Hell's Angels

by Hunter S. Thompson

  At Bass Lake the situation was further complicated by the restraining order, which, according to the police, ruled out any possibility of bail, even at 10 percent. Despite this, the sunset mood at Willow Cove was loose and happy. There was a feeling that the crises were all past and that now the serious drinking could begin.

  In accordance with their ethic of excess in all things, the Angels booze with a zeal that seems hardly human. As drinkers, they are binge-oriented. Around home they seldom get drunk, but at parties they go completely out of their heads—screaming gibberish and running headlong at each other like crazed bats in a cave. The bonfire is always a hazard. On one run Terry fell into the fire and was burned so badly that he had to be rushed to a hospital. Those who avoid the fire and refrain from shoving their fists through car windshields might, at any moment, go roaring off on their bikes to seek out some populated area where they can put on a show.

  In 1957 several hundred outlaws made a disastrous run to Angels Camp, where the American Motorcycle Association was staging a big race in conjunction with the annual frog-jumping contest. Many of the top riders in the country were on hand, along with some three thousand cyclists of every description. The Angels were not invited, but they went anyway—knowing that their presence would cause violence.

  The AMA includes all kinds of motorcyclists—from those on 50-cubic-centimeter Hondas to devotees of full-dress Harley 74s—but it centers on competition riders, either professional or amateur, who take their bikes very seriously, spend a lot of money on them and ride all year round. Their idea of a good party is an argument about gear ratios or the merits of overhead cams. Unlike the outlaws, they frequently take long trips either alone or in groups of two or three … and often into areas where anybody on a motorcycle is automatically treated like a Hell’s Angel, a raping brute unfit to eat or drink among civilized people. This has made them bitter, and most can’t even discuss the Angels without getting angry. The relationship of the two groups is not quite as venomous as that of owls and crows—who will attack each other on sight—but the basic attitudes are not much different. Unlike the general public, many competition riders have had painful experience with the outlaws, for they move in the same small world. Their paths cross at bike-repair shops, races or late-night hamburger stands. According to respectable cyclists, the Angels are responsible for the motorcycle’s sinister image. They blame the outlaws for many of the unpleasant realities of being a bike-owner—from police harassment to public opprobrium to high insurance rates.

  The “respectability” of AMA people is entirely relative. Many are as mean and dishonest as any Hell’s Angel, and there is a hard core—mainly race riders and mechanics—who will go out of their way to tangle with outlaws. AMA officials deny this, for obvious reasons, but in almost the same breath they denounce the Angels as criminal scum. I’ve heard cops call motorcycle outlaws “the lowest of the low” and “the scum of the earth,” but they do it with a certain amount of self-control. Most cops were bitterly amused at the Hell’s Angels’ publicity boom. By contrast, the AMA people were outraged; it was like a bunch of owls reacting to the news that a crow warlord had won the Nobel Peace Prize.

  In Sacramento in the fall of 1965 a handful of Hell’s Angels attended a national championship race and afterward got in a brief scuffle, in the parking lot, with two men who said something to offend them. Nobody was hurt, and the Angels, five of them, drove off in a car toward San Francisco. They had not gone far when they were forced off the road by two cars full of respectable riders and mechanics … who jerked the outlaws out of their car, and as one said later, “We beat the bastards bloody; they couldn’t stand up; they were crying.”

  On the disastrous run to Angels Camp in 1957 the outlaws were outnumbered about ten to one, but the opposition couldn’t have mustered enough strong-arms to meet them head on. The Angels arrived early and bought up the entire beer supply of four bars, which they drank in a pasture several miles from the site of the races. By nightfall most of the outlaws were raving drunk, and when somebody suggested they go over and check out the AMA camp the reaction was automatic. Their howling frightened the townspeople and sent the sheriff running for his car. The outlaw pack filled both lanes of the narrow road … gunning their engines and sending the beams of their headlights into trees and bedroom windows as they weaved and jockeyed for running room. They were only going for a party, they said later, but the party never got started. The lead bikes took the crest of a hill at over a hundred miles an hour and crashed blindly into a group of cyclists beside the road. Two outlaws died in the bloody pile-up, which immediately drew a large crowd. There were not enough police to keep the scene under control, and fights broke out as cyclists shoved and shouted among the wreckage. Flashing lights and sirens added to the confusion, which grew worse as the fighting spread. It continued all night and most of the next day—not a full-scale riot, but a series of clashes that kept local police racing from one spot to another.

