Collecting Hells Angels memorabilia isn't for the meek

that part goes down allows this to come out and that's an actual bowl that you could smoke out of um tobacco of course my name is beau bushnell and this is the ricoh aka the research institute for contemporary outlaws aka the outlaw archive this is one of the founders of the hells angels this was his second cutoff vest so it's from 1953. a small portion of the straight satan's archive we have about 10 members photo albums they lived in the venice canals in the 1960s notorious for being part of manson's crew of people but ended up testifying against him to put him in jail putting this collection together has not been easy i've had multiple death threats from multiple clubs for the last seven years have basically lived off the grid nothing under my name everything goes to a po box i don't fear for my life i guess at one point maybe i did but just to be safe you never know this wall is dedicated to the purdue hells angels purdue is slaying for san bernardino goes back to the 1800s this belonged to a guy named gut turk who was a hells angel and then a merry prankster this is the pattern for the chain stitcher for the death head from the 1960s and then this is a stock certificate from when the hells angels incorporated in 1966. probably the only one in the world one of two maybe in 2012 i did a series of documentaries for the moca la called the art of punk they were short documentaries about the art behind dead kennedy's black flag and crass i did that with a guy named brian ray turcotte who has the largest punk collection in the world and he really inspired me we came across a photo album that belonged to one of the straight satans and the way it's put together was like a piece of our photos labeled newspaper clippings this is our class 2 bank vault 9 inches of cement all around and a 4 000 pound door it's where the archive is stored there's about 35 000 pieces in here these are all basically photo albums on the sides this side as well this is where all the textiles go this is 60 000 feet of 16 millimeter film from the 1960s this is a bike i built it's called phantom of the opera it's made up of parts from different members of motorcycle clubs and the motor is the important part which came from a galloping goose member that they call the judge he was the first felon in us history to be admitted to a state bar and he became the judge of loomis california in the 1970s all these clubs consider this stuff their club property when a member leaves the club he's to give back his patches and anything with the club insignia or when he dies he's supposed to be buried with it they claim it is theirs even though the people that i got them from i got them straight from the people that they belong to former members who believe that they earned them and i believe that too i think it should be theirs this is art made by a guy named andy and andy became the jeweler to the ventura hells angels in 1982 i believe he was really known for his zippos and uh he started making them in 1970 they're all signed dated and numbered on the bottom that part goes down allows this to come out and that's an actual bowl that you could smoke out of tobacco of course pull this part back and it clears the bowl this is all handmade this is 400 hours of work so out of the bottom a coke spoon that telescopes and on the bottom is a roach clip but you're not going to hand a roach clip around a circle attached to a heavy zippo so he created a spring-loaded mechanism to detach it this is important to me because it's a huge piece of american history that's never been documented amazing personal stories it's a subculture that is spread all across the world these guys invented this world basically out of thin air they were completely completely different they were outsiders i think it's timely because there's a lot of people that want to be outsiders right now the hells angels are thought of as being this racist organization but now they're everywhere in the world there's hundreds of chapters um every ethnicity you can imagine pretty much but people don't realize that back in the 1950s it was very mixed these guys were different they were weirdos so who were they to judge somebody for being different you

Channel: Los Angeles Times

Views: 1,863,431

Keywords: Los Angeles Times, LA Times, L. A. Times, bo bushnell, biker gangs, hells angels, motorsycle, motorcycle memorabilia

Id: N2VeSnfE_tA

Length: 5min 32sec (332 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021