I Wish I Could Be a Hells Angel By Cuban Joe Jan.19.2010 I’ve been intrigued by the fabled Hells Angels for years. When I was a kid I read Hunter S. Thompson’s book and started carrying a Buck pocket knife shortly after. I daydreamed about getting a bike and wearing those red and white colors. Problem then, like now, I never did like Harley-Davidsons, or choppers, and apparently one of the rules to join the club is to like that type of bike. Still, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to join the Marines or the Hells Angels when I got old enough. I ended up joining the Boy Scouts, grew into a Camus loving, self-loathing existentialist, and eventually joined the Peace Corps ... go figure. Whether you like the Hells Angels or think they are smelly, gruffy, low brow troglodytes bent on criminality, one thing is for sure when you see the boys in their colors, you are aware of their presence. Even someone who has been living under a rock for 50 years would understand that coming upon such a “patched” individual, it would be best to be on guarded behavior and not act a fool. The colors mean different things to different people, but the universal truth—whether you are a seasoned tough NYPD cop, a 5th degree black belt, a Charles Bronson-like civilian or Eastern European gangster—is that the Hells Angels colors instantly grab your attention. Even if you are a rival club member with your own nifty scary patch, seeing the Hells Angels colors on someone’s back will immediately cause you to pause and take stock of your next move. Of course, if you are a real badass, your next move might be to attack, but you certainly won’t be doing it lightheartedly. For even if you have the know-how to beat the crap out of a Hells Angel, you still have his enthusiastic friends to worry about. Say, for instance, you are unlucky enough to get caught beating up one of the skull-winged few by a passing cop and are sent to jail ... well, it really goes downhill from there. Because once in jail you have their jailhouse associates the Aryan Brotherhood, and even worse, the AB’s Latino associates, the Mexican Mafia, to contend with. Not many people, other than cops with other cops as backup, mess with these guys. In New York City their clubhouse is in Manhattan, I ride by it occasionally and never have I seen a bum pee on the wall, a car park in their bike parking, a graffiti artist tag the extremely “clean” and attractive brick exterior of their building. Its clubhouse sits proudly, though out of place, like a fastidiously kept oasis in the middle of an otherwise crappy neighborhood. That sort of respect or fear from society, whether deserved or not, appeals to a lot of people. Though I live in Manhattan now, I must wince and confess when I was 20 I lived in Union City, New Jersey for a bit. Sort of dump with a nice view of a real city, kinda like Oakland, for you Bay Area readers. On my floor lived a former Marine who told me that he had been in the French Foreign Legion for a short while before deserting. He was a motorcyclist and we shared a small garage facing the Hudson River. He liked Harleys and I liked Yamahas, but we rode together anyway. We spent a lot of time talking about all sorts of stuff, including the Hells Angels. He had a white, super friendly pitbull named Bubba that went everywhere with him in his Toyota pickup. He worked driving a taxi in the morning and wanted to join the fire department. Rumor was that he was a longtime, though part-time, hit-man for reliable mobster types, even though he was only about five years older than me. Of course having just done a stint in the Peace Corps, I was really intrigued by this violent, seemingly worldly guy and frankly didn’t know what to believe. Then one day, to further add to my intrigue, while watching a story about mobster John Gotti on the news, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The mobster was found not guilty and was being led out of the courthouse in celebratory manner, and right there on tv was a very tall good-looking guy who I instantly recognized because I often saw him hanging out at my friend’s apartment. The guy was wearing a suit and was obviously Gotti’s body guard. He was shoving well wishers and press aside until he and Gotti entered a waiting car to be whisked off! Wtf ... who would have known? My Jersey friend never confirmed to me that he was any kind of hit-man, but he did confess that he also wanted to join the Hells Angels as a kid, but when he was old enough that he never did. He never gave me too much detail when he told me he had killed someone by mistake at the age of 16, other than to say he always regretted that death and was constantly exploring ways to help people whenever he could. Reaching out for some kind of redemption he joined the Marines instead of a biker club. He once surmised that being in the Hells Angels might be similar to being in the Foreign Legion. He said the Legion wasn’t necessarily an effective fighting force, compared to the Marines or other military forces. But that the legion had a tremendous mystique about it. It wasn’t anything like he thought it would be and he spent a lot of time doing dishes and trying to follow mundane and repetitious orders he barely understood. But that what attracted him to the Legion was the very same thing that might attract some to the Angels ... the history and the folklore that came with it. According to him, he spent less then a year in the Legion and Europe, but whenever he was out and about and people recognized the famous white “kepi” and uniform, they treated him with reverence and even bought him drinks. Of course as a Hells Angel, when people recognize your uniform you are more likely to be treated with fear, but you will probably get the free drinks. My friend said when he first got out of the Marines he once again considered joining the Hells Angels. He said to join a gang and be able to kill “enemies” on command would make him very happy and he would probably ascend the Hells Angels ranks quickly. However, knowing himself to be a lightning rod of trouble with an extremely bad temper, the overt acts of illegal violence he would need to constantly display in order to prove himself would probably get him killed or land him in prison in short order. He was convinced he wouldn’t make it through the two-year prospect/vetting process to join the club. So he joined the Legion instead, got out and happily drove a taxi until the next best thing. When I moved I sold him my Yamaha and never saw him, his Harley, or his pitbull again. Years ago I heard that he started a successful limo business and still had my old RZ350. He hadn’t joined the Hells Angels, or the fire department ... and was trying hard to join a much bigger gang, called the NYPD. I wonder if he made it. I wonder ...