security measures and its cast of characters. Newsweek quotes a defense attorney’s complaint that courtroom searches and bulletproof shields made his clients appear overly menacing, but few people involved in the case come across positively. (66) Eventually the system itself comes in for criticism. Defense attorneys question the constitutionality of RICO and argue that the club cannot be held responsible for the actions of every member and associate. Prosecution witnesses and informants, paid for their testimony, were criminals themselves. As a participant in the Witness Protection Program, one Angel testifying against the club was “enjoying,” at taxpayer expense, “immunity, a new name, a credit rating, about $200 a month and a Government recommendation for a small–business loan.” (67)
News magazines failed to report the trial’s outcome in July 1980. After 17 days the jury could not reach a verdict on 32 of the 44 counts. Barger, described as “cool and relaxed” as he confessed to selling drugs, was among those found not guilty of racketeering and conspiracy. In reporting that the attorney prosecuting the case would try again, New York Times reporter Wayne King notes, “No price tag has been placed on the trial, although estimates have run as high as $5 million.” (68) This is a detail rarely noted in court reports. Including the cost of a complex trial suggests either that the Angels had yet to be recognized as a scourge worthy of such perseverance, or that the price of the state’s mistakes in trying the case was too high.
The trial foreshadowed a litany of stories in magazines and newspapers concerning drug dealing, violence, arrests, trials and mob connections which played throughout the 1980s. (69) The Hell’s Angels MC continued to establish new chapters across the country, however. Upstart clubs rose to challenge them and the gang wars that followed made up the balance of news reports. The Angels also continued their low–key, circumspect metamorphosis. It and other clubs continued to show interest in volunteer projects and lobbying efforts, though law enforcement officials and the media were ever–skeptical. Sensing some anti–government opinion, Barger spoke out against attacks on the club in 1982: “‘DEA and ATF on their best days would make the Hell’s Angels look like a bunch of Boy Scouts on a Sunday picnic.’” (70) The article ends, though, with praise for FBI risks in infiltrating outlaw clubs.
For four decades, Barger was the one constant in Hell’s Angels coverage, and his treatment in the media is indicative of the media’s changing perceptions of the club. Newsweek noted his odor and decadence in 1965 as he “spat out,” “We ain’t no homos.” (71) In 1970, commenting unrepentantly (and again ungrammatically) on Altamont, the malevolence of the “boss Angel” is a stronger undercurrent: “Ain’t nobody gonna kick my motorcycle.” (72) Relying on the California Attorney General and former club members as sources, a 1973 Los Angeles Times article provides a more threatening picture of Barger, if only because he is revealed as intelligent and charismatic. Barger inspires “an almost hypnotic loyalty.” He created a “Mafia–style monolith, staking out territories and ruling through fear and intimidation,” succeeded in harnessing the club’s potential, directed its public relations, and “put a lid on the Angels’ more raucous entertainment.” (73)
Barger turned down interviews for the Los Angeles Times article, so to balance law enforcement statements reporter William Endicott quotes Sonny’s lawyer, who says Barger’s a man’s man, but that he “is out of touch with the times. ‘He’s a physical man, a soldier of fortune, and that’s anachronistic in 1973.’” (74) The picture of Barger as the “Maximum Leader” of the Hell’s Angels MC conflicts with the New York Times’ image of the club in that same year as being ravaged by drugs and greed, and near collapse with Barger and others in jail. The New York Times describes in detail Barger’s role in drug trafficking and two murder trials but minimizes his leadership. He is summed up as a high school dropout, “famous tough guy,” and the “‘old man’ of a green–eyed blonde who once won a beauty contest.” (75)
In 1994 the archetypal Angel and “bad–to–the–bone biker” was again profiled in a Los Angeles Times piece, this time as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and friend of Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, revealing how the image and reputation of the man and the club had changed in 30 years. Like Paul Newman he has his own line of salsa and sells T–shirts emblazoned, “Sonny Barger — American hero.” Relaxing in his home, Barger, now a jogger, is “almost patrician” and “the hard edges have softened.” He remains unapologetic, however, and his speaking ability has, amazingly, improved: “I just believe we have a right to do anything we want to do as long as we’re not hurting anyone else, and if anyone tries to stop us, we have a right to step on them.” He has “melted” into society, but continues to “avoid mainstream society. ‘It’s not something that appeals to me. . . . I am what I want to be.’” (76) In sum, Barger is a winner, and America loves a winner, even if his background may be a bit shady.
