Hells Angels are moving into my area for the first time. I have a generally negative view of them, but have some friends who feel otherwise. I would love to hear your experiences related to the Angels specifically, but “1%” clubs as well.
They will not get involved with you if you don’t approach them. Don’t do business with them. These guys are not messing around.
However, I have had numerous experiences with people in the group you mentioned. I lived in a neighborhood where they had a clubhouse and it was much quieter and had less crime during their time there.
I worked in a kitchen at a restaurant they frequented for private parties close to that clubhouse. They smoked so much hash. This was decades ago. They tipped very well, were polite to the staff, and never caused a scene (we had a separate entrance in the back they used).
I have been aquatinted with people who were in different states of involvement with them. They had different outcomes. Some fine (tangential to crime not really involved) and others who fared worse. The fared worse guys were like useful pretty criminals who they took advantage of because they wanted to be associated with that group and wouldn’t take the hint to get lost. I’m not discussing specifics.
Finally, if you’re life their neighbour and they ask you to come over for a beer just say you’re busy. If a guy shows up from out of town and you run into him in the driveway don’t ask why he’s there. They won’t involve you in their business but might notice if you seem curious.
Sir/madam, you just touched on one of the most important rules for living a happy life. I like to call it “See something? No you didn’t.”
I grew up and primarily have lived in the south, and my dad and I would go out in the woods when I was a kid. From my very first trip he told me “Son, while we’re out in them woods. If you see someone else out there, just turn around and go back the other way. Don’t say nothin, don’t wave, just go the other way.”
To this day I live by that. My partner “it sounds like the neighbors are building something out of wood at 2am.” Me “not my problem”. Partner “I think I heard gunshots.” Me “wake me up when you hear screaming.”
The big clubs are all an organized crime syndicate. How bad the situation will be mostly depend on your exact location. Especially with the Hell’s Angels the involvement in organized crime depends a lot on the exact charter. Some just do illegal gambling, some light narcotics and gun trades while others are also involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution.
In most of the western world organized crime usually stays away from regular citizens. That’s why many people here say if you don’t approach them they will leave you be. But crime always affects regular people. And there is basically nothing you can do. It’s just up to luck whether you specifically get affected or not.
When the Hell’s Angels started to move into Europe most politicians just ignored it. But a war between locals clubs, the Hell’s Angles and then the Banditos (who also moved into Europe) broke out almost immediately. Some people even got killed. But politicians only stepped in when a civilian got killed or severely injured because some gang member shot a rocket into a rivaling gang’s bar. Then shit moved back into the shadows.
Given the area, I’m pretty sure they are aiming to take over the meth trade/transportation here.
Well the I think it is fair to expect some violence… wether innocents get hurt is up to pure luck.
I have a very negative view of them.
I’ve been the victim of violence from a HA member, for no other reason than “he decided to sit down, extremely drunk and high, at our camp at a music festival”. After offering him a beer and having a chit chat, hoping he would lose interest, he decided to start groping a 16 year old. I was the unlucky person chosen to ask him to leave. That didn’t go very well.
Second, someone in my family unfortunately got mixed up in HA and received a prison sentence from dealing drugs. He has now escaped that environment but it left me in little doubt that there’s few “noble knights” in that group, only drug-dealing gang-members.
Thirdly the country I come from has witnessed multiple wars between immigrant gangs and HA, as well as between HA and Bandidos. At one point they were firing stolen anti-tank rockets into a building where the rival gang was having a party. It’s hard to have a great impression of someone who chooses to fire an AT-4 in through a building.
So yeah, HA no thanks.
Yes, my partner has good friends whose son got briefly entangled with the HA, they ripped him off and fucked up his life a treat, not good people. But they are far from the worst gang here
Sweden right? Or Denmark if not so I guess.
I mean it’s not the same there as in the USA I GUESS at least.
in Europe?!
Living in France I had no idea what those HA are and thought it was an American thing
What do you mean it didn’t go well? You’re not being specific enough
It meant I got a couple of punches and as a scared 17-year being punched by a drunk Hells Angels member, I took it and did nothing.
