Hell’s Angels’ The name of the biker gang can still evoke terror, mystique, and intrigue sixty years after it was established in Fontana, California.
George Christie belonged to the Hells Angels for 40 years, 35 of which he spent as the Ventura, California, chapter’s leader. His one-man play about his time in the club, which is based on his book, is currently being staged in Las Vegas.
Christie said that when he was younger, he saw a member of an outlaw motorcycle club on the street and that is what drew him to the lifestyle of the outlaw bikers. Everyone in his immediate vicinity appeared to be very worried about the biker, but the biker himself didn’t seem to be bothered.
The incident, according to him, changed his life and stuck with him.
Christie was further pushed into an outsider mentality by a significant early event.
He was charged with lying during a high school IQ test. Because Christie struggled in school, the principal was unable to accept that he performed well on the test.
Christie claimed that after the meeting with the principal, he felt unwelcome and like a cheater.
If this is a respectable society, I said to myself, “no thank you,” the man added.
He enlisted in the Marine Corps soon after high school graduation. He purchased a motorcycle and joined the Hells Angels after being released from the Corps.
Christie, however, also had a job with the Department of Defense, a home, a married life, and kids. He was out on the streets with outlaws at night and on weekends.
There were a lot of friends back then, he claimed. I was welcomed for who I was, what I was. Back then, everything was centered on brotherhood and motorcycles.
He claimed that buying a custom motorcycle was impossible in the 1960s and 1970s. The only way to get a bespoke motorcycle was to make one yourself. Because of that, motorcycle enthusiasts met.
When the Department of Defense learned that he was the club’s commander, he continued to work there until 1978.
Around that period, a conflict between the Hells Angels and the Mongols, a rival team, erupted.
According to Christie, the violence began in 1977 during a bike swap and progressed to fights, shootings, and even bombings.
A Los Angeles mob leader allegedly called him to ask them to end the conflict after things got so nasty, according to him. Christie claimed that the mob was worried about how the motorcycle battle would affect their ability to make money.
Christie claimed that motorcycles couldn’t travel more than a few blocks before being halted by the police.
The entire bike dynamics changed at that point, he claimed. Instead of being a live-and-let-live, free-loving society, it became one that was very territorial and said, “Don’t push on us, this is our area.” Both sides suffered fatalities.
A period of incarceration offered Christie the insight to alter that dynamic.
Christie discovered that clubs didn’t fight among themselves while they were incarcerated.
Why he wondered, couldn’t we live in harmony outside of this constrained, cement civilization known as a prison?
He left and set out on a mission to put an end to the carnage. Up until the 2002 Laughlin River Run, it largely worked.
The altercation at the yearly motorcycle party will live long in the minds of many Southern Nevadans. Members of the Hells Angels and Mongol gangs engaged in it at Harrah’s casino. Three persons died.
For years, we had been at war with the Mongols, but I had managed to work out something of a truce between the two clubs, and this just blew suddenly out from the water.
He claimed he attempted to negotiate a second peace the day after the conflict, but it failed.
It’s a hot and bloody war, he proclaimed.
Christie refuted the assertion that the conflict is centered on a drug-dealing zone.
The way enforcement bodies show it is as if there’s a struggle for the supply of drugs. We’re squabbling over egos, I’ll tell you that much,” he declared.
Christie eventually left the club because of disputes amongst motorcycle clubs.
While some of the club’s younger members wanted to stir up more conflict with other clubs, he wanted to put an end to wars. However, others in the club didn’t share that vision.
He even saw groups moving and dispersing in different ways. “It was difficult, he said, and I realized that if I remained in the club, my motivations would just be selfish. I said that I didn’t want to be the guy who was the Hells Angels leader in the past.
He entered a club meeting and announced his departure.
He remarked in his final speech to his club, “‘You guys no longer share my vision.
If others do not share and understand your vision, you cannot be a leader. We don’t have enough people to fight anymore, I remarked as I pulled off my patch and folded it up. History teaches us that when there are no more opponents with whom to engage in combat, people tend to retreat inward. I don’t want to be present throughout that.
He said that he had never walked farther than it took him to get from the meeting table to the door.
The final thing he addressed to his club was, “We have become the people we rebelled against, and I’m gone.” Seven years ago, that happened.
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