Most striking is the article’s admission that for many men Barger is a role model. Barger describes meeting a woman who tells him that all men would like to be him, to have the ability to handle every situation. With romantic comparisons of Angels to wild West figures, Sonny admits, “We are the type of people who handle situations, whatever they are.” (77) Law enforcement, consequently, is the bully and the article concludes with Barger suggesting he was always simply a target, a potential “feather in prosecutors’ caps.” That defense is nothing new for Barger or the Hell’s Angels, but in 1994 it rang true for those who felt oppressed by government bureaucracy and would respect those who managed to escape interference.
Barger’s image makeover parallels the mainstream news media’s handling of changes in public perceptions of motorcycles and bikers. With the growing popularity of motorcycles and their diffusion into society, the news media changed their strategy, albeit slowly, and modified the biker formula. During the 1960s and 1970s, mainstream magazines and newspapers described the spread of responsible motorcycling and acceptable clubs. Acceptable usually meant riding a lightweight European or Japanese motorcycle, not a Harley, (78) and responsible meant obeying traffic laws and wearing a helmet. (79)
Throughout the period, motorcycling remained a masculine activity, something of a “forbidden fruit” for businessmen and citizens who wanted to escape the daily grind, and riders usually exhibited a recklessness for which the motorcycle was ideal. But the bad–biker image carried over to the reporting of motorcycling as a sport and as a leisure activity and riders contended with prejudice from police and motorists alike. (80) Even if the rider wore a Brooks Brother suit, “he’s still a Hell’s Angel to most of the populace.”(81)
“Law–abiding respectable men like George McCarty,” profiled in a 1969 New York Times article on the “new breed” of enthusiast, provide a counterpoint to the “small minority of ‘weirdos who spoil it for everyone else.’” (82) McCarty, owner of a shoe pattern factory and a weekend biker, rides his motorcycle as a hobby, as a “little bit of rebellion against society,” and as an alternative to relaxing with three martinis after work. The “weirdos” are those “dressed in denim and leather vests emblazoned with Iron Crosses and painted skulls.” But because of the biker image, McCarty has to keep his hobby a secret: “‘It’s too bad the kooks get all the headlines,’ he said. ‘I don’t tell my customers I own a motorcycle — I wouldn’t dare.’” (83)
In the 1970s and 1980s the combination of good public relations, Harley–Davidson’s resurgence , a new middle–class infatuation with heavyweight cycles, and the media’s co–opting of some elements of the outlaw subculture showed signs of improving the biker image. With Harley–Davidson back on sound financial footing, or at least offering Japanese manufacturers steady competition, motorcycling became a viable, acceptable and even patriotic pastime. (84) “Between the saints and sinners, a whole new breed of biker is emerging,” proclaimed Esquire in 1989, evoking “classic” images of hogs and Sportsters as the great American freedom machines. (85) Malcolm Forbes, Liz Taylor, Lou Reed and Charles Russell (president of VISA) all owned and rode Harleys, and so did another new breed of riders — those over 50 years old — who enjoyed the freedom offered by motorcycles. (86)
But the bad–biker image was far from dead, and not everyone who sat astride a hog and indulged in biker chic was treated warmly. Fortune reporter Andrew Serwer, relying on FBI sources and journalist Yves Lavigne’s screed on the Hell’s Angels, forsakes the usual physical description of bikers for an analysis of the club’s “paramilitary” operations.
