The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms puts the number at closer to 5,000 members, and at least 10,000 regular “hangers-on.” As for Ralph “Sonny” Barger, who founded the Oakland charter in the late 1950s when he was 18 years old, he “refuses to say how many Hells Angel members there are,” has says that it has experienced something of a “growth spurt.”ĭespite a lack of clarity about the group’s numbers, at least one aspect of its history is relatively clear it is littered with legal matters that speak to a vast empire of drug dealing, trafficking in stolen goods, racketeering and extortion. and up to 2,500 worldwide, according to the U.S. The group, as a whole, boasts roughly 800 members across the U.S. According to the New York Times, “Throughout the 1950s, Hells Angels groups spread out across California, eventually uniting into a confederation with each club maintaining its own autonomy.” The now-notorious club has since extended much further than the bounds of California to include independently-operated charters that dot the globe – from Southern California and Manhattan to Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Sydney, just to name a few. In the decade that followed the Fontana chapter’s founding, it would be joined by a number of other, similar groups. In the process, these men – many in their late teens – laid the foundation for what would become “a uniquely American subculture of hardened individualism, fierce fraternity and contempt for society’s mores,” as Kovaleski so aptly put it. A handful of young World War II veterans, “bored with the tedium of civilian life,” came together in the late 1940s to drink, ride cheaply-acquired motorcycles thanks to a post-war surplus, and generally, pass the time back on U.S. It was here that the Hells Angels got its start. They may only be earned, and oftentimes, that takes years.įontana is an arid, highly-populated inland expanse in San Bernardino County, California bordering on the San Gabriel Mountains. Kovaleski, stated in 2013, “only full members are permitted to wear the provocative death’s-head patch or the two words of the club’s name, which, like the logo,” are protected by law across the globe. In the “rule-bound world of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club,” investigative reporter Serge F. It is common knowledge that the Hells Angels logo and the club’s other insignia are utterly off-limits to all but a select group of individuals.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |