The Secret Life of Outlaw Biker Clubs with Outlaw Archive

[Music] the bid Stitch gang is honored to have someone very special uh uh open their door in their home to us Bo from Outlaw archive good to meet you yeah you too I've never seen the amount of traction responses questions after announcing we're speaking with someone today uh it's been crazy and I think as a whole people are asking and curious what is Outlaw archive i it's a lot of things but really it's the probably the most comprehensive collection of any subculture American subculture on Earth um at least that's my opinion but 10 years ago I started collecting items related to Outlaw motorcycle clubs and street gangs and it's all like mainly West Coast Centric it's now gone across the US not across the world I'm not interested in the international stuff but like my focus is been on tracking down former Hell's Angels and similar club members from the early days so like the 50s and early 60s um before they became more of like criminal organizations we're going to get into that yeah I'm curious initially what piqued that interest for you um I mean I grew up skateboarding building low riders going to punk shows going to hip-hop shows rolling with like graffiti artists in La so I've always been around like interesting people and subcultures and like um I was collecting vintage like a lot of denim stuff in like 2010 11 around there and I met a guy who collected some old motorcycle club vests and I got interested in it but my interest like really took off when I found I found a photo album I didn't know that like these people documented their lives the way that they did it's crazy like full scrapbook photo albums 100 pages with like death memorials uh newspaper clippings from crimes they committed just I don't know that's super crazy and it's interesting to me because I feel like number one like why would they be documenting such a thing it's kind of surprising to me as well I guess it was just as surprising for you well police yeah and like police would confiscate that as evidence back in the day yeah but I don't know I don't know why they would document it that like document it the way that they they did but it fascinated me I came across a photo album that belonged to a member of a club called the straight satans and they were out of the Venice canals in the 1960s and early' 70s they were known as Charles Manson's Army but they testified against Manson and his followers which is like the number one like most frowned upon thing in motorcycle club world is like talking to the cops so these guys talking to the cops like they lost their 1% status 1% is like the 1% patch is what bikers wore or I guess they still wear but I don't think they really exist today in my mind they don't um in like the late 40s there was a run to Hollister California and a motorcycle run to Hollister California and there was like a riot but there wasn't really a riot it was just the Press trying to yeah create drama I guess and uh the American Motorcycle Association which was like the group that put on all like the motorcycle rallies around the US they released a statement that said 99% of motorcycle riders on the road are law-abiding citizens so the outlaw Club said well we're the 1% and they took it and created a patch and to be able to be a 1center you had to be approved by the Hell's Angels the Satan's slaves the straight satans at one point until they lost their 1% status status but then they regained it later on it's like a whole like weird social interesting and I want to know I want Game of Thrones there like you know the territories with their hierarchy and there's like the families within each territory with the hierarchy within each family which is the club so so different clubs could potentially become 1% enters what was the criteria involved with becoming a 1er you just you had to be like a legitimate club that the Hell's Angels the Satan slaves the stade satans and the coffin cheaters all basically approved of really yeah this is It's political yeah oh yeah very political and like they were all about like they called it showing class okay and that's like doing the most disgusting thing possible basically give me an example like a member of the Purdue Hell's Angels San berardino that's where they started bdue is like redneck sling for San Bernardino that goes back the 1800s they called it the San bdue I don't know don't ask me how that happened but um yeah there there was a member in bdue San berardino Hell's Angels named Paladin who was friends with the corner of Los Angeles when Marilyn Monroe died he called Paladin and said you'll never guess who I have on the slab and Paladin said who he goes Ino he goes you're [ __ ] kidding me keep her there I'll be right there so he went down there and pulled the tampon out of her and had sex with her so when I heard this story I was like a [ __ ] that can't be real then I looked up the Los Angeles coroner from that time who did his residency at LMA uh LMA Linda University in San berino and Marilyn monro's body disappeared for like four or 5 hours on the day after the day she died so that's disgusting incredible like that's what they called showing class there was another bergue Hell's Angel named country who like would eat stuff out of trash cans he would eat roadkill he would like drank a slug once just like he was from Mount Mount Ary North Carolina and just like as hillbilly as it got okay let me ask you this because we were talking about this earlier like this sort of Outlaw culture this subculture doing everything they can to almost set themselves apart as Outsiders to society and you know sometimes you look at these clubs and there's obvious uh sort of there's a undoubtedly at least to some extent some type of criminal Enterprise thing there but there's also this General Punk attitude and mentality about it yeah back then like they were definitely criminals but they weren't organized they would go out and like steal motorcycles and break into houses sometimes but like they weren't at all organized really they were just like really interesting weirdos like I you know just told you about two of them that like country is definitely interesting I don't know a lot about Paladin but like I I got into this because I'm not it's not about like the clubs it's about the people and like the personal stories I'd get to know these guys and like they would start telling me actually first of all as I got to know these guys like I would say tell me some stories from back then and they'd say oh you