If you meet up with bikers, Serwer begins, “you have reason to be nervous.” (87) Club members claim that law enforcement is using bikers to improve its own reputation and that the club cannot be held responsible for all its members’ activities, but Serwer reiterates the official line on the club’s penchant for drug trafficking and violence. All that has changed is their growing sophistication.
The Massachusetts Hell’s Angels members Mark Bastoni interviewed for a Boston Magazine article echo Serwer’s sentiments. Individually, they admit to being convicts and felons, but they argue that fact alone should not reflect on the club. Bouncin’ Bob argues that politicians and members of the Knights of Columbus have also been convicted of crimes, so “why aren’t they calling the Senate a criminal organization and harassing senators and politicians?” (88) A second biker claims police officers steal cocaine and marijuana from property rooms then re–sell it, but no one believes they are part of a criminal organization. It is the club’s age–old defense, but it gained a new resonance in an era of government corruption. The reading public was more likely to accept the idea all organizations, even the most upstanding, contain a criminal element.
Besides interviewing bikers, Bastoni talked to the club’s lawyer, the FBI and state police officers. With the information he gathers, Bastoni admits, “Not even the Angels’ high–octane blend of paranoia and denial can wipe out the violent record of the Massachusetts club during the last 10 years.” (89) Club members have been linked to murder and methamphetamine production, and, worse yet, they hire themselves out to the Mafia. Yet there is no real comparison between the two organizations. Compared to the Mafia, “the Hell’s Angels pale in significance,” the chief of the New England Organized Crime Strike Force says, because their influence is too narrow. Despite the rhetoric, Bastoni concludes, “some law–enforcement authorities are less convinced of the Angels’ importance in the world of crime.” (90)
Which is not to suggest the Hell’s Angels are not dangerous. Rather, in Bastoni’s article organizations like the Hell’s Angels MC are simply parts of the whole. At heart, the police force and the motorcycle club offer the same benefits — camaraderie, mutual defense and elitism — which Bastoni believes explains the grudging respect and hatred they hold for each other. “Cops represent the authority that the Angels despise,” yet both view themselves as living by a strict code of conduct that sets them apart from the rest of society. In the end, Bastoni believes, “The biggest thing that separates them is the law.” (91) So even though they stand at opposite ends of the legal spectrum, the existence of organizations such as the Hell’s Angels is a necessity, because in order to recognize “good” there must also be “evil.”
The suggestion of news articles from the late 1980s into the 1990s was that outlaw bikers had lost some of their ability to intimidate. The New Republic even provided bikers a modicum of respect in a 1989 piece which described their successful, however inelegant, lobbying efforts. (92) A Los Angeles Times article observed in a 1990 headline that “Hell’s Angels make good neighbors in Ventura,” if only because they do not bother anyone. (93) And GQ’s Trish Deitch Rohrer paints a picture of rich urban bikers (rubbies) who buy expensive Harleys in order “to lose themselves among the fugitive kind.” It’s an illusion, though, as Rohrer points out the weaknesses in the stereotype: some “real bikers” are outlaws, but most are just “working–class men who love nothing and nobody more than they do their motorcycles.” (94) Rohrer succeeds in pointing up society’s hypocrisy: after years of opprobrium, the bad–biker image is now sought after as a means of excitement, male bonding and vicarious thrills.