  The casualty list showed two dead, a dozen serious injuries and the final demise of the old notion that rural communities are geographically insulated from “city trouble.” Angels Camp was a major goad to the development of the mutual-assistance concept, a police version of mobile warfare, which meant that any town or hamlet in California, no matter how isolated, could summon help from nearby police jurisdictions in case of emergency. There is no official list of these emergencies, but if there were, any rumor of a Hell’s Angels visitation would be right at the top.

  ‡ Not all of this was paid, and the Frisco Angels were forced to change bondsmen. Their new man charges them a firm 10 percent.

  15

  The fact that people are poor or discriminated against doesn’t necessarily endow them with any special qualities of justice, nobility, charity or compassion.

  —Saul Alinsky

  To squelch any possibility of the Angels roaring drunkenly out of camp during the night, Baxter and the Highway Patrol announced a ten-P.M. curfew. At that time, anyone in camp would have to stay, and nobody else could come in. This was made official just after dark. The deputies were still trying to be friendly and they assured the Angels that the curfew was as much for their protection as anything else. They kept talking about “bunches of townspeople, coming through the woods with deer rifles.” To forestall this, the police set up a command post at the point where the Willow Cove trail joined the highway.

  Meanwhile, a mountain of six-packs was piling up in the middle of camp. This was in addition to the original twenty-two cases in my car. By the time it got dark the car was half empty, so I put the rest of the beer in the back seat and locked my own gear in the trunk. I decided that any symbolic alienation I might incur by securing my valuables was worth the risk of having them all lost—which they probably would have been, for it was not long before the camp became like an animal pen. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times showed up the next day and said it “looked like Dante’s Inferno.” But he arrived about noon, when most of the outlaws were calm and stupefied from the ravages of the previous night. If the midday lull seemed that awful, the bonfire scenes might have permanently damaged his mind.

  Or perhaps not, for the ten-o’clock curfew had a drastic effect on the action. By driving all the fringe elements out of camp, it forced the Angels to fall back on their own entertainment resources. Most of those who left were girls; they had seemed to be enjoying things until the deputies announced that they would either leave by the deadline or stay all night. The implications were not pleasant—at ten the law was going to pull out, seal off the area and let the orgy begin.

  All afternoon the scene had been brightened by six or ten carloads of young girls from places like Fresno and Modesto and Merced who had somehow got wind of the gathering and apparently wanted to make a real party of it. It never occurred to the Angels that they would not stay the night—or the whole weekend, for that matter—so it came as a bad shock when they left. The three nurses who’d picked up Larry, Pete and Puff earl
ier in the day made a brave decision to stay—but then, at the last moment, they fled. “Man, I can’t stand it,” said one Angel as he watched the last of the cars lurch off down the trail. “All that fine pussy, just wasted. That wiggy little thing with the red shoes was all mine! We were groovin! How could she just split?”

  It was a rotten show by almost any standards. Here were all these high-bottomed wenches in stretch pants and sleeveless blouses half unbuttoned … beehive hairdos and blue-lidded eyes … ripe, ignorant little bodies talking horny all afternoon (“Oh, Beth, don’t these bikes just drive you kinda wild?”). Yeah, baby, wild for the open road … and off they went, like nuns hearing the whistle, while the grief-stricken Angels just stood there and watched. Many had left their own women behind, fearing trouble, but now that the trouble was dissipated, there was not going to be any strange ginch either.

  Among the hardest hit was Terry the Tramp, who immediately loaded up on LSD and spent the next twelve hours locked in the back of a panel truck, shrieking and crying under the gaze of some god he had almost forgotten, but who came down that night to the level of the treetops “and just stared—man, he just looked at me, and I tell you I was scared like a little kid.”