won't believe me I'm like what do you mean I won't believe you they're like f you know try I try to tell people stories all the time and they're like oh you're full of [ __ ] I was like oh try me they tell me these crazy stories and even I was like oh come on like you can't that can't be real but then as I was track I'd track other guys down like they would tell me the same story verify them just from like their perspective now what is it about that period that era cuz I don't know if it something like that exists today like how it did back then no not at all not at all what do you tribute that sort of I I don't know like purposefully Outsider mentality too well it was definitely counterculture but I feel like it had a lot to do with um like coming out of World War II these kids were like kind of the the first of their kind because a lot lot of their like dads went away to war and and they were like kind of like the first addd generation just like people didn't know what addd was but I think it had a lot to do with like the trauma of being torn like their families being torn apart I don't know it was like broken it was like the birth of the broken family almost in America like the birth of like the add type kid who just was never quite there doesn't mean that they're not intelligent like some of these guys are absolutely incred intelligent some of them are like self-made multimillionaires and have been since like the 60s and 70s so it's like not like these guys are just like stupid trash they're really incredible people they just like wanted to live the way they wanted to live they didn't want to be told what to do how to act to get a normal job they just like they wanted to be teenagers forever kind of I mean eventually they grew up obviously but um yeah I that makes no no that's interesting like you you hear about there's always Rebellion that occurs in the sort of landscape of like tradition and you're right post like World War II like it was Ultra like Ultra Orthodox when it comes to like I don't know the way that Society was supposed to act and behave and to see like McCarthyism EXA and like this is a way of saying [ __ ] you you know what I mean and that's cool I respect it I don't think something exists like that how definitely not and like I feel like we're in a time where like everybody wants to be an outsider like they're putting on this act like they're an outsider but like you're an outsider you're not labeling yourself an outsider you're not like I don't know one interesting thing too is like the way that these guys found one another back then like with no internet they just kind of ended up in the same place and we the same type of people but I think there's like I think that's like almost like human nature I feel like we all have that embed in us in a weird way like we all find our tribe somehow it's just unique that they were doing it back when you know there was no way to like join a social network and find people like well could you tell me about it like do you know like how did cuz I didn't even realize that they just end up at like the same bars like actually not even bars really like they in the early days they hung out at like hot dog and hamburger joints so they would just kind of meet each other there and like each other I don't know have you gotten any flak by either I don't know what you would refer to it like Enthusiast family members for your collecting um some like it's very rare most family members that former members respect what I'm doing and like like when I started this there were still former members alive from that era so everything would come directly from them but now it's a point where like there's very few alive so I'm finding more family members than I did before um so a lot of it comes from family members I don't buy this stuff on like eBay and it's literally like ancestry.com newspapers.com um in the in the early days when you got arrested they would put your first middle and last name and you're how old you were at the time so if you have somebody's full name and their age you can go on ancestry.com and find out you know their related marriage records their birth records for children all of that could you tell me about one of the most interesting sourcing stories you you've ever had I don't know what it may be like well like gut who designed like the the first Grateful Dead shirt uhuh he's somebody I looked for for years and uh that's the Grateful Dead shirt that you acquired uh a an incredible acquisition I think everyone every I mean your reputation is what in large part tied into that yeah so tell us about that yeah well like gut became a very good friend of mine and I ended up with his colors his Hell's Angels vest and the vest from his club before he was a Hell's Angel and uh his jacket from he was in a group called artista it was like Stanley Mouse and all the top like poster artists and photographers and just basically artists of of uh the Psychedelic era for like concert posters and rock posters they had this it still exists it's like this very private group called artista and gut was a founding member so I have his artista jacket wow and he told me about that shirt but when I first met him like you couldn't google that there was no there were no images of that shirt online so I have a video of him explaining it to me and then when that auction happened it's the gut shirt the gut always told me about so like it had to go with his personal eera you know like I have the Hat he was wearing when he died a sht he was wearing when he died um so like I don't know I just I had to I didn't care what I had to pay I had to get that to go with this stuff and now there's like bootlegs popping up left and right but you got the original though the I mean it's not the only one that was made back then they probably made a hundred of them but it came directly from uh The Grateful Dead how did you get in contact with them oh it was s it was an auction yeah it was the big grateful de but I thought you sorry oh that you mean exactly okay so I showed you the LAPD roster in there so I had his full name and I had his like date of birth but couldn't find him cuz he had like been living off the grid there were all these blogs this was Sir could you explain background on that LAPD uh finder that you have well I have have the uh 1970s LAPD motorcycle gang task force archive that came from the head of the department and in it um there's a a roster of every Hell's Angel identified in California from like the late 60s through the late 7s and