No need to qualify that you “did nothing,” my friend. From what you described, you had the courage to stand up when drawing the short stick (because nothing made you follow through when you were “chosen”) and then you kept yourself and everyone else as safe as possible by not retaliating. Can you imagine how things might have escalated if you had?
You have my sincere respect for what you’ve described here.
I agree /u/sunbeam60 is tough as nails.
My ex’s parents were in one. They’re some of the dumbest people I’ve ever met, so it just kinda confirmed to me that biker gangs are for terminally stupid people who think the vroom vroom sounds cool and that leather vests are badass.
The biker gangs in my area are typically just a few steps down from the KKK. They won’t outright do anything awful, but they are generally not nice folk.
Their members feel like boys the size of men, incapable of realizing that the public view them as a moronic nuisance, and not cool or tough.
fag /faɡ/
noun: fag; plural noun: fags
A person who owns or frequently rides a Harley Davidson motorcycle.
(South Park)
I’m not a faggot, yet, but I’m bike-curious.
Shhhh, squid in training. He’s not talking about you.
Sorry, help me our here. I have no idea what that means.
It might be a backronym, but “squid” has been also defined as “ Stupidly Quick, Underdressed and Imminently Dead”.
The squidracingteam sub all refer to themselves and each other as homo regardless of actual sexual orientation. I assumed you to have been one of them as it’s a common joke with them. Squid is used as a description of sportbike riders for how they tend to dart through traffic. My apologies for misinterpreting your use of the joke.
Nope, I had no idea about that.
This a reference to a South Park episode, where they change the meaning of the word “faggot” to mean “annoying harley riders”. Even all the gay people are on board with it.
It’s pretty funny (South Park - Season 13 Episode 12 “The F Word”)
Do we have a squid racing team in the Fediverse? Be cooler if we did.
Not that I have seen
*CalamariRaceTeam
Yeah, them.
I really wish we could of made that the official definition after the episode.
So, I have very limited experience with 2 of them. One was Banditos. I was the bouncer at a dive bar on the weekends as a second job. This was 20 years ago. Banditos started hanging out there, and honestly they were pretty cool. They were loud, and drank a lot, but they never caused me any problems, and helped me solve a couple of problems in my time there. Some of them were local FOP which seems a little gross, but they never bothered me.
The other was black pistons I think? I don’t remember. My friends dad was in it, and she and I got to hang out at their clubhouse some. That was almost exactly like you would think it was.
I only hung out there like 2 or 3 times with her. It was a shitty looking trap house in the hood. There was Nazi memorabilia all over the place. There was a bar in the middle of the living room. Middle aged white dudes drunk and geeked on meth. Lots of guns.
One night one of the dudes showed up with a black crackhead prostitute from the neighborhood. I know she was from the neighborhood because she said she had been there a few times before, and I heard them talking about “seeing her around”. Anyway, she was running around naked half the night doing Hitler salutes with those chuckle-fucks. Drinking whiskey, and smoking, probably meth. The whole situation was incredibly off putting.
FOP? What’s that?
Fraternal order of police
Imagine the intersection of the mafia and a bunch of college football players. Its a very tribal mentality. If you’re nice and polite, treat them with the respect you would treat anyone who has the power to fuck your life up (but dont kiss their ass… imagine how nice you would be to someone from the IRS who just has “some questions” about your last return) and dont put your nose in their business, they will more likely than not be perfectly fine.
But disrespect to one is disrepect to all, as a group they ARE involved in organised crime to some degree and while some of them are regular guys, some are cold blooded violent people.
Just be warned though, if you have a job or may apply for a job that involves security clearances. Having 1%ers phone numbers on your phone or as Facebook friends can throw flags.
Thanks, that’s interesting about the security clearances. I am hoping to work in infosec, but I’m already not planning on getting any kind of clearance. For one, I’m not doing any spook work, and for two, I don’t like the idea of serious background checks.
