February 20, 2008

• How Odd

  How very strange indeed it is that, due to Xanga and Google, I have come to be seen by a few people as some sort of expert on outlaw motorcycle clubs.  This puts me in the same club as the late gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson (right), who was hanging around with Hells Angels in the Bay Area around the same time I was, about forty years ago.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but I was partying in the campground on the Hells Angels bike run where Hunter Thompson got severely beaten by the Angels, presumably because they didn’t like having a straight citizen nosing around asking questions.  Anyone looking back at the incident, knowing Thompson by reputation, might wonder whether he had been there mainly for the drugs, and the material he gathered for his book was secondary.  [BTW, "straight citizen," back then, in biker jargon, meant only someone who wasn't one of them.  It had nothing to do with sexual orientation.]

  I certainly have not claimed to be an expert on outlaw bikers, nor did I have any intention of blogging my story of the three years I rode with them, until that just happened.  It happened like this:

  Three weeks after I’d started blogging on Xanga, while I was clicking on every interesting name I saw in people’s comments, or on whatever sort of name appeared under an interesting comment, getting to know some of you people, I observed something happening here that reminded me of the way things were done in the similarly closed community of prison.  Alliances were forming, enmities were being forged, and people were expressing a wide range of feelings over other people’s nettiquette, the unofficial, unwritten Rules of the Game.  Writing that story opened a big can of worms that eventually evolved into my thus-far-unfinished autobiography’s being written in a series of blog entries.

  Someone asked me why I had been in prison.  I could have taken the simple route and said I had been sentenced to three years for possession of about ten grams of Cannabis, but I am not one to shy away from telling a long story.  I had already written (not posted) the story of the first time I was in jail, for my daughter Angie, who had wanted to know how she came to be conceived, born, and given up for adoption.  I edited and posted it, then continued the story, and haven’t stopped yet even though I have tended to get bogged down easily since I got through the exciting years.

  The first clue I had that someone googling for info on outlaw bikers would be pointed to my blog was when I got an email through my Xanga email link, from a woman whose sister had disappeared into the world of  outlaws, specifically Gypsy Jokers in the Pacific Northwest.  She hadn’t understood that I was now thousands of miles and a few decades away from that scene.  She asked, and there was a feeling of desperation to her email, if I knew her sister or could look for her.  I did what I could:  tracked down a journalist in the area who had done stories on the Jokers, and hooked him up with the woman.

  It was months after that when I heard from her again.  She found her sister, but she wasn’t the same woman her family had known.  She was drug addicted, and scarred in body, mind and spirit.  Still, her sister thanked me for my part in helping to find her.  I feel it was the least I could do.

  Around that time, I did some Google experimenting, and found a number of combinations of biker-related search terms that would return my Xanga site in the top position.  One of them that still does so today is, “hells angels”+”gypsy jokers”+oregon.  I’d have mixed feelings about this if I thought it was something about which I needed to have any feelings.  It’s just a fact of life, one that keeps bringing new people into my life.

  During the recent spate of cold weather that kept me from blogging for a couple of weeks, the paragraph below was sent to me through Xanga Messaging, and was copied into comments on several of the biker entries I had posted almost six years ago.  The writer of this message apparently registered on Xanga to contact me, then closed his account before I had a chance to respond.

  Did Oregon OMG’s keep the HA out of here? I don’t think Oregon has a HA
  chapter. It makes me proud to be a native. I wish you would come down
  harder on the HA as they are growing in power and numbers. I am so glad
  that we live in a time and place where no woman/human has to live the
  way you did. The HA uses/used fear to get what they wanted, but those
  days are gone. I wish you and all of the people/woman that got violated
  by the HA would take action. Many are dead. It is not too late.
  Monsters are always monsters. You may save a life by being retaliatory
  rater than reminiscent. Those same sick fucks are still alive and
  destroying lives. At least two lives that I know of. Either way, great
  writing.
  