it's full name date of birth moniker it's 660 names um just one of the things I've come across for a collector like you that's a treasure Trove because that gives you so much access that I don't think anyone else in the world for sure absolutely yeah yeah yeah and so you've been able to source using that binder yeah yeah or at least getting contact not even s at least definitely I I could use it I could have used it a lot more than I have but um I like there to be like a personal referral at some point or like I like it to be more like authentic and and natural than just like forced I don't want to just sit there and cold call random people and like not have anything to talk to them about I want to be able to like I want to know who they are first and who would they what like chapter they were in and what friends they had and like just so I can talk to them and they know that I'm Legit now are they surprised when they get a phone call or introduced via another friend and they're like who is this guy I mean if they're introduced through a friend not really but it's the random phone calls that yeah they're I've been hung up on a lot um there's certain pieces that taken me like five years to get wow just cuz people are like [ __ ] off hang up on me and then I call back a year later and they talk to me a little bit and then just kind of slowly build a relationship so we you mentioned something so gut like I'll tell you about gut so there were all these blogs talking about like gut and how gut disappeared and nobody knew where gut was yeah so gut was uh he was an early Hell's Angel he was in the North Sacramento chapter which started in like I think it was like 1960 61 and right after the north sack chapter started the city of North Sac because it was like an actual separate City at the time Sacramento and North Sacramento North sack brought in um the sheriff named John mland and he was from the south good old boy and his number one like thing was to get rid of the Hell's Angels get them out of Sacramento so if you were hot flying colors you're wearing your vest he would pull you over and like do anything he had to do to put you in jail to like set a precedence so like he would you know smash your tail light and be like oh you're going to jail for that [ __ ] so they stopped flying their colors he eventually pushed the North Sac chapter out of Sacramento by 1964 end of 1964 but so gut um and a guy named Terry the [ __ ] wanted to get away from all the heat up there so they transfer down to the San beradino chapter in like 62 or so 63 then Terry the [ __ ] wanted to become an Oakland member in 1965 so he moved up to Oakland and left bdue transferred to the Oak because you can transfer to other chapters gut wanted to become an artist he was always an artist but he wanted to become a professional artist so he moved to Oakland with him but left the club I think it was actually 1964 so he like left what does that mean leaving the club like in an actual practical way he quit the club and like a lot of people back then you quit the club like they would run you off and you weren't like allowed around and they would beat you up but he was so respected that when he moved to Oakland he wasn't a m but he went to all the Oakland Hell's Angels meetings and went on all their runs he just didn't wear the patches so he moves up to Oakland to Berkeley he like lived in both but um he starts doing like the Hell's Angels were throwing concerts back then and the the posters over there Bill Graham actually kind of like stole their model and started promoting concerts based off the way that they were doing it so dut was doing the the artwork for these posters for the for the concerts and became friends with the Mary pranksters and eventually became one of the Mary pranksters did their acid test diploma artwork and and did you know concert posters for them and he started doing concert posters and t-shirts for Grateful Dead J shopin and Big Brother um blue cheer who he he like created blue cheer he managed them he launched their career he did all their art he spent like the late 60s and early 70s sailing the world with his best friend uh David Crosby crazy amazing interesting life and then ended up homeless on the street a heroin addict and in the ' 80s he went to all of his friends and family and said listen I'm going away and you're never going to see me again I'm going to start over this doesn't mean that I don't love you it's just I need to start over so goodbye and he disappeared Into Thin Air so I'm searching these blogs reading like the people looking for him and one of these blogs like his ex-wife went on and said I was married to gut he had these really amazing he did these really amazing photo albums of collages of like psychedelic art and bikers and her name was very unique so I did like a reverse or I did like a White Pages search found her number and actually her email I couldn't get a hold of her so I emailed her and said hey um like is gut still alive do you talk to him do you still have any of this artwork she goes I don't I haven't talked to him in like 35 years whatever it was um but I cced my daughter aura she's on this thread she might you know have some stuff so before she the daughter even responds I go to Facebook and I search her name and send her a friend request and then the daughter responds and says no I don't have anything and I haven't talked to my dad in like 20 years but she ends up adding me on Facebook and so I scroll down in her profile and I find a post where she had like plugged in one like an Instagram photo this is like 200 15 okay so her Instagram handle doesn't have her like I would never been able to find it because it doesn't have her full name in it and this is back when Instagram if you didn't turn the setting off it would it would have geoca for every photo like down to exactly where the photo was taken so I'm scrolling through her Instagram and I see this old guy on a tractor and it's the daughter Ora's uh daughter with gut and it doesn't say like gut it just says Ruby with who's like gut's granddaughter with her Grandpa so I click on the like the geol I click on like the geolocator tag thing and takes it down to Reno Nevada and I'm like oh [ __ ] so he's alive huh that's got to be good so a couple months later the daughter posts on Facebook that she's in tranon Mexico which is like population 600 it's the surf Village outside of zat Nao and our family friend owns like the biggest house there and uh We've like we used to go down there for holidays