Hell’s Angels. A Strange and Terrible. Saga by Hunter S. Thompson

Anyone reading the next day’s headlines would have thought the whole Laconia area was an ash pile, with ragged survivors shooting at each other from behind the charred remains of auto­mobiles. But this was not exactly the case. The state of martial law that had been declared on Saturday night was ended in time by Sunday’s final racing events, which proceeded without inci­dent. Liquor and beer sales, which had been halted during the riot, were also renewed. On Sunday morning there were reports of a naked man picketing on Lakeside Avenue with a large sign saying: HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE.

Mayor Lessard spent most of Sunday investigating the riot, and by Monday he was able to report it had been Communist-inspired and of Mexican origin, with the Hell’s Angels doing the legwork. The mayor, the police chief and the local safety commissioner agreed that the Hell’s Angels had caused all the trouble. They had been plotting it for months.

But they won’t come back, vowed the safety commissioner. And if they do, we’ll just have to be ready for them like we were this time. After all, nobody was killed or maimed, and property damage amounted to only a few thousand dollars at most.

Other merchants agreed. I think [the cyclist] will be invited back, said the owner of the Winnepesaukee Gardens dance hall at Weirs Beach. The president of the Laconia National Bank said the riot had been caused by a small minority that had been taught a good lesson and wouldn’t try it again. One of the few dissenting voices in town was that of Warren Warner, who super­vised the races for more than fifteen years, when they were at the old track in Belknap. The apologists will wait about six months or so, he predicted. Then they’ll start planting the idea that the riots were caused by police brutality or the Hell’s Angels gang from California and that they can be controlled. But listen, in that crowd of twenty thousand cyclists there are two thousand who are no better than animals. There would have been a riot whether or not any one club decided to come or not.

A local journalist not allied with the beer and hamburger industries put it more dramatically: The cyclists could have burned down the Weirs if they’d really wanted to. Maybe next time they will. Laconia is like a town playing Russian roulette. Five times out of six it pulls the trigger and nothing much hap­pens. The sixth time it blows its brains out. *

* The Laconia racing weekend was held on schedule in 1966. There was massive police pres­sure and no rioting, perhaps because the only Hell’s Angel on hand was pacified by LSD.

This did not jibe with the mayor’s theory of foul winds from far­away places. Everyone seemed to agree that something Russian had been in the air that night, but I was curious about the Mexican influ­ence and the role of the Hell’s Angels. Actually, I couldn’t believe the mayor had said the things he was quoted as saying when he ana­lyzed the riot. They were too absurd. So I decided to call him and check — not only his words, but random facts such as the number of arrests. For some reason it was impossible for the press to divine how many alleged rioters had been arrested. This is usually a factor in crime stories, and in most cases it is an easy thing to find out. There is nothing interpretive about it, no hues or shadings. It is simply a number that anybody can get from the desk sergeant — if not immediately, than at least within twenty-four hours after the action. Most reporters assume the desk sergeant’s figures are accu­rate, for he is the man who makes the entries in the big ledger.

Yet eight different articles on Laconia carried seven different ver­sions of the arrest total. Here is a list I made a week after the riot:

The New York Times. . . about 50

Associated Press. . . at least 75

San Francisco Examiner (via UPI). . . at least 100, including five Hell’s Angels

New York Herald Tribune. . . 29