  Fuck You Hell’s Angels
  Coxtom

  The OMG in this message is a reference to outlaw motorcycle gangs.  About forty years ago, the dominant club in the Eugene-Springfield area were the Gypsy Jokers.  Following my gang rape by them, a few members of the Vallejo, California, Black Ravens MC (a 1%er Hells Angels affiliate club) and the Richmond and Oakland chapters of Hells Angels, went to Oregon on a mission of retribution.  In California, there was already a war between Hells Angels and Gypsy Jokers, which was probably the central reason that I was chosen for rape by the Oregon Gypsy Jokers.  Please don’t get the idea that there was any chivalrous intent in the Angels’ and the Ravens’ coming down on the Jokers for raping me.  It was a territorial dispute, and I was just a disputed piece of property in the eyes of both sides.

  A few of the Black Ravens and Hells Angels who had gone to Oregon with my ol’ man and me in ’67, stayed on there and formed a club called the Free Souls.  By the time I got out of prison four years later, the Hells Angels vs Gypsy Jokers war in Oregon was over.  I had information from multiple sources in positions to know, that there had been at least three murders before the Gypsy Jokers surrendered.  The Jokers had either burned their colors and joined the Angels or their affiliates, or they had left the state.  One Joker I had known was known to be in Nevada, where he had started up a new chapter of the Gypsy Jokers.  I don’t know from first hand experience what happened after that.  I have been gone from there, living in Alaska and not hanging out with bikers, since 1973.

  I did some web research today.  In an official 2006 crime report, the State of Oregon said, “Oregon now has five documented OMGs. Recent reports indicate that these gangs are acting cooperatively to prevent other OMGs from establishing chapters in the state. Renewed rivalries are sparking a nationwide trend of violent confrontations and recruiting drives that include ‘patching in’ smaller clubs to increase membership and expand their presence in a given area.”  The report does not name those clubs, but does mention the “Big 5″ U.S. OMGs:  Hells Angels, Bandidos, Pagans, Outlaws, and Sons of Silence.  When I rode with one-percenters forty years ago, anyone who wore a 1% patch was a Hells Angels affiliate, or else was liable to run into trouble with the Hells Angels.  The Angels have killed to support their claim of exclusive rights to that symbol.  Now, I’m told, they no longer claim it as exclusively theirs.  I don’t know.  Who would I ask?  I suspect that opinions on that issue may differ.

  I also found the website of the Eugene-Springfield, Oregon chapter of A.B.A.T.E., a motorcycle rights organization with chapters in a number of states.  A history of the chapter contained the following:  “We decided to call ourselves “Willamette Valley ABATE”, but first we
  had to approach the Free Souls to get an approval…. Russ took care of
  it and it was OK’d. Some time back there was a defunct Motorcycle group
  known as the Willamette Valley Riders that started out as a family
  oriented group who eventually bent toward becoming a motorcycle club
  and the Free Souls MC shut them down.”

  Another article I found on the web, referred to a lawsuit brought against the Sheriff’s Department of Clark County, Washington, and two of its deputies, by The Confederation of Clubs of Washington on behalf of the Free Souls M/C.  The deputies had allegedly informed various bar owners within their jurisdiction that they would not respond to 911 emergency calls if the proprietors chose to allow patch holders in their establishments.  The Sheriff’s department settled out of court for $20,000 to cover the bikers’ legal fees, agreeing, “not to campaign for other bar and taverns to adopt ‘no colors’ policies; to develop a written protocol for deputies to use when discussing perceived problems regarding wearing of ‘club colors’ with owners of such establishments; and to basically avoid conflict and confrontation with the Free Souls MC and to cooperate with the club in the resolution of any future concerns.”

  

  If “Coxtom” is proud to be an Oregonian because the state has no Hells Angels chapter, he is simply ignorant of the realities of the outlaw biker establishment in his state, in this country, on this continent, and on several other continents as well.

  

  That woman who wrote to me about her sister can tell Coxtom that he is mistaken about “those days” being gone.  There is someone else here at Xanga now who knows some of those Big 5 bikers the same way I do:  as a survivor of gang rape.   We have been corresponding for a few months, since she first signed on here to ask me, “a few questions,” about the mentality of the men who raped us. 

  She, magdalenamama, felt strongly enough about the issue to post her story in graphic detail, in the hope that it might provide some help or comfort to others who had endured the same treatment.  I agreed that it was a worthy effort, and wanted to help her reach more readers.  My followup to this post, and some of those answers to her questions, can be found HERE.
  

  • 7:23 pm
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