In 1957 several hundred outlaws made a disastrous run to Angels Camp, where the American Motorcycle Association was staging a big race in conjunction with the annual frog-jumping contest. Many of the top riders in the country were on hand, along with some three thousand cyclists of every description. The Angels were not invited, but they went anyway — knowing that their presence would cause violence.
The AMA includes all kinds of motorcyclists — from those on 50-cubic-centimeter Hondas to devotees of full-dress Harley 74s — but it centers on competition riders, either professional or amateur, who take their bikes very seriously, spend a lot of money on them and ride all year round. Their idea of a good party is an argument about gear ratios or the merits of overhead cams. Unlike the outlaws, they frequently take long trips either alone or in groups of two or three. . . and often into areas where anybody on a motorcycle is automatically treated like a Hell’s Angel, a raping brute unfit to eat or drink among civilized people. This has made them bitter, and most can’t even discuss the Angels without getting angry. The relationship of the two groups is not quite as venomous as that of owls and crows — who will attack each other on sight — but the basic attitudes are not much different. Unlike the general public, many competition riders have had painful experience with the outlaws, for they move in the same small world. Their paths cross at bike-repair shops, races or late-night hamburger stands. According to respectable cyclists, the Angels are responsible for the motorcycle’s sinister image. They blame the outlaws for many of the unpleasant realities of being a bike-owner — from police harassment to public opprobrium to high insurance rates.
The respectability of AMA people is entirely relative. Many are as mean and dishonest as any Hell’s Angel, and there is a hard core — mainly race riders and mechanics — who will go out of their way to tangle with outlaws. AMA officials deny this, for obvious reasons, but in almost the same breath they denounce the Angels as criminal scum. I’ve heard cops call motorcycle outlaws the lowest of the low and the scum of the earth, but they do it with a certain amount of self-control. Most cops were bitterly amused at the Hell’s Angels’ publicity boom. By contrast, the AMA people were outraged; it was like a bunch of owls reacting to the news that a crow warlord had won the Nobel Peace Prize.
In Sacramento in the fall of 1965 a handful of Hell’s Angels attended a national championship race and afterward got in a brief scuffle, in the parking lot, with two men who said something to offend them. Nobody was hurt, and the Angels, five of them, drove off in a car toward San Francisco. They had not gone far when they were forced off the road by two cars full of respectable riders and mechanics. . . who jerked the outlaws out of their car, and as one said later, We beat the bastards bloody; they couldn’t stand up; they were crying.
On the disastrous run to Angels Camp in 1957 the outlaws were outnumbered about ten to one, but the opposition couldn’t have mustered enough strong-arms to meet them head on. The Angels arrived early and bought up the entire beer supply of four bars, which they drank in a pasture several miles from the site of the races. By nightfall most of the outlaws were raving drunk, and when somebody suggested they go over and check out the AMA camp the reaction was automatic. Their howling frightened the townspeople and sent the sheriff running for his car. The outlaw pack filled both lanes of the narrow road. . . gunning their engines and sending the beams of their headlights into trees and bedroom windows as they weaved and jockeyed for running room. They were only going for a party, they said later, but the party never got started. The lead bikes took the crest of a hill at over a hundred miles an hour and crashed blindly into a group of cyclists beside the road. Two outlaws died in the bloody pile-up, which immediately drew a large crowd. There were not enough police to keep the scene under control, and fights broke out as cyclists shoved and shouted among the wreckage. Flashing lights and sirens added to the confusion, which grew worse as the fighting spread. It continued all night and most of the next day — not a full-scale riot, but a series of clashes that kept local police racing from one spot to another.