“We’re bastards to the world and they’re bastards to us,” one Hells Angel told Newsweek in 1965. “When you walk into a place where people can see you, you want to look as repulsive and repugnant as possible. We are complete social outcasts — outsiders against society.”
CLADE by Maya Reynolds
600 South Spring Street
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(enter on 6th btwn Spring & Main)
Los Angeles, CA 90014
(enter on 6th btwn Spring & Main)
Buddha + Punk-Rock Attitude -
Exemplifying the 1970’s…
2 years ago - 
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1The Wild Ones
“They saw themselves as modern Robin Hoods…virile, inarticulate brutes whose good instincts got warped somewhere in the struggle for self-expression and who spent the rest of their violent lives seeking revenge on the world that done them wrong when they were young and defenseless.”
Hunter S Thompson. HELL’S ANGELS: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Description of Terry the Tramp - “Letting him answer the doorbell seemed like a final solution to the rent problem…”
“He had been up all night and was groggy from pills and wine. It was a cold wet day, and on the way to my place he had stopped at a Salvation Army store and bought the shaggy remains of a fur coat for thirty-nine cents. It looked like something Marlene Dietrich might have worn in the twenties. The ragged hem flapped around his knees, and the sleeves were like trunks of matted hair growing out of the armholes of his Hell’s Angels vest. With the coat wrapped around him, he appeared to weigh about three hundred pounds…something primitive and demented, wearing boots, a beard, and round black glasses like a blind man.”
Hunter S Thompson. HELL’S ANGELS: A Strange and Terrible Saga
A Sordid & Fascinating Description of the Hell’s Angels “Uniform”
“Every Angel recruit comes to his initiation wearing a new pair of Levis and a matching jacket with the sleeves cut off and a spotless emblem on the back. The ceremony varies from one chapter to another but the main feature is always the defiling of the initiate’s new uniform. A bucket of dung and urine will be collected during the meeting, then poured on the newcomer’s head in a solemn baptismal. Or he will take off his clothes and stand naked while the bucket of slop is poured over them and the others stomp it in.
These are his “originals,” to be worn every day until they rot. The Levi’s are dipped in oil, then hung out to dry in the sun—or left under the motorcycle at night to absorb the crankcase drippings. When they become too ragged to be functional, they are worn over other, newer Levi’s. Many of the jackets are so dirty that the colors are barely visible, but they aren’t discarded until they literally fall apart. The condition of the originals is a sign of status. It takes a year or two before they get ripe enough to make a man feel he has really made the grade.”
Hunter S Thompson. HELL’S ANGELS: A Strange and Terrible Saga
Touring the streets of the lower east side, I happened upon The Hell’s Angels New York City Chapter. Note the “Chopped Hogs” perfectly parked out front in the snow.
Also, if you look closely, you can see the front is lined with surveillance cameras.
2 years ago - 2
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