sometimes so I reached out to her and said hey I hope you have fun in tran con's uh it's an amazing place and she said how do you know I'm in tranon Facebook and I said yeah our family friend owns Kasa colita there and uh I've been there a couple times she goes you've got to be kidding me that's her next door neighbor I'm going to be with them for the next two weeks so 5 days later she sends me a text and said here's here's my dad's number he's in Reno he wants to talk to you so like what are the odds of that you know like just me knowing her next door neighbor in Mexico and uh I was in actually I was in San Francisco with uh an old friend of mine with she and her boyfriend and uh it was it was like the holidays end of 2015 they're both on drugs like smoking cocaine and it's just insane to be around like all the bath tubs are like full of dirty water and I'm like I got to get the hell out of here it's like this this is right when like the daughter hits me up about gut right when I'm like losing my mind about to go back to LA um so I call gut and he's like yeah I'd love to you know meet with you CU I wanted to design the cover of my first book called halfway to Purdue that's 70 something 5x7 photos of all these Outlaw Bikers taken at this woman mother Ruth's house she was married to a a Hell's Angel she was a hell she was a female Hell's Angel in like the early 60s and all these guys would stop at her house just to hang out and talk because she lived halfway between sanino and Venice and um she would feed them or bandage them up and she would take a photo of them on their bike in front of this hedge in the back of her house when I got her archive there's all these 5x SS and they're labeled who the person is what club they're from so I track down every living person in the photos and their friends and had them tell me short stories about each other and I published it as a book and the one missing element was like the cover I wanted it to be like done by gut so I called him up and he's like yeah you know why don't you come to Reno sometime and I was like I'd love to like when he goes I don't know whenever you tell me I said how about tomorrow and he's like uh okay I rent an SUV and I drive over the Doner pass and it's like the worst snowstorm of the season I'm literally one of the last cars that makes it over the past before they close it I show up guts living on this Ranch outside Areno he's like a ranch hand basically that's how he got sober it's the woman who owned the ranch she owned a ranch in the Bay Area with her husband and uh they would do like horse rides like you pay to go up there and ride horses he was living on the street and saved up like $65 so he could go ride a horse and started going back more and and she got to know gut the owner and loved him and said let me help you like why don't you come live on our property then they ended up selling it moving to Reno and he moved with them so like he lived on his trailer on their property and looked after it and um I showed up in the middle of the night and um ended up like sleeping on the sofa in his trailer and we just hung out for like 2 days and like right away like the second we like started talking we were friends and uh I would go up there like once every month and a half two months and uh he died two years later wow yeah and he's on his deathbed his daughter flies into town and we both agree that we should call his brother who was like his best friend back in the' 60s their childhood through like you know whenever he like walked away from his family so we called him he lived in Northern lives in Northern California and uh we you know I said hey your brother's on his deathbed Marino you should come here had been like 35 years you know since they had seen each other 30 years whatever it was so he drives in and uh they spent like the next two weeks together it was amazing it was like nothing had changed at all and uh gut passes away so the brother goes back to Northern California and he has a voicemail from his friend who had just or was in the process of selling his parents' home and said hey um you know your brother came up to North Sacramento in 1963 to work for the summer to save some money and he left some things at my house my parents house and uh they've been in a box there ever since uh I know you're probably never going to talk to your brother again but I thought you might want them so the brother calls him back says what do you have and he goes I'd rather not say um I'll be to your house in 20 minutes so he shows up with s Angel's colors and hellbent for Glory which was dut's first club and uh so the brother calls me and says I've got some things you might want if you don't want them I'm going to throw them away what do you got he goes I got some colors I said how much do you want for them he goes nothing uh if you don't want them I'm going to throw them away so I said I'll be there in 7 hours packed up my car drove up there crazy thing about all this is that gut had his second these were his first set of colors so it's like has North Sacramento on the bottom but then over it he stitched a burdue patch instead of like normally they would take off the original patch and then just put the new patch on but it's double layered which is really cool but um so his second set of colors he kept even though he left the club and he put them on like a black like tin board and gave them to Sunny Barger in like the 1970s he always told me I wish I wouldn't have done that because I want I wish I could have given them to you and then he dies and his colors appear wow it's like he orchestrated it from up there it's bizarre that's incredible yeah okay so sorry that's like kind of all over the that's it's a complicated story and there's a lot of stories like that yeah there's so many sort of intermingling parts and you're kind of going from you're in Reno you're in Northern California you're you're all over but not just that there's these crazy connections that allow me access to these people like the daughter living next door to our family friend's house like what are the odds of that just so many things like that that keep popping up throughout all of this that you know when something like that happens it's like that's like an instant in you know because she's sitting there talking to somebody that personally knows me and my family who can vouch for me she doesn't know me gut's daughter yeah I've emailed her a couple of times so she instantly felt comfortable enough to put me in touch with her dad so you said something