Jon Krakauer writes in Smithsonian that “the biker subculture has always amounted to considerably more — and less — than the public has imagined it to be.” (95) Bikers indulge themselves, are clearly eccentric, and as a group can be intimidating to the uninitiated, but they are no more dangerous than the local bridge club. In a decade of increasing complexity, Krakauer concludes, biking is simply a lifestyle which indulges in “turning the machine age back on itself.” (96) A Daytona, Florida, police officer can even crack a smile amid the leathered up bike week crowd. “Bikers are good folks, for the most part,” he tells Krakauer. “It’s not the bikers who make trouble for us, it’s the college kids who’ll be here for spring break. I’ll take bikers over students anytime.” (97)
Deprived of some of the ominous overtones, bikers could even be used humorously, and occasionally with sarcasm, in mainstream publications. The advent of Christian motorcycle clubs allows Newsweek to contrast the old image with the new. Now, the article states, when a tattooed biker crosses your path on the highway “Mad Max style,” he may intend to save your soul rather than steal it. (98) The New York Times Magazine labels members of the Christian Motorcyclist Association “Heck’s Angels.” They are, the article concludes, more representative of today’s biker than the cartoonish “drug dealing long hairs depicted in ‘Easy Rider.’” (99) Bikers can even be used to lampoon a style of behavior. Slash and burn fly fishermen for whom catch and release is “a cheap excuse to spare pantywaists from cleaning fish” are, naturally, Hell’s Anglers. (100)
The ubiquitous Harley–Davdison, firmly established as a status symbol and personal statement of freedom and individuality, cannot be ignored as a powerful contributor to the biker’s evolution. Owning a motorcycle, indulging in leather and getting tattooed no longer automatically brand an individual deviant. Indeed being a biker and riding a Harley is, according to The New Yorker’s Alec Wilkinson, a purely “American attitude”: “Harley–Davidsons are the pre–eminent motorcycles made in America. ‘It’s an attitude and ego thing,’ according to a biker I know. ‘If you’re an American, you have an attitude, and if you have an ego you don’t want to be seen riding foreign junk.’” (101)
Riding a hog is also expressive of the biker’s darker desires. Every rider knows that some day, some way, they are going to go over “the high side,” but at least they will do it with style. As Harper’s Melissa Pierson writes, “If you continue to ride in the full knowledge that you could lose your life in so doing, then you are asking not for death but for immortality.” (102)
From hoodlums, hooligans, rapists and terrorists this country’s outlaw bikers have come a long way from Hollister. Los Angeles Times reporter Lynn Simross likens the modern–day biker to Rodney Dangerfield — they both want a little respect. (103) The contemporary biker looming in the rearview mirror is more likely to be a banker or a dentist than a barroom brawler. Yet some people are not completely happy to see the stigma disappear. Older and grayer, some of the original hard–living outlaws are irritated that what was once theirs is now available to anyone — without the cost. Bikers like Mexican Steve who hold to the outlaw code call the newcomers posers, weekend warriors who have usurped the Harley “for reasons faddish and commercial.” Eyeing the clientele of a biker bar, a sneering Steve tells a reporter, “All the yuppies can ride a Harley now.” (104)
Written at first blush, with city officials still indignant over anti–social bikers who incited violence in their towns, early newspaper and magazine reports of the many “riots” inspired by outlaw bikers and motorcycle clubs inspired public fear and moral outrage. Too often, however, when the facts were discovered and the damage was shown to be far less extensive than originally reported, it was too late to undo the injury, even if the mainstream media had wanted to. Why change what effectively called attention to deviance and bad behavior?For decades being a biker was difficult, whether the cyclist was an outlaw or not. However, the consensus image of what it means to be deviant, our standards of right and wrong, and public perceptions of corruption changed just enough so that the would–be biker outlaw of the 1990s no longer inspired instant anxiety on the part of straights and citizens. Though the “bad–biker” image was still being used, it had broadened and could indicate more than criminality, decadence and danger.
Chapter 4
1. Hunter S. Thompson, Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (New York: Ballantine, 1967), 39–41.
2. News writing and reporting as a whole are treated here as a genre. Though genre is usually considered a literary term, it is reasonable to believe reporters, whether they work for big–city newspapers or mainstream national magazines, see themselves as doing the same job — informing a diverse reading public. The techniques they use to accomplish that are similar. Reporters, like writers of genre literature, depend on structures, formulas and story types which insure their stories are interpreted and understood correctly. Heather DuBrow’s description of literary genres can be applied to news writing: “Generic codes frequently function like a tone of voice rather than a more clear–cut signal: they provide one interpretation of the text, they direct our attention to the parts of it that are especially significant, but they do not and cannot offer an infallible key to its meaning.” Heather Dubrow, Genre (London: Methuen, 1982), 106.
3. Harrison Salisbury, The Shook–Up Generation (New York: Fawcett, 1959).
4. See Will Sparks, “Terror in the Streets,” Commonweal, 4 June 1965, 345–348; Gilbert Geis, “Crime and Politics,” The Nation, 14 August 1967, 115–116; To Establish Justice to Insure Domestic Tranquility: The Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (New York: Bantam, 1970); Thomas Rose, ed., Violence in America: A Historical and Contemporary Reader (New York: Random House, 1969).
5. Hunter S. Thompson, “The ‘Hashbury’ is the Capital of the Hippies,” in The Great Shark Hunt (New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1979), 458.
6. H. E. Robbins. The Real Story Behind the Hell’s Angels and Other ‘Outlaw’ Motorcycle Groups (Sherman Oaks, California: Angels Publishing, Co., 1966), 36.
7. Susan J. Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female With the Mass Media (New York: Times Books, 1994), 292.
8. Raney Stanford, “The Return of the Trickster: When a Not–A–Hero is a Hero,” Journal of Popular Culture 1 (Winter 1967): 232.
9. “Life Goes Motorcycling,” Life, 11 August 1947, 113.
10. “Respectable Motorcyclists,” Life, 8 August 1949, 65.
11. Hal Burton, “Most Unpopular Men on the Road,” Saturday Evening Post, 25 September 1954, 128.
12. Ibid., 128.
13. Andrew R. Boone, “How They’ve Halted Delinquency on Wheels,” Popular Science March 1955: 258.
14. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media and the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (New York: Bantam, 1980).
15. “Cyclist’s Holiday,” Life, 21 July 1947, 31.
16. Ibid., 31.
17. Three weeks after it reported the Hollister riot, Life ran a letter from Paul Brokaw, editor of Motorcyclist, that defended cyclists. He takes issue with Life’s suggestion that all 4,000 bikers present were members of a motorcycle club. Anticipating the “one–percenter” distinction, Brokaw corrects the error by noting that the disorder was caused by a “small percentage of that number, aided by a much larger group of non–motorcycling hell–raisers and mercenary–minded barkeepers.” He laments that the photo “seared a pitiful brand on the character of tens of thousands of innocent, clean–cut, respectable, law–abiding young men and women who are the true representatives of an admirable sport.” “Letters to the Editor,” Life, 11 August 1947, 7.
18. “Motorcyclists Put Town in Uproar,” New York Times, 7 July 1947, 19.
19. “Cyclists Rule Town; 28 Held in Disorder,” New York Times, 5 July 1948, 16.
20. “Outlaw Cyclists Alarm a Village,” New York Times, 3 June 1957, 7.
21. “4,000 Touring Cyclists Wreak Havoc in Hollister,” Los Angeles Times, 7 July 1947, 4.
22. “46 Jailed in Riverside Cycle Riots,” Los Angeles Times, 5 July 1948, 1.
23. “Swarming of the Mounted Hoodlums,” Los Angeles Times, 6 July 1948, II 4.
24. Ibid., 4.
25. “The Wild Ones,” Time, 17 June 1957, 22.
26. In Hell’s Angels, Thompson writes that the events of Angels Camp were a “major goad to the development of the mutual–assistance concept, a police version of mobile warfare” (211). It was clear that bikers presented a major problem for small town peace officers, and that it was becoming increasingly difficult for law enforcement to handle the kind of violence which followed one–percenter clubs.
27. John Malcombe, “How Hell Hit Angel’s Camp, Ace, December 1957, 11.
28. Ibid., 11.
29. Ibid., 56.
30. Ibid., 56.
31. James Murray, “Debacle in the Desert,” Sports Illustrated, 23 January 1961, 12.
32. Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 67.
33. “The Wild Ones,” Newsweek, 29 March 1965, 25.
34. “The Wilder Ones,” Time, 26 March 1965, 23B.
35. “California Takes Steps to Curb Terrorism of Ruffian Cyclists,” New York Times, 16 March 1965, 15.
36. “The Wilder Ones,” 23B.
37. “Hell’s Angels Called Threat on Wheels,” Los Angeles Times, 16 March 1965, 1.
38. Ibid., 1.
39. Michael Mok, “‘Come to the Riot. See Weirs Beach Burn,’” Life, 2 July 1965, 88.
40. Ibid., 88. Despite his tone, Mok is consistent in describing the bikers as insolent drunks and bullies. The New York Times ran the Weirs Beach story on page 1, leading with a description of the firepower used against the 10,000 young rioters. One paragraph notes that “police and National Guard units cleared out the town, even rousting persons registered at hotels,” but follows it with a description of the damage — mostly litter — left behind by the cyclists. “10,000 in Beach Riot in New Hampshire,” New York Times, 20 June 1965, 1.
41. “Bikies’ Fun,” Newsweek, 5 July 1965, 21.
42. In Mok’s story the Laconia police chief and the mayor blame the Angels based only on their reputation: “‘We knew they were around and that they had taken over a town out west, but they weren’t going to do it here’” (Mok, 88). Newsweek’s story on the same event notes that “some natives suggested, without proving it, that the trouble was started by cross–country visitors from the notorious California motorcycle gang known as Hell’s Angels” (“Bikies’ Fun,” 21). The New York Times printed the allegation without details (“10,000 in Beach Riot,” 1).
43. Thompson, Hell’s Angels, 287. To be fair, much of the information about the riot was not immediately available. Thompson notes that it was “at least a month before the initial, wild–eyed accounts of the Laconia riot were deflated by first–hand testimony from those without instant access to the media” (Hell’s Angels, 279).
44. William Murray, “The Hell’s Angels,” The Saturday Evening Post, 20 November 1965, 39.
45. Murray, 34.
46. Ibid., 34. Many articles that immediately followed added gang rape to the offenses for which the Hell’s Angels and other clubs, as organizations, were guilty.
47. Ibid., 35.
48. As far as the Angels’ attitudes towards blacks, Murray quotes Wallace as saying that the club is not overtly racist, “but the main thing is that the Angels ain’t for anybody, and that makes them anti–Negro and just about anybody else” (“The Hell’s Angels,” 34). “Rebels on Wheels,” Ebony, December 1966, 64–65, and “Nazi Emblems of ‘Wayouts’ Are no Symbols of Hate,” Ebony, December 1966, 66–68, also attempt to dispel the image of outlaw bikers and the Hell’s Angels as racists.
49. Murray, “The Hell’s Angels,” 37. Murray was letting the Angels off easy. That members of outlaw clubs lived off the wages of wives and girlfriends who worked as prostitutes had been acknowledged in other reports.
50. "She Didn’t Scream,” Newsweek, 11 December 1967, 34.
51. Frank Murray, “The Story Behind Florida’s Crucified Redhead,” Front Page Detective, March 1968, 19.
52. Ibid., 56.
53. “Avenging Angels,” Newsweek, January 5 1970, 16.
54. James T. Wooten, “Motorcycle Gangs Terrorize Once–Calm Atlanta Hippie Area,” New York Times, 3 January 1971, 40.
55. James T. Wooten, “The Life and Death of Atlanta’s Hip Strip,” The New York Times Magazine, 14 March 1971, 34.
56. “Fallen Angels,” Newsweek, 8 January 1973, 25.
57. Ibid., 25.
58. “The Risen Angels,” Newsweek, 10 December 1973, 38.
59. Ibid., 38.
60. Yves Lavigne, Hell’s Angels: Three Can Keep A Secret if Two are Dead (New York: Carol Publishing, 1987).
61. “Hell’s Angels 4, Breed 1,” Time, 22 March 1971, 18.
62. Roger H. Davis, “Outlaw Motorcyclists: A Problem for Police (Part One),” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, October 1982,13.
63. “It May Be the End of a Cycle as Hell’s Angels ‘Godfather’ Sonny Barger Returns to Jail,” People Weekly, 3 July 1979, 63–64.
64. “Hell’s Angels: Some Wheelers May be Dealers,” Time, 2 July 1979, 34.
65. Ibid., 34.
66. Melinda Beck, “Hell’s Angels on Trial,” Newsweek, 29 October 1979, 43.
67. Jane O’Reilly, “In California: A Trial of Angels,” Time, 26 May 1980, 10. In the New York Times Wallace Turner suggests skepticism of the state’s case: “The trial has so far consisted of a relentless presentation of bizarre testimony from a string of former associates of the Hell’s Angels and introduction of evidence to buttress their stories.” Wallace Turner, “Criminal Trial of Hell’s Angels Starting 4th Month,” New York Times, 20 January 1980, 21.
68. Wayne King, “Mistrial Declared in 8–Month Hell’s Angels Trial on Coast,” New York Times, 3 July 1980, 12.
69. See Lori Santos, “Gangs of Bikers Control Drugs, DEA Report Says,” Los Angeles Times, 24 July 1980, 18; Mark Starr, “Do the Bandidos Fit their Name,” Newsweek, 23 November 1981, 49; Stanley Penn, “Rise in Crime Ventures by Motorcycle Gangs Worries U. S. Lawmen,” Wall Street Journal, 11 January 1984, 1; “Speed Demons,” Time, 2 April 1984, 21; Walter Shapiro, “Going After Hell’s Angels,” Newsweek, 13 May 1985, 41; “Busting Hell’s Angels,” Time, 13 May 1985, 28; “Gangs that Rival the Mob,” U.S. News and World Report, 3 February 1986, 29.
70. David A. Weissler, “Motorcycle Gangs go Gray Flannel,” U.S. News and World Report, 20 September 1982, 65.
71. “The Wild Ones,” Newsweek, 29 March 1965, 25.
72. “Avenging Angels,” 16.
73. William Endicott, “Hell’s Angels: Some Say They’re in the Big Leagues,” Los Angeles Times, 15 January 1973, 3.
74. Ibid., 12.
75. Wallace Turner, “Jail Terms Deplete Ranks of Hell’s Angels,” Los Angeles Times, 18 March 1973, 51.
76. Bob Sipchen, “The Rough Rider,” Los Angeles Times, 14 December 1994, E 1.
77. Ibid., 1.
78. See “How the ‘Thunder Herd’ Boss Brought a Honda Boom to the U.S.,” Newsweek, 6 July 1964, 66–68; Eric Arctander, “Civilized Cycles,” Popular Science, July 1965, 68–72; “An Uneasy Rider in the U.S. Market,” Business Week, 20 June 1970, 44.
79. See “How to Avoid Killing Yourself,” Esquire, November 1965, 140; “All About Owning a Cycle,” Better Homes and Gardens, September 1970, 46+; “Can Cycling be Safe,” Better Homes and Gardens, May 1972, 76; Lee Gutkind, “Two–Wheeled Intruders in a Four–Wheeled Culture,” New York Times, 10 June 1973, section XX, 39; Joan Cook, “Motorcycles Move Up in the World,” New York Times, 18 April 1976, section XI, 15.
80. See “Two–Wheeled Chic,” Time, 11 September 1964, 78–80; Michael Sumner, “Varoom at the Top: The Madison Avenue Motorcycle Club,” Esquire, November 1965, 141; Robert Levy, “Those ‘Easy Rider’ Executives,” Dun’s, January 1972, 44–46; David Shaw, “These Big Wheels Hit the Road,” Los Angeles Times, 18 March 1973, section II, 1; “Cyclists Rev Up Kindly Image,” New York Times, 15 April 1973, p. 100; Georgia Dullea, “Heck’s Angels, Sort Of,” New York Times, 11 August 1974, 54; Ann Japenga, “Cycling: Sundays at the Rock Store,” Los Angeles Times, 23 September 1979, section
VII, 1.
81. “Plight of the Cyclists,” Newsweek, 27 March 1967, 89.
82. Robert Reinhold, “New Breed of Motorcycle Buff is Businessman 5 Days a Week,” New York Times, 16 June 1969, 59.
83. Ibid., 59.
84. See Gloria Emerson, “Easy Riding in Daytona,” Geo, April 1980, 8–30; Irv Hamilton, “Bikers in Pinstripes,” San Francisco Magazine, October 1980, 88–90; Marilyn Wellemeyer, “Running Free and Close to Nature,” Fortune, 13 July 1981, 133–140; John Costello, “Therapeutic Thrills on Wheels,” Nation’s Business, May 1982, 93–95; William E. Schmidt, “Resort Looks on Warily as Hell’s Angels Wheel In,” New York Times, 14 August 1982, 8; Stephen Braun, “Easy Rider Ritual,” Los Angeles Times, 20 January 1986, 1; Michael Oneal, “Harley–Davidson: Ready to Hit the Road Again,” Business Weekly, 21 July 1986m 70; Jay Merritt, “Heck on Wheels,” Esquire, March 1987, 30–33; James Howard Kunstler, “My Motorcycle Years,” GQ, April 1988, 93+; Melvin Maddocks, “Motorcycle in Search of a Third Wheel, or Maybe a Fourth,” Christian Science Monitor, 5 August 1988, 17.
85. Mark Marvel, “The Gentrified Hog,” Esquire, July 1989, 22.
86. Chris Pfouts, “Easy Riders,” New Choices, June 1989, 64–68.
87. Andrew E. Serwer, “The Hell’s Angels’ Devilish Business,” Fortune, 30 November 1992, 118.
88. Mark Bastoni, “Chrome and Hot Leather,” Boston Magazine, July 1988, 101.
89. Ibid., 131.
90. Ibid., 135.
91. Ibid., 133.
92. Alex Heard, “Hogrolling,” The New Republic, 20 November 1989, 11–12.
93. Hugo Martin, “Hell’s Angels Make Good Neighbors in Ventura,” Los Angeles Times, 29 April 1990, B1.
94. Trish Deitch Rohrer, “Hell’s Yuppies,” GQ, March 1990, 289–290.
95. Jon Krakauer, “A Hog is Still a Hog, But the ‘Wild Ones’ are Tamer,” Smithsonian, November 1993, 90.
96. Ibid., 99.
97. Ibid., 90.
98. Rebecca Crandall, “The Motorcycle Ministers,” Newsweek, 22 June 1992, 60.
99. David Handelman, “Heck’s Angels,” The New York Times Magazine, 18 November 1990, 70.
100. W. Hardback McLoughlin, “Hell’s Anglers,” Field and Stream, June 1994, 19.
101. Alec Wilkinson, “An American Attitude,” The New Yorker, 10 July 1995, 68.
102. Melissa Holbrook Pierson, “Precious Dangers,” Harper’s Magazine, May 1995, 74.
103. Lynn Simross, “Going Full Cycle,” Los Angeles Times, 31 October 1987, sec. 5, 1.
104. Jim Nesbitt, “Bikers Roar Back,” The Houston Chronicle, 25 June 1992, 1.