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

American law enforcement procedures have never been designed to control large groups of citizens in rebellion, but to protect the social structure against specifically criminal acts, or persons. The underlying assumption has always been that the police and the citizenry form a natural alliance against evil and dangerous crooks, who should certainly be arrested on sight and shot if they resist.

There are indications, however, that this natural alliance might be going the way of the Maginot Line. More and more often the police are finding themselves in conflict with whole blocs of the citizenry, none of them criminals in the traditional sense of the word, but many as potentially dangerous — to the police — as any armed felon. This is particularly true in situations involving groups of Negroes and teen-agers. The Watts riot in Los Angeles in 1965 was a classic example of this new align­ment. A whole community turned on the police with such a vengeance that the National Guard had to be called in. Yet few of the rioters were criminals — at least not until the riot began. It may be that America is developing a whole new category of essen­tially social criminals. . . persons who threaten the police and the traditional social structure even when they are breaking no law. . . because they view The Law with contempt and the police with distrust, and this abiding resentment can explode without warning at the slightest provocation.

Some of the Hell’s Angels’ most spectacular crimes are techni­cally misdemeanors, such as lewd and lascivious behavior and disturbing the peace. These are routine offenses, generally appearing on police blotters as vag lewd. Thousands of people are booked every year for obscenity in public places, for fighting in bars, and racing vehicles in populous areas. But when five hundred delegates from some apparently subhuman species converge on a peaceful community and begin pissing in the streets, hurling beer cans at each other and racing loud motorcycles around the village square. . . the shock effect on the citizenry is more severe than a Dillinger-style machine-gun assault on the local bank — which is, after all, insured. Few men will break down and weep at the prospect of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation having to pay off a claim. . . but reports of a hundred filthy thugs en route to a mountain resort can throw the whole population into armed panic.

This was the situation on July 3, 1965. Bass Lake had been tense for days. Copies of the July 2 Life, featuring Laconia, were prominently displayed on racks at the village markets. The locals were expecting the worst. Judging from all the publicity, the most optimistic forecast called for drunken brawling and property damage, civic fear, and possible injury at any moment. It was also probable that the outlaws would buy up the town’s entire beer supply, as is their wont. And if the brutes lived up to their reputa­tion there was every reason to expect a holocaust of arson, looting and rape. As the weekend began, the atmosphere at Bass Lake was reminiscent of a Kansas hamlet preparing for a tornado.

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Man, when you were fifteen or sixteen years old did you ever think you’d end up as a Hell’s Angel? How did I get screwed up with you guys anyway?. . . Christ, I got out of the Army and came back to Richmond, started ridin a bike around, wearin my chinos and clean sport shirts, even a crash helmet. . . And then I met you guys. I started gettin grubbier and grubbier, dirtier and dirtier, I couldn’t believe it. . . Then I lost my job, started spendin all my time either goin on a run or gettin ready for one — Christ, I still can’t believe it.

— Fat D., a Richmond Hell’s Angel

Whaddeyou mean by that word right ? The only thing we’re concerned about is what’s right for us. We got our own defi­nition of right.

— A Hell’s Angel sunk in philosophy

According to Frenchy, the run would take off at eight A.M. from the El Adobe, a tavern on East Fourteenth Street in Oak­land. (Until the autumn of 1965 the El Abode was the unofficial headquarters of the Oakland chapter and a focal point for all Hell’s Angels activity in northern California — but in October it was demolished to make way for a parking lot, and the Angels moved back to the Sinners Club.)