Christine was a really fine woman, my friend’s mother, who as raised by his grandmother. She was basically pimped out by the Hell’s Angels. They’d come through town, throw her on the back of a bike and take her across country. She had a scrapbook of all the places she had danced—she was a fine looking woman, even in middle age.

The Hell’s Angel’s were at the Shamrock a few years ago when I was in there. There were six of them. Most of the guys were your age [50-plus]. There was one bigger younger one who wouldn’t stop staring at me so I gave it back. We had our eyes locked for a long while and I figured that was going to be my last stand. If you fight one you fight them all. Then an older one put his hand on that guy’s shoulder and said something and he backed off. I ended up joking with them later and they behaved themselves reasonably well.

The Hell’s Angel’s were at the Holiday House a few years before that and there was a lot of them. Their bikes were lined up on Harford Road. They were being obnoxious, being rude to the barmaid and the owner and the other patrons. But there were so many of them there’s no way anyone was giving it back. It would have been a massacre.

The Pagans I have had some dealings with, been good friends with one of them. He did a lot of hard tome on charges back in the 70ss and 80s and remains associated with them for social events but doesn’t conduct club business. He once brought a duffle bag of pot to the work site and sold it by the handful and had two bricks of crack that were the size of cigarette packs. The one thing about bikers, is they run drugs intelligently like other white dealers—not like these stