I thought the Hells Angels were mostly an anachronism, a figment of an earlier generation … where I am if you see bikers, mostly it’s off duty law enforcement riding together for fun and/or civic projects. I don’t doubt there’s Hells Angels everywhere but they appear to be keeping a low profile here, if anything.
(The last time I saw Hells Angels colors was when I worked a motorcycle event at Road Atlanta a gazillion years ago – nowadays I don’t think you can get into the racetrack wearing club colors, Hall County polices the track pretty thoroughly and the track has their own security.)
Any of you see 'em where you live? Do we have any riding Dopers? Oh man, I just wondered, if Dopers wore colors, what would they look like? Now I’m imagining people going down the highway with “IT’S TAKING LONGER THAN WE THOUGHT” on their backs.
I have an official Cecil SDMB pickelhaube and monocle. I think it’s made of strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff but I’m not sure, it might be a different dragon, not Cecil.
Happy cold and flu season everyone. (Is that PC to say?)
I went to see a Led Zeppelin cover band in Oak Forest, Il. 20 years ago and there was one standing at the front door. First time I’d seen one in my area. They have a club house in Harvey, Il.
They even have a website, I’ll break up the link a little bit.
http:// www. hellsangelschicago. com/
(Took too long typing to edit the first post.)
Another time I was sitting in a bar in Tinley Pk. Il. and a person sat next to me. I could see a pink hat out of the corner of my eye. I could also see the Hell’s Angels logo tattood on his hand by the web of the thumb/index finger. I nonchalantly galnced over to exchange a polite greeting, and stole a closer look at his hat. Pink ballcap with the Hell’s Angels logo.
This story from 2009 talks about biker gangs in Canada. It seems that Hells Angels did not show up in Ontario until 2000. At which point they exploded due to absorbing/ merging with lots of the local biker gangs.
Saw a guy out at Costco. Could have been Fred from Accounting, neatly coiffed, trimmed and tidy beard. Wearing a full dress Hell’s Angels jacket, with all correct regalia, exactly as I saw it in '68, except crisp and recently dry cleaned. I said nothing, just gaped in awe. Didn’t even register what city it was supposed to represent. (All the real ones came from San Berdoo anyway…)
My area (Milwaukee, but also including the rest of Wisconsin and Illinois) has the Outlaws. But googling to see if there were Hells Angels around here, the first link shows an on going court case involving nearly a dozen Hells Angles members out of California. So it does seem that they’re still a thing.
(warning, auto playing news video)
Also, I believe the Hells Angels are still active in the Twin Cities.
Phoenix area, oh yeah. I saw one on the freeway a couple years ago.
There was a house that had wild parties a few blocks away from us. Usually bikers. Once I remember seeing two Angels idling and talking in front of my neighbor’s driveway. The neighbor came home from work and honked at them. My eyes got real big.
They’re quite common all over the interior of British Columbia. They’re probably my favorite group to do business with. As long as you show respect, I’ve always seen them return the favor. The local chapter also does a lot to keep meth out of town because it cuts into their coke profits, and I’m totally OK with that.
They’re around and thriving on the Lower East Side of New York City, where they’ve had a HQ since 1969. I’ve been on that block many times and there are always at least 8-10 bikes parked outside.
Ours are more Pagans/Outlaws/etc than the HA although more over the eastern NY border that changes.
Short ball-peens make pretty good informal weapons with a certain level of plausible deniability.
The 1% clubs are odd ducks. Some officers and members may be in for criminal purposes but the majority of patch-holding members seem to have always been in more from the family/closeness/brotherhood than anything else. I have ridden around with some lesser clubs but never considered prospecting or anything. If you do it right, if your head is in the right place, you will go to the mat for your least favorite bro as much as you most favorite and my brain just isn’t wired that way. I don’t see big differences between today and 40 years back other than the level of violence being higher but we can say that about all of society.
Approach with not so much caution as awareness. You are not “one of them” (even if you are a blood relative of a patched member) no matter how much time you spend around them any more than you can be part of any paramilitary fraternal organization without joining. The difference is most groups won’t put you down on the ground, prop your legs over the curb, and shatter them.
In the late 20th, when I lived in Oakland, and the day’s business found me on East 14th Street, I often walked by the Oakland chapter’s clubhouse; naturally, there’d often be a few gentlemen of the Red and White milling around or riding past. Oakland is practically the birthplace of the club, the Holy of Holies, and I’m sure there will be some Angel presence there until California falls in the ocean. They mostly looked like older working-class white guys to me, albeit somewhat hairier and more inked-up, and wearing their colors, of course.
Over the years I’ve been to various events – shows, parties and like that–where there were some individual HAs in attendance. They don’t generally look for trouble when they’re out among the citizenry; every now and then one might encounter a prospect who thought he had something to prove, but none of the trouble I’ve seen happen was instigated by Hell’s Angels.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot – in the summer of 1984, when the violent and racist faction of local skinheads became problematic in the Haight, the word got out that the Angels were unhappy with the situation and about to become involved – that settled the boot boys down real quick.
Gary Floyd of the Dicks knew a lot of bikers including HA around that time. Occasionally they would come to a Dicks show. 16 year old skinheads were definitely intimidated.
I went to high school in Folsom CA, also the home of Represa CA aka Folsom Prison. It was not unusual to see HA traveling through to visit folks in prison, or when someone got out. When a leader got out, there would often be 50-100 HA in a formation with police escort to pick them up and get 'em out of town.
I wouldn’t call the Angles noble and living by a code as understood by civilians. They didn’t necessarily go looking for trouble but sometimes they did.