  Other Angels rushed off to the beer market when the curfew was first announced, but their hopes for a party with the tourists were dashed when the place closed right on the dot of ten. There was nothing to do but go back to camp and get wasted. The police were lenient with late arrivals, but once in, there was no getting out.

  The hours between ten and twelve were given over to massive consumption. Around eleven I ducked into the car and worked for a while on the tape, but my monologue was constantly interrupted by people reaching through the back windows and trying to wrench the trunk open. For hours there had been so much beer in camp that nobody worried about seeing the end of it, but suddenly it all disappeared. Instead of one beer at a time, everybody who reached into the car took a six-pack. The stash had begun. It was like a run on a bank. Within minutes the back seat was empty. There were still twenty or thirty six-packs piled up near the bonfire, but these weren’t for stashing. The cans were clipped off one at a time. Nobody wanted to start a run on the public-beer stock. It would have been very bad form … and if the hoarding became too obvious, those who planned to drink all night might get violent.

  By this time various drug reactions were getting mixed up with the booze and there was no telling what any one person might do. Wild shouts and explosions burst through the darkness. Now and then would come the sound of a body plunging into the lake … a splash, then yelling and kicking in the water. The only light was the bonfire, a heap of logs and branches about ten feet wide and five feet tall. It lit up the whole clearing and gleamed on the headlights and handlebars of the big Harleys parked on the edge of the darkness. In the wavering orange light it was hard to see faces except those right next to you. Bodies became silhouettes; only the voices were the same.

  There were about fifty girls in camp, but nearly all were “old ladies”—not to be confused, except at serious risk, with “mamas” or “strange chicks.” An old lady can be a steady girl friend, a wife or even some bawdy hustler that one of the outlaws has taken a liking to. Whatever the connection, she is presumed to be spoken for, and unless she makes obvious signs to the contrary she will usually be left alone. The Angels are very solemn about this, insisting that no member would think of violating the sanctity of another’s liaison. This is true, but only up to a point. Unlike wolves, old ladies don’t mate for life, and sometimes not even for a month. Many are legally married, with several children, and exist entirely apart from the general promiscuity. Others are borderline cases who simply change their minds now and then … They switch loyalties without losing rank, establishing just as firm a relationship with one Angel as they previously had with another.

  These can be very shifting sands. Like beauty and honesty, promiscuity is in the eyes of the beholder—at least among the Angels. An old lady who changes her mind once too often, or perhaps only once, will find herself reclassified as a mama, which means she is common property.

  There are mamas at any Angel gathering, large or small. They travel as part of the troupe, like oxpeckers,‡ fully understanding what’s expected: they are available at any time, in any way, to any Angel, friend or favored guest—individually or otherwise. They also understand that the minute they don’t like the arrangement they can leave. Most hang around for a few months, then drift on to something else. A few have been around for years, but this kind of dedication requires an almost preterhuman tolerance for abuse and humiliation.

  The term “mama” is all that remains of the original expression “Let’s go make somebody a mama,” which was later shortened to “Let’s go make a mama.” Other fraternities have different ways of saying it, but the meaning is the same—a girl who’s always available. A widely quoted section of the Lynch report says these girls are called “sheep,” but I have never heard an Angel use that word. It sounds like the creation of some police inspector with intensely rural memories.

  The mamas aren’t pretty, although some of the newer and younger ones have a sort of demented beauty that erodes so fast that you have to see it happen, over a period of months, to feel any sense of tragedy. Once the girls have developed the proper perspective, it’s easy to take them for granted. One night in Sacramento the Angels ran out of beer money and decided to auction off Mama Lorraine in a bar. The top bid was twelve cents, and the girl laughed along with the others. On another occasion, Magoo was packing Mama Beverly on a run to Bakersfield when he ran out of gas. “Do you know,” he recalls, “I couldn’t find a single gas-station attendant who would give me a free gallon of gas for a go at her.” The public prints are full of testimony by men who take pride in having “sold their talents dearly,” but people who understand that their only talent is not worth fifteen cents or a gallon of gas are not often quoted. Nor do they usually leave diaries. It would be interesting to hear, sometime, just exactly what it feels like to go up on the auction block, willing to serve any purpose, and get knocked down for twelve cents.