interesting which is you mentioned the like family members and you mentioned you know one family member saying oh I might just throw this away yeah and so there's a couple different sort of layers to this I mean you have some family members that almost Embrace uh you know their family members past and who they were you've got some that seemingly want to distance themselves or forget about the past I would say MH uh what have you noticed from trying to reach out to a lot of these family members uh who have had relatives well it's it's crazy that like their parents kept this stuff even though like a lot of them had completely like disassociated with their that's insane to me why because it was a very important part of their lives no matter what even if it was it was only a couple years but it was so impactful like the people that they were friends with back then they would they never forgot them they remember like now they didn't always know each other's real names it was all like monikers but they still knew like they remembered all these funny stories about them and like where they lived and just it was just a you know important part of their lives there's like no way to deny that so as much as they wanted to like walk away from their past like they couldn't walk away from those memories the only reason they walked away from it is because like they signed up um you know they joined these clubs when it meant one thing and as they were in these clubs like it became something else like it became more criminal like they didn't want anything to do with that cuz that's not what they signed up for like they weren't doing this to like go out and kill people BR could you talk about that transition a little bit because I think that's very fascinating yeah it's like basically um Mid 1960s Sunny Barger founder of the co-founder of the Oakland Charter he uh was just another president of a charter and there were lots of them he was literally a nobody it was like almost The Perfect Storm like he found a way to take over the club and part of that was Hunter S Thompson writing his book Hell's Angels it was supposed to be about the San Francisco 's Angels Sunny caught wind of it put himself in front of Hunter and made himself like I'm the lead I'm the supreme leader so he became like the central figure of of Hunter's book now at the same time the San beradino Charter had no Clubhouse they there was a an all black bar in San berardino called the Blue Blaze Cafe and like that's where they hung out at all the time so their president utto freedley found um an 800 acre ranch in Rancher kukamonga and started renting it it became the the bdue ranch is what it was called it was their own private you know Oasis basically it was a rundown Spanish style house with all these little Casas and a swimming pool that was cracked down the middle and like a stream that ran into the swimming pool and so sometimes it would have like it would be half full of water that was dirty and sometimes it would just have no water in it but um he was he he was offered to buy it like the the owner of it wanted to sell it and he had a chance to buy it for very very cheap today that piece of land would be like a billion dollars it's like it's the entire basically like Foothills above uh chaffy College in ranchu kukamonga so Ed Roth the artist and uh Sal Mino the actor you know who Sal Mino was he was in Rebel Without a cop oh yeah okay okay so they wanted to do a movie about the Hell's Angels so they went out to the Blue Blaze and met with Otto and the Hell's Angels and said you know we'll give you $110,000 you know as like a licensing fee if we can do a movie about the Hell's Angels and he said well I can't just approve that I have to take it to the uh officers meeting which is like all the presidents and vice presidents of every Charter and everybody had to vote on it so his plan was to buy the Purdue Ranch under the hell's angel's name so every Hell's Angel would always have a place to live no matter what he takes this idea to the the officer meeting and everybody loved it except sunny sunny stood up and said nobody makes money off the club ever well nobody knew this at the time this is like 1965 Sunny was already negotiating his deal to do Hell's Angels On Wheels the movie starring Jack Nicholson Club made Z off it sunny only made money off that so he shot down the ability to have a billion dollars of land today whatever it is hundreds of millions um for his own personal gain game yeah why was he okay well explain to me and that like back to back with Hunter S Thompson's book so it was like the that's why I say it was The Perfect Storm of him like taking over because this book comes out number one bestseller Sunny is like the Supreme lead the Hell's Angels and then Hell's Angels On Wheels comes out Jack Nicholson's first starring role and it's St co-starring Sunny Barger and the Hell's Angels so like overnight he's you know the face yeah talk to me a bit about what he means to that transitionary period for the Hell's Angels I mean I know well he saw it as an opportunity to make make money he saw the ability to create a network around the us at first and then around the world to traffic drugs wow so like he built a look the Hell's Angels the logo was already there the name was already there it was already like established he just helped take it to the next level and he like took it international well it was already International it was the first International Charter was like 1960 but like he really pushed the international aspect of it and uh yeah I don't know if that answers your question no no which goes to something else which is in your collection there's sort of like a line between glorification and reverence towards like imagery towards the culture itself and I guess what are your thoughts on treading that line I mean one thing that anybody who follows me knows is that like I call out the stuff that I don't agree with and then like it comes down to like the swasa and people are like you know why do you support that well because the reason they work back then it wasn't because they were anti-semitic like they were that's the opposite of what they were half of these guys were Jewish back then they were to piss people off they like they were looked look before these guys appeared nothing like them had ever existed so you're coming out of the 19 you know actually it is the 1950s and Leave it to Beaver you know mentality and all of a sudden there's these guys that don't shower and they're like their vest like a lot of them in the okay in the mid 1950s like they kept their colors clean but late 50s early 60s they started initiating their colors which is when you got your patches you would put them on and all the members would pee on you and they would put oil on you and anything they wanted but you you could never wash them after that so like they smelled like piss and had you know grease and people just like had never seen anything like this and they were freaked out about it and so the Hell's Angels just like wanted to and all the other clubs they just wanted to like push it as far as they could so they would tongue kiss each other in public and you know show class do the the weird things just to freak people out because like they knew that there was no Redemption and they were like well they already hate us let's just make them hate us more now would you say that the the drug Enterprise part was an aspect aspect of that or was that just pure sort of money no that was just pure money and that's like like this this whole subculture was you know started in California it's like Southern California it came from San berardino in the LA area but then it became middle Americanized what what does that mean like the first out of state official out of state Charter was Omaha in 1966 and they started pushing East after that so you take something that was like so California Centric and the media already hates hated these guys so like the media would obviously you know take a a story and like sensationalize it and these guys in Middle America reading these stories when they're 16 years old they want to become Hell's Angels and they believe what they're reading in the news so once they join a club they take that I see idea that mentality into the club and want to take it even further so it just like kept getting worse and worse and wor the Press vilified them obviously through probably a little bit of sensationalism as well Middle America Suburbia picks up on that or Midwest whatever picks up on that and they're like oh okay there's something there like let's up it when in reality mid 1960s Front Page News every day it was an outlaw motorcycle club and something horrible that they did but then of course a week week later two weeks later when the charges are dropped it's like a tiny little article in the back of the newspaper wow yeah um okay there's always a boogeyman during that era they were the boogeyman well I want to talk about like okay by the way I got to think about how I want to word this a little bit but I want to talk about like how there's that family aspect and I think that even when you look at today I don't really know where I'm going with this but like you look at today like young people I think that that's a lot of the draw for they wouldn't be considered social groups now but like gangs like it's like kind of getting that sense of of community almost with fellow outcasts I maybe I'm wrong here but like I'm curious there was like loyalty back then and a lot of these guys even if though they left the clubs in the 60s and 70s they remain friends with other guys who like they're best friends from back then who left the club at the same time or around the same time so like the friendships are amazing because they they had stayed friends their whole Liv basically you know from like early 20s until their 70s and today it's like the average turnover like okay going back in like the 1960s like some of these guys were only in the club for a few years that happens today too like the average turnover rate I think is like three or four years in h Angels but like there's zero loyalty um they they don't care about their history they don't care about their past they don't care about the old members in the club like in the last year year and a half there's been like 5 50e members kicked out for no reason just because it's like these young guys who want to post on social media and look cool they want to live off the reputation of their past of like the guys from before them and the international Charters today who actually do crazy stuff like Canada and New Zealand Australia like they're doing crazy [ __ ] yeah but the guys in the US are just like internet gangsters that just want to pose with the patch and like look cool and then use that patch to bully people around so just doesn't represent anything that it used to represent it's not even a motorcycle culture anymore like back then it was all about building bikes and like riding and having fun and like can't build a bike today it's all plugged into a computer you know so so what do you attribute that um that dilution to I guess of of the quote unquote like brand or the culture I mean there's a saying that like the Hell's Angels always represent America at that time so I just think that's like I think that's very true like look at America today and the state we're in it's not good I don't think we're in a very good place and you look at the Hell's Angels and you're like oh it makes sense because like they're just a representation of America right now that's super interesting I mean like yeah you could kind you make the argument with especially looking at social media like things aren't real like there's not realness like there used to be right these guys are like clean cut they look like the Backstreet Boy like they basically like they look like the dudes in high school that worked at abian Fitch that like drove mini trucks and like you know wore their hat sideways and like tried to act like they were gangsters it's like the the worst type of person that one kid in high school that you're like oh God that kid who like thought he was a you know white rapper in 11th grade it's like those guys now and like they everything's super clean cut you're not allowed to like have a dirty patch basically like never let your patch touch the ground it's like what these guys used to piss on their patches come on like that was the whole point is just I don't know so B aside from uh your collections in the biker club scene throughout the United States you also have a special emphasis and you collect uh from La street gangs yeah how did before I even got my first Outlaw motorcycle club photo album I came across uh you know Printed Matter the LA book and Zen fair that used to be at the Geon contemporary M by way I'm not from La okay okay so like I think it still exists like on some level but like the uh founder committed suicide a few years ago but it was like this big book and Zen Fair around you know 20 11 12 13 14 in there and uh I was there with uh