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

* Name deleted at insistence of publisher’s lawyers

Luckily, somebody pulled him back to the party, still naked and yelling. His drunken challenge to the cops might have kicked off a real disaster. In California and most other states the police cannot legally invade private property without a search warrant unless (1) they are reasonably certain a crime is being committed or (2) they are invited by the owner or occupant of the property. His performance could have been interpreted either way if the cops had been in the mood, and at that stage in the evening a raiding party could not have made it across the bridge without violence. The Angels were in no mood to be rounded up quietly and they were too drunk to care about consequences.

It didn’t take long for tales of La Honda to circulate among other Angel chapters. A scouting party from Oakland checked it out and came back with such glowing reports that La Honda quickly became a mecca for Angels from all over northern Cali­fornia. They would arrive unannounced, usually in groups of five to fifteen, and stay until they got bored or ran out of LSD, which only a few had ever tried prior to the Kesey hookup.

Long before the outlaws discovered La Honda, Kesey’s free­wheeling parties were already cause for alarm among respectable LSD buffs — scientists, psychiatrists, and others in the behavioral-science fields who felt the drug should only be taken in controlled experiment situations, featuring carefully screened subjects under constant observation by experienced guides.

Such precautions are thought to be insurance against bad trips. Any potential flip-out who leaks through the screening process can be quickly stuffed with tranquilizers the moment he shows signs of blood lust or attempts to wrench off his own head to get a better look inside it.*

* There is a minority opinion among acid-eaters that the solemn preparations for a con­trolled LSD experiment might produce more bad trips than they prevent. Many subjects are so rigidly indoctrinated by what they’ve read and heard that by the time they finally swallow the capsule, their reactions have already been articulated in their own minds. When the experience deviates from their preconceived notions — or shatters them alto­gether — they are likely to panic. And panic is always a bad trip, with or without acid.

The controlled-experiment people felt that public LSD orgies would lead to disaster for their own research. There was little optimism about what might happen when the Angels — worshiping violence, rape and swastikas — found themselves in a crowd of intellectual hipsters, Marxist radicals and pacifist peace marchers. It was a nervous thing to consider even if everybody could be expected to keep a straight head. . . but of course that was out of the question. With everyone drunk, stoned and loaded, there was nobody capable of taking objective notes, no guides to soothe the flip-outs, no rational spectator to put out fires or hid the butcher knives. . . no control at all.

People who regularly attended Kesey’s parties were not so worried as those who’d only heard about them. The enclave was public only in the sense that anyone who felt like it could walk through the gate on the bridge. But once inside, a man who didn’t speak the language was made to feel very self-conscious. Acid freaks are not given to voluble hospitality; they stare fixedly at strangers, or look right through them. Many guests were made fearful, and never came back. Those who stayed were mainly the bohemian refugee element, whose sense of interdependence led them to spare each other the focus of their personal hostilities. For that there was always the cops, across the creek, who might come crashing in at any moment.*

* In retrospect I think the cops’ restraint was not entirely rooted in the knowledge that any illegal arrests might cause them embarrassment later, in the courtroom. I’m sure they also felt that if they waited long enough the loonies in Kesey’s enclave would destroy each other, thus saving the taxpayers the expense of loading court dockets with complicated trials.

But even among the Pranksters there was enough uncertainty about the Angels that the first party was noticeably light on LSD. Then, once the threat of violence seemed to fade, there was acid in great profusion. The Angels used it cautiously at first, never bringing their own, but it didn’t take them long to cultivate sources on their own turf. . . so that any run to La Honda was pre­ceded by a general mustering of the capsules, which they would take down to Kesey’s and distribute, for money or otherwise.