  Most mamas don’t think about it, much less talk. Their conversation ranges from gossip and raw innuendo, to fending off jibes and haggling over small amounts of money. But every now and then one of them will rap off something eloquent. Donna, a stocky, good-natured brunette who came north with the exodus from Berdoo, once put the whole thing in a nut. “Everybody believes in something,” she said. “Some people believe in God. I believe in the Angels.”

  Each chapter has a few mamas, but only Oakland maintains as many as five or six at a time. Among other outlaw clubs the situation varies. The Gypsy Jokers are not as mama-oriented as the Angels, but the Satan’s Slaves are so keen on the practice that they take their communal women down to the tattoo parlor and have “Property of Satan’s Slaves” etched permanently on the left rump-cheek. The Slaves feel that branding gives the girls a sense of security and belonging. It erases any doubt about peer-group acceptance. The branded individual is said to experience powerful and instantaneous sensations of commitment, of oneness with the organization, and those few who have taken the step form a special elite. The Angels are not given to branding their women, but the practice will probably catch on because some of them think it “shows real class.”‡

  “But it takes the right girl,” said one. “She has to really mean it. Some girls won’t go for it. You know, like who wants to go to the baby doctor with a big tattoo sayin your ass belongs to the Satan’s Slaves? Or what if a girl wants to cop out sometime and get married? Man, imagine the wedding night. She drops her nightie and there it is. Wow!”

  There were about twenty Slaves at Bass Lake, but they didn’t do much mixing. They staked out a small corner of the clearing, parked their bikes around it and spent most of the weekend lying around with their women and drinking their own wine. The Gypsy Jokers were less inhibited, but their behavior was oddly subdued in the presence of so man
y Hell’s Angels. Unlike the Slaves, few of the Jokers had brought girls, so they were spared the constant worry that some pill-crazed Angel might try to move in and provoke a fight that the Angels would have to win. In theory the Hell’s Angels confederation is friendly with all other outlaws, but in practice the half-dozen Angel chapters clash frequently with various clubs around their own turf. In San Francisco the Jokers and the Angels nurse a long-standing enmity, but the Jokers get along famously with other Angel chapters. A similar situation prevailed for years in the Los Angeles area, where the Berdoo Angels had sporadic rumbles with the Slaves, Comancheros and Coffin Cheaters. Yet these three clubs continue to speak well of every Hell’s Angel in the state except those dirty bastards from Berdoo, who kept muscling in on other people’s turf. All this was changed, however, by the Monterey rape, which resulted in such overwhelming heat that the Berdoo Angels were forced into desperate coexistence with the Slaves and other L.A. clubs, who were not much better off.

  The Satan’s Slaves are still a power in outlaw circles, but they have lost their slashing style of the early 1960’s.‡ Other outlaws say the Slaves have never recovered from the loss of Smackey Jack, their legendary president, who had so much class that even the Angels held him slightly in awe. Smackey Jack stories still circulate whenever the clan gets together. I first heard about him from an easygoing Sacramento Angel named Norbet:

  “Man, that Jack was outta sight. Sometimes he’d run wild for three or four days on pills and wine. He carried a pair of rusty pliers around with him and we’d sic him on strange broads. Man, he’d jerk em down on the ground and start pullin their teeth out with those goddamn pliers. I was with him in a place one time when the waitress wouldn’t give us any coffee. Jack climbed right over the counter and took out three of her front teeth with his pliers. Some of the things he did would turn your stomach. Once he pulled out one of his own teeth in a bar. People couldn’t believe it. A lot of em ran out when they saw he was serious. When he finally got the thing out, he laid it down on the bar and asked if he could trade it for a drink. He was spittin blood on the floor, but the bartender was too shook up to say anything.”