my friend Brian turot we came across these like 400 [ __ ] Polaroids they weren't for sale they were just like kind of in a box of the in this dealer's display case the bottom and we're like what is that and he pulled them out and showed us and um we said you know can we buy this from you and he goes well I wasn't like wasn't really going to sell them but like give me an offer we said how about like 2500 bucks he goes yeah sure sounds like a deal you know I'm on the road for the next uh two months or so so and I live up in Oregon and there's more Polaroids up there and I really want to like scan everything first so like don't give me the money now just give me a couple months and we'll make the deal happen so all good like two months later my friend uh sends me a link to KTLA or K cal.com and it says 400 Crypts Polaroids sell first day of photo Paris La for $45,000 that I was like [ __ ] so turns out he sold them to somebody that same day or the next day at the same show for like $3,200 didn't even let us counter didn't tell us that guy sold this is within two months that guy sold them for six that guy sold them for 12 that guy sold them for 24 the guy that got them for 24 is a dealer from New York long from Long Island he sold them for 45 Grand so I was like he knew those were important [ __ ] so um like a year and a half later two years two years later um I'm on a Blog reading about it again and somebody commented said [ __ ] those photos I got way better photos and that way more and it's a guy named Earl G URL gamble I was like there's got to be only one Ural gamble in the world so I went on Facebook and pulled him up sent him a friend request and he wrote me like right away goes yo who the [ __ ] are you I said I saw on the blog you have cryp you have cryp polaroid it's like I want to buy that and he goes all right like give me your number so started talking to him and he's from the 76 Street East Coast Crips which is east of the 110 freeway is like what they call East Coast for Crips and like that's where the Crips started that's where they were formed on the east side like there's a lot of people that think like the west side of the 110 is where they like started with a guy named like Tookie but hiie was later on a guy named Raymond Washington was the actual founder of the Crips and the seven six East Coast Crips they were like one of the early [ __ ] sets these guys were originally called Shack boys there's a book called Monster Cody Scott they monster sorry about a a [ __ ] named monster Cody Scott he wrote the book and uh he was an atray gangster but he wrote a lot about the shack boyss and that's eural Gamble and his crew so he invites me to like the hood to a a ccq it's a a barbecue but Crips don't use B so it's called a ccq uh one of their friends was had had just gotten out of prison after 35 years for murder so they were having this like ccq to like celebrate that so I showed up and so you had the cookout yeah yeah but it was pouring rain they changed the location like last minute and it was inside of a garage and like it was just torrential downpour crazy so I like walk up and all these dudes are looking at me like who the [ __ ] is this like white boy I'm with two two friends and they end up like taking us inside and we sit in like the living room and guys are coming in and out and like looking at us and I don't know what the hell's going on and finally a guy comes out with like a dirty uh shopping like plastic bag with something in it like you could tell as a photo album we threw on the table there he's like you know what would you give me for this so look at it and we gave him like $2,500 or something and uh from there they all started selling us their photo albums but then they would go to like they were like who's dead in our hood or who's in prison and they would go to their family members and get their photo albums so we ended up just from like that crew alone I got like 27 photo albums from them and uh like they're all really good friends of mine these guys they're like OG amazing amazing dudes um and then I ended up getting to know like the 89 89th Street East Coast Crips and Q102 which is like 102nd Street and uh then I got to know the guy that played uh sorry the guy that Shawn pen played in the movie colors is a real cop named Pac-Man he was like the gang cop in like the 70s 80s and early 90s I tracked him down and started buying his archive he kept all this like amazing stuff because he was like the go-to cop they would go around all the different like police conventions and teach other departments how to like document gangs um so now I don't know what we have like 10,000 Polaroids probably and like I don't know 30 shirts sweatshirts pants shoes hats bandanas what distinguishes the LA street gang sort of world from biker clubs or is there more overlap than well like they're not organized they don't have like a logo that they're fighting for and dying for and protecting like the motorcycle clubs do because like their patch is everything you know they there's like blue rags and red rags but it's different it's not the same and it's not like organized where they're like keeping minutes for meetings and you know there's no like officers now there's obviously like a hierarchy there's like they know who like the shot callers are but there's no like actual structure to it so it's to it's different but in a lot of ways similar I guess but like the like these guys all started like the CP started to like protect neighborhoods like that's how it was kind of formed and all these guys say the same thing that they were all brainwashed by their like big homies um thinking that they were doing the right thing but like really being used by these older members when they were like 12 years old to like do dirt and they thought it was okay doing these things and like they want to do like the opposite now for their like the youngsters in their neighborhood they like want to tell them stay in school you know do the right thing don't go out and like just kill people like this whole crew of like seven six East Coast Crips like they've all been to prison at some point for like murder or being part of a murderer and it's just like wow they don't want to be in prison they don't want their like youngsters to be in prison they think it's a waste of life they they realize what they've done wrong this is don't take this question the wrong way i' hope you're clean cut guy you're white like when it comes to the bikers like how did they accept you when it comes to these