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After the war, G.I.s came home with ready cash, an appreciation for the motorcycles they’d seen “over there” and – shall we say – a heightened sense of what constituted excitement. In 1947 this led to the so-called “Hollister motorcycle riot”. That event received national prominence when a beefy drunk, slumped on his motorcycle, was pictured in Life magazine. In 1954, the reputation of motorcyclists was sealed by The Wild One, a film based on Hollister and starring Marlon Brando as a disaffected rebel. Ironically, in the late ‘40s the Hells Angels were still an AMA-sanctioned club that organized races and rallies. But by the time the ‘50s drew to a close the ‘Angels were outlaws who made Brando’s “Johnny” seem like a schoolboy. It’s not clear if art imitated life, or if life imitated art. |
I've written about the real history of the Hollister riot at some length, and I'll eventually compile those essays into a 'Best of Backmarker' entry for this blog. But this oh-so-gay photo of a young Brando reminds me of a jibe that was edited out of a Backmarker entry a few years back. You see, in the summer of 2008, I caught a story in the LA Times about one of those Christian biker 'gangs' tangling with some Hells Angels. That prompted me to write...
I note that today’s LA Times reports “the Anaheim-based Christian motorcycle gang known as the Set Free Soldiers found itself in deeper trouble Wednesday when its leader and half a dozen members were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder.” Police charged the Christian bikers with attempted murder after a melée in a Newport Beach bar in which two Hells Angels were stabbed.
In a way, this news almost makes me feel better about those so-called Christian bikers, who I always felt were just a bunch of posers. It seems at least some of them are genuine badasses. Plus the Times’ coverage goes a long way towards answering a question I’ve often pondered, which is, who would Jesus kill?
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