Click images for desktop size: "Cracked Wheat" by Unknown When I was around 7 I remember being in the car with my new step-father and my mother. We were on a two lane highway going someplace I don't remember. It wasn't very important, to me anyway.
We were in a salmon cake colored Plymouth Belvedere, old but fancy, when suddenly I saw behind us a bunch of motorcycles: choppers.
In a few moments the car was surrounded by choppers. Big hairy brutes wearing Hells Angels colors, riding choppers. Some of the bikes were elegant and beautiful. Others were ratty and rusted while others were in the middle of their transformation. All of them glistened gloriously in the bright California sun.
It was a Hells Angel snake about 50 bikers just tearing up the highway.
Click images for desktop size: "Ghosts" by Unknown
I heard my father yell at my mother, "Whatever you do DON'T look at them!" as he scrunched low behind the steering wheel. My step-father was the biggest adult I'd ever seen. I was fascinated that these bikers scared even him.
Of course I clung to the window staring at these guys. They were big, ugly brutes. They looked beautiful because they looked like freedom.
Some of them even waved at me but mainly they were focused on something else; on being free I'd have thought. For about five minutes the bikes roared past us. The snake trailed two abreast and when they reached the car they zipped and passed us on both sides. They counted only on their sheer presence to hold my step fathers fear in check to stop him from veering the car to either side and wiping one of them out.
It was incredibly exciting. Free to be anywhere they chose with their buddies who were just like them. That they scared the bejeezus out of adults was only a fringe benefit. What was cool was their
Click images for desktop size: "Wall Of China" by Unknown arrogance in their sheer presence.
I read the papers and looked at adult books about the Hells Angels. For a while they were my icons. They represented everything I wanted to be.
That's how I discovered Hunter Thompson. I was about 10 when I read his book on the Hells Angels.
I never became a biker. I had a couple of friends who did. Two of them are dead and the others in prison. The two who died did so on the road. One smashed into a culvert on PCH. They figured he was doing over a hundred on his old Indian Chopper. The other smashed into a truck on the 405 during rush hour. The third is in prison. He was the "pick up man" in some sort of kidnapping. I never got the full details. He was just the guy who was supposed to pick up the money. When he did he was descended upon by cops. I've seen enough movies to understand that.
If you go down to Venice Beach you always see the burned out bikers hanging around. Like the old norse crones who shared one eye and a tooth between the three of them you can see the drug wrecked bikers passing a joint and, you assume, their surviving brain cell as they laugh and tell stories that don't make a whole lot of sense. A lot like listening to Sky Saxon tell you about his plans for the future. (Sky Saxon and the old drug casualty bikers should be hired by the government to travel to high schools. Twenty minutes of listening to them talk is the surest inducement to not to drugs that I can imagine.)
I've been thinking about bikers because I've been reading this book: "At War With Hells Angels". War?
Its a bad book. I find it amusing. This is the third book this guy has, apparently written about the Angels. I think he's obsessive. The book is about the war between bikers in Illinois, Canada and
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Luis Royo Scandinavia!
I'm a SoCal guy so I've always been a touch perplexed about how you can be a biker in a place where you can only ride about four months out of the year, but that's just my own personal concern. Who wouldn't want to be part of a family that represents freedom and fear?
This writer tries to paint the Angels as the new Mafia. Maybe its so but I'm befuddled by how you can be a secret crime organization when everything about you marks you as a biker. When you wear a uniform that is known throughout the world.
He paints the Angels as the ultimate evil in the world. I'm not exaggerating. He sees the Angels as evil incarnate and proof that God is in retreat!
I think he saw the totally cool movie "Stone Cold". Its the last great biker movie staring Brian Bosworth (Awesome line backer from Oklahoma who fizzled as a Seattle SeaHawk in the NFL - Bosworth's big claim to fame was being one of the first athletes suspended from the NCAA for steroid use, which prompted Bosworth to show up at the OU bowl game wearing a knee length T-Shirt that used the NCAA initials to spell out National Communists Against Athletes . . . strange. Maybe it was this attitude that kept him from being a movie star. He's pretty good here, especially as a debut.)
In "Stone Cold" Lance Henriksen gives his greatest performance as "Chains" the president and leader of "The Brotherhood". A Hells Angel's clone. Henriksen gives the movie the edge and movement towards greatness. He;s incredible and undefeatable. He raises evil on earth to giddy heights. Tres cool.
But even this fictitious character so brilliantly embodied cannot compare to the evil that this writer paints for the real world Angels.
The writer uses too many charts and diagrams to ever prove his point to me but I like that it reminds me of my child hood when I could think of nothing more gorgeous than ripping through the highways with my friends while my step-father cowered behind the wheel of his safe car.

Lots going on. All just life. The drains here are clogged. This is an old house and the clog is at a junction of ancient cast iron where PVC pipe has somehow been welded on. The runs of pipe are over thirty feet long! I have a six foot snake . . . So it will be interesting.