street gangs how did they like get cool with you a lot of the bikers like At first thought I was like an undercover cop I'm like dude don't you know what like statute limitations is like nobody's looking right now years the [ __ ] out of here come on and like I'm in a Range Rover come on like [ __ ] are you talking about but um like what is it that accept you from both knowing what I'm talking about yeah like all these all the Crips love me they're like B the white [ __ ] B like that literally that's what they say it's hilarious but like that's kind of I'm used to that because 16 years old I started building low riders and hanging out with like Mexican gangsters and I was like the one white dude this is in the 90s 9697 so so it's like it's an appreciate I mean they I think that they could probably recognize the appre appreciation for the culture so to speak through like you know experience and like you knowing so much well yeah and I'm not like cosplaying I'm not trying to be part of that world like there's nothing that bothers me more than like these current day kids who like try to dress up like their bikers from the 60s and it's like how much time do you spend in front of the [ __ ] mirror every morning like trying to like go full period correct like these guys didn't think about that back then they just had cheap clothes and put it on like Levis they're cheap back then and they lasted that's why they wore them yeah yeah I think that's the difference like some of these former Hell's Angels like the guys that had been around in the club since the like the 70s like one that I just bought a bunch of stuff from his first question was like do you want to be in the club or have you ever and I was like no absolutely not never would never want to be and he was like okay good because he didn't want me to be like the guy that was getting this stuff so I could go to the club and be like L you know I got this now let me in I don't know if that makes sense no no that's super interesting I guess I want to ask you another question because I feel like you now that a lot of these guys are older yet you still have some perspective as to like this newer generation of of I guess Outlaw counterculture uh you know groups what's changed as a whole you know from the 50s 60s 7s too everything today everything like the Hell's Angels should not exist today in my opinion um this isn't based off what they were in the 60s but if you look at what they were in like the 70s when they were like blowing up houses and doing insane [ __ ] killing people especially when it came to like their patch and their club like protecting it if I if I tried to do this in the 80s or 90s like first of all nobody would none of these guys would have been willing to talk but like say that you know I was able to get them to talk and get this stuff they wouldn't have sent me direct messages over Instagram and said I'm going to kill you or I'm G to [ __ ] you up I would have like disappeared and my family would have disappeared so like based off what a Hell's Angel is supposed to be if the Hell's Angels existed like they were supposed to be they would all be in prison today day CU they would all be doing things to protect their Club does that make sense to you yeah like when it comes to the point that somebody can now look I stand up for myself so I'm different but like and the clubs come at me and I'm like go [ __ ] yourself you're not getting this stuff back you're not going to stop me from doing this but like the fact they're like direct messaging me harassing me and not actually doing anything about it just shows that like they are so diluted and just not what they originally were supposed to be so have some of these groups come to you and say said I want this back as yeah yeah and like 2016 when I was about to release the book that gut designed halfway to Purdue the Hell's Angels took uh the two former members that helped me track down all these people in the photos and like they were the main like co-authors who told me stories the San frado Valley Hell's Angels took them into a room and said if you if this book comes out we're going to kill you and your families these are guys at the time were 77 years old and these 30 somethings were telling them we're going to kill you over a book that wasn't even about the Hell's Angels it's about like all the just about people from back then and uh they called me and said the same thing and I said go [ __ ] yourself and I basically went to war with the Hell's Angels like uh got to the point where in like end of no I guess 2018 I gained access to Cloud Server and got all their rosters and got all of their like files 1.7 terabytes of information and I um use that to basically protect myself like when a member would direct message me on Instagram private account always and it never has their last name it'll say like Brendan HMC Seattle right so I go to the roster from their Cloud Server I go to Seattle Brandon there's a cell phone number reverse poll on that I get his address so I take a screenshot from Google street view of his address I have his parents name I have his siblings names I have his girlfriend or wife's name and I text him now remember he's direct messaging me on Instagram thinking I have no idea who this person is and then he gets a text with his house and all of his information and they're like what the [ __ ] I've never been so afraid of my life I'm like really you're a [ __ ] Hell's Angel and you're afraid be careful who you talk [ __ ] to on the internet maybe you're the real gangster out of all this [ __ ] yeah I mean I still those guys that pulled the old-timers into the room like I still constantly harass them till this day and I will for the rest of my life like that's so disrespectful what they did these guys that they pulled into the room they're like very important people to me they're they were very very good friends of mine yeah and um I just think I don't know I I hate the current day young gangster guys so like all drone their Clubhouse and like post it on Instagram and just constantly you know [ __ ] with them so for everyone that's curious we're speaking to bo bo what's your last name Bushnell bo bo Bushnell Outlaw archive the greatest biggest most expansive and most thorough of archives we've ever seen but we really appreciate your time man yeah for sure thank you very much [Music] absolutely

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Id: 5lJb1Rd5fFQ

Length: 57min 42sec (3462 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 23 2024