The Commandos were still in the grip of The Wild One when the second new wave hit — in the person of the wild prophet Rocky, the messiah, bringing the word from the Southland. Ten years later Birney Jarvis, a San Francisco Chronicle police reporter and former Hell’s Angel, described the moment of truth in an article:*
* For Male Magazine
One hot summer day in 1954, a swarthily handsome devil, sporting a pointed beard and a derby, broadslid his Harley-Davidson to a screeching halt at a motorcycle hangout in San Francisco.
His faded blue Levi jacket, the sleeves roughly hacked off with a knife, was emblazoned with the leering winged death’s-head that has become so well known to Californian lawmen.
You could see the sweat-stained armpits of his checkered shirt as he wrestled the four-foot-high handlebars into position. With a flick of his wrist he blasted the afternoon quiet of a Sunday on Market Street.
He laid his bike over on the kickstand, polished the glistening chrome of his XA spring forks — four inches longer than stock — with a ragged handkerchief. He looked around him, nonchalantly wiping his greasy hands on his oil-crusted jeans.
This was Rocky. Nobody cared what his last name was because he was classical and he was a Hell’s Angel from down Berdoo way.
Thirty cyclists with polished boots and neatly barbered hair had watched his arrival, not without suspicion because he was, at that time, a stranger and all of them had been riding pals for a long time. . . The welcoming committee was prime for membership in the Hell’s Angels. Although completely square compared to the latter-day Angels, the street corner gang had had constant brushes with the law. . . Rocky was elected president of the new branch of the Hell’s Angels because he could really ride and because he had style.
He could spin donuts on that hog with his feet on the pegs, and man, he was a wiggy cat, a member of the Angels recalled. The cyclists found a seamstress who could duplicate Rocky’s sinister emblem and it wasn’t long before nearly 40 Angels were roaring out of San Francisco. The neat Hell’s Angels — Frisco surrounding the grinning skull with wings cost $7.50 and was ordinarily sewn on a Levi jacket. The white background of the red lettering soon became spotted with grime — and blood — from the many barroom battles that ensued.
Listen, man, those beefs ain’t our fault, said a battle-scarred veteran of beer-hall punchouts. We’d go into a bar and someone’d mouth off or try to move in on our chicks and then we’d fight. What else could you do?
Police reports kept pouring in as the Angels were forced to move from one hangout to another. A hangout — usually an all-night restaurant or a pool hall — would last about a week, until complaints of noisy or rowdy behavior brought the law.
We chased those bike bums off Market Street because they were having drag races right through the traffic. A lot of them were stealing motorcycles and we’d check them all out, said Terrible Ted, a motorcycle policeman who once called several of the Hell’s Angels his friends.
We called that bike heat Terrible Ted because he really was bad, man. Why, he’d ride like a nut to catch us and then he’d throw the book at us. *
* In 1966 Terrible Ted ran a red light in an unmarked police car and collided with a Greyhound bus. The crash killed his wife, destroyed the car and critically injured the patrolman.
It got so I had to go to work just so’s I could pay off my tickets and stay out of the slammer, said an Angel who lost his license to drive four times because of his driving record.
One humorous incident connected with the Hell’s Angels insignia several years ago is still a source of amusement to the hard-riding cycle gang.
An Angel known as the Mute was stopped for speeding by a policeman near the beach in Santa Cruz one Sunday afternoon. The Mute was proudly displaying his colors on a ragged Levi jacket. Take that off, the patrolman jotted down on a notepad politely offered by the Mute, who was deaf and dumb.