INTRODUCTION
I hadn’t planned on writing a book when I quit the Hells Angels. After more than three decades as president of the Ventura charter, peacemaker and spokesman for the club, I was perfectly happy to step down, quietly run my businesses, be the best husband and father I could be, and ride off into the sunset.
Then the club leadership did what they’re so good at doing—they turned on me. My former charter, a bunch of guys I had looked out for like they were my own blood and had called “brother,” voted to change my status two weeks after I quit. All of a sudden, I was officially “out bad, no contact.” Given some of the characters who wear the patch in good standing, that’s a low bar. It’s the worst label in the outlaw motorcycle club culture. It’s reserved for rats, hopeless drug addicts, and other lowlifes who have disgraced the patch.
To make matters worse, tough talkers inside and outside the club spread the lie that I had been kicked out, ignoring that I quit first. It gave all kinds of people—many of who had never even met me and didn’t know me—license to spout a lot of nonsense. In the outlaw world, they call it being put out “on Front Street.” It means you’re exposed and unprotected, a target for anyone from law enforcement to your former club brothers to complete strangers. So anybody with an ax to grind tried to rewrite history, saying I had been expelled in disgrace. Some spread the particularly dangerous lie that I had cooperated with law enforcement. Never mind that four months after I quit, I was indicted and wound up doing a stretch in federal prison. Had I rolled on anybody, I wouldn’t have done a day.
“Out bad” versus “stepped down” may seem like a difference without a distinction. But it’s important to me. I left on good terms having done my best for a club I loved and given it absolutely everything I could. Those terms were changed after I left, by people with their own agendas. They’ve done their best to tarnish my name and reputation ever since. Simple as that.
I won’t lie. It stung. It was a pure betrayal. At a point I thought, “Enough is enough.” The sad truth is that you can stand silent only so long until people take your silence as an admission of something. I’ve found that the more I keep quiet, the more people put words in my mouth. So I wanted to set the record straight. That’s when I decided to write this book.
A man’s measure is a lot more than the most obvious parts of his life. My story goes well beyond the Hells Angels. As the best Hells Angels like to say, “The man makes the patch, the patch doesn’t make the man.” That’s why I also wanted to reveal the man behind the patch and put the lie to some simplistic and offensive stereotypes about the men who ride motorcycles as a life rather than a hobby.
You could say I was born and raised to be an outlaw. As a member of an isolated immigrant culture, as a surfer, and even as a Marine in the Vietnam era, I lived on the edges, always belonging to outsider groups. So the denim vest of an outlaw motorcycle club member fit comfortably right from the start. Unfortunately, what it means to be an outlaw has changed since the early days. When I first became a Hells Angel, the idea was to share a love of motorcycles, freedom, and partying—to live as you pleased, not as society dictated—with a bunch of rowdy, like-minded individuals. These days, the life is something much different. A lot of club members rarely ride. The Hells Angels Death Head patch is currency. Brotherhood has become just another overused word.
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The story of how the outlaw culture and I got from then to now is complicated. The best I can do is to write the simple truth, as brutal as it may be. A lot, both good and bad, happens over forty years spent in the outlaw world. Especially if you’re a family man, as a lot of outlaws are. The personal side is often a surprise to people who meet me. That’s another part of what I’m hoping to explain, the reality beyond the dramatized fiction. Undercover cops and informants who have written about the club paint members with one brush. In those books, we’re one-dimensional criminal scum. Most outlaws who write about the life are just as bad. According to them, we’re heroic freedom fighters living only to ride, feeling no pain, misunderstood by the rest of the world, and endlessly and unfairly persecuted by law enforcement. Like all of life, the outlaw truth can’t be written in black or white. It’s infinite shades of gray.
Gray being gray, others may remember differently. But this is all the absolute truth as I recall it. Throughout this book I’ve made every possible effort to re-create conversations and events faithfully. I’ve researched crucial events, asked others who were there. I’ve sifted through police records, court transcripts, and newspaper articles. If I’ve failed to be accurate on any point, it isn’t for lack of trying or a desire to deceive. I mean no disrespect to anyone, but I’m also not trying to be diplomatic. I’ve never been one to worry about what other people think, and I’m not going to start now. I don’t owe anybody anything. I started out to write this book knowing that I was going to step on some big toes. I don’t care. I just want this to be an honest accounting. The real story, my story, scars, flaws, and all. No regrets.
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That means talking about all I’ve done as a Hells Angel. Honestly, I’ve been ready to kill for the club, for nothing more than a piece of fabric sewn on another piece of fabric. That willingness is the price of admission. But I also want to explain what I’ve done outside the club. I’ve been a devoted father, trying to support my children as best I could. I was a dedicated martial artist, bike builder, and businessman. I wasn’t always the best husband to my first wife, and every day I put the lessons I learned in that relationship in practice making my second marriage successful. I’ve lost one child, and I’m working hard to ensure I never bury another.
Both those aspects of my life—inside and outside the club—have been affected by law enforcement. That’s a gray area as well. I remain friends with a lot of local cops. Many people I’ve come across in law enforcement maintain a sense of decency and common sense. They gave me some basic respect and I gave it back. (Something many in the club never liked about me.) The feds are another matter. Sometimes, especially at the federal level, agents and prosecutors blur the line between outlaw and cop. They are driven individuals who are often more about the win than they are about any sense of right and wrong. That part of my story is a cautionary tale for any freedom-loving American. Love or hate outlaws, the legal system in this country needs fixing. Outlaws, like a lot of people on the margins, are canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the erosion of constitutional rights.
Really, though, it all comes down to this. I was a Hells Angel for forty years. I belonged to the red and white. I vowed my allegiance to a group of brothers who were, at the best of times, a second family to me. At a point, though, I changed, the world changed, or the club changed. Probably all three. I found myself riding a road down which I was no longer willing to take my wife and young son. That doesn’t change the first and most important truth. I loved being a Hells Angel. It was a dream from a young age, and I don’t regret it for a minute. So many days I felt like a god, drunk with freedom and power, riding a motorcycle I’d crafted with my own two hands with that winged skull on my back. I was part of something bigger than me, something that stretched around the world. I may be exiled now, to that ugly, lonely place we call Front Street, but I’m the same man I was. I have my differences with certain members, but I love the club to this day, and I’ll always hold dear the memories of my time as a Hells Angel and the bond of my closest brothers. That’s something nobody can take away from me. Not law enforcement. Not the people who look at my tattoos and scowl thinking they know all about me. And not my enemies in the club and their puppets.
As an outlaw I never saw myself as a criminal. At times we made up the rules as we went along, but so did our forefathers. Sadly, in the end we failed. We became the people we had rebelled against. I discovered that if I was going to remain a true outlaw, I would have to do the unthinkable. This is my story.
Copyright © 2016 by George Christie