Outlaw Bikers

An Academic Guide To The Culture

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History

The cornerstone of the modern-day outlaw motorcycle club lies in California, long known to be a magnet and incubator for off-the-wall social movements and radical concepts. Its genesis can be found with the hard-riding, hard-drinking, and hard-fisted members of two clubs: the Boozefighters of Los Angeles and the Pissed Off Bastards of Fontana. Both clubs were kick-started in the wake of World War II when motorcycles were cheap and sold by the thousands as war surplus.

Many of those who bought bikes gravitated into groups to ride and party together. In a story that has been told and retold countless times, the rowdy presence of the Boozefighters and Pissed Off Bastards at the 1947 Gypsy Tour Rally in the small town of Hollister, California, gave birth to the biker image of troublemaker and antisocial deviant. Their usual high-jinx, hard partying, heavy drinking, and crazy motorcycle stunts were totally blown out of proportion and sensationalized in news reports. The most outrageous episode which actually did occur was when two members of the Boozefighters rode their bikes into a local bar. A staged picture – taken by an opportunistic photographer and published in Life Magazine – showed a drunk on a motorcycle clutching a bottle of beer; ironically, he wasn’t even a member of a motorcycle club.

The picture, and headlines such as Bikers Take Over Town, captured the imagination of the American public. Both its fear and fascination with outlaw bikers took hold and little has changed to this day – bikers, whether independent or belonging to a club, are perceived to be a breed unto their own. Meanwhile, the AMA, horrified by the negative publicity being generated, held a damage-control press conference at which time they stated that all the trouble was caused by the “one percent deviant that tarnishes the public image of both motorcycles and motorcyclists.” This statement eventually led the outlaw biker community to adopt the term “one-percenter” to distinguish themselves from the rest of the motorcycling community and citizens in general. The bikers’ negative image was fixed forever in 1954, when the movie The Wild One – inspired by the events that occurred in Hollister – hit the big screen.

The first to capitalize on the notoriety and infamy being attributed to bikers were the Hells Angels, founded in California by dissatisfied members of the Pissed Off Bastards in 1948. They were the first 1%er outlaw motorcycle club and for decades commanded the most media attention. The Hells Angels would set the standards all other outlaw clubs aspired to, but only three, however, would rise to join them at the top of the biker world’s hierarchy: the Outlaws, Pagans, and Bandidos. While the Outlaws trace their lineage back to the McCook Outlaws – founded in McCook, Illinois in 1935 – they didn’t actually become a 1%er motorcycle club until 1963. The Pagans, which were founded in Maryland in 1959, didn’t gain momentum until 1968 and today are still confined to the United States. Founded in 1966 in San Leon, Texas, the Bandidos expanded internationally in 1983 to more than 200 chapters worldwide in 2012, rivaling the Hells Angels in size; collectively the four motorcycle clubs are known today as the “Big Four”.

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