I live in an area where the Pagans have a pretty sizeable presence but no real competition so we don’t exactly have turf wars or anything going on. They definitely have their criminal activity going on, but by and large it’s out of sight and out of mind unless you go looking for it or are unlucky enough to live next to them or something. In general if you keep your nose out of their business they’ll keep out of yours. They can even be pretty reasonable at times, I have a friend lived basically next door to a bar they used to hang out at a lot, and after last call all the bikes leaving at like 2AM made a bunch of racket. His dad pretty much just politely asked their leader if they wouldn’t mind leaving the other direction where there weren’t really any houses instead of going by the residential areas, and that was pretty much the end of it, never really had a problem with them again, and a few years later they ended up finding a different bar to hang out at.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re bad dudes, you don’t want to get involved with them, but if you don’t do anything outrageously stupid you’re probably not going to have a problem with them. That said, out of an abundance of caution if you can, it’s probably best to just avoid them and the places they frequent altogether.
Pretty much everyone around here knows a few pagans or knows someone who does. Some of them think it’s cool, and those people tend to be idiots. Otherwise it’s just kind of a fact of life, everywhere has their local troublemakers, ne’er-do-wells, assholes, and criminals, it just happens that some of them around here wear denim vests.
Also for what it’s worth, I live in the suburbs, so probably not exactly the epicenter of where the worst of their activities take place.
Yeah, I guess our area used to be like a biker “neutral zone”, and we never had really any biker activity. For some reason the Hells Angels are setting up shop suddenly. I can’t imagine it’s for any good reason.
Bikes don’t go very well in neutral, I’ve found.
Surely downhill?
A friend joined them to get protection because he got beaten a lot. He left again after his first drug trafficking job was offered to him. (and fortunately he was allowed to leave because he didn’t know enough yet)
My schoolmates rented a club house for parties and the bikers wanted to do the security themselves. The have beaten people and kicked one drunken guy lying on the floor who argued too much with them. Completely unprofessional.
This was late 2000s in rural Germany.
I’m in the UK and Imo they’re not good people. I know several tattooists who have been threatened/had their place trashed by them when they’ve opened a shop in my city.
I also went to a Hells Angels bar once when a music event was being hosted there and they were awful people. Charged more for drinks if they didn’t like the look of someone, one guy threatened me because a glass fell on the floor and smashed (it was nowhere near me) and made me clean it up. I’m a small woman, I was scared, so I did it and left 😬
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They are mostly racist tweaker assholes
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So as a biker you just assume other bikers will drive recklessly and warn each one about cops?
Warning others of dangerous criminals like cops is good praxis.
Why don’t you warn all drivers than?
Isn’t that something people do? In Germany many people flash their high beams if there is police, speed trap or danger.
Yes, many people want other drivers to drive recklessly without risk. I was wandering what’s the other guy’s motivation was.
Warning people of speed traps causes them to drive more safely, not less. Only cops get upset when you do this.
Where I live all speed traps are clearly marked. Yes, their purpose should be to make people slow down, not catch them by surprise. But we’re talking about warning about caps,nort just speed traps. If it’s just unmarked speed traps I agree.
You’re basing all this on a whole lot of assumptions:
- The only way one can get a ticket is because they were reckless
- Driving outside the law, regardless of time and place, is automatically risky
- Speed traps really make the roads safer for everyone
- I’m assuming you’re warning other drivers because you think they can change their behavior and avoid a fine. If it’s unavoidable why warn them? It’s not going to help anyone. So yeah, you can get a ticket for other things but reckless driving is the main one you can easily avoid when warned ahead of time.
- Yes, driving outside the law is always risky. It’s not up to individual drivers to decide when it’s ‘safe’ to break the law. It’s stupid to think that you can just decide that the laws do not apply to you because ‘you know better’. Every single driver breaking the law thinks that they know better or that they can do it because they are a better driver than everyone else. Drivers like that can just go fuck themselves.
- Speed traps that are clearly marked and enforce speed limit instead of just fining unsuspecting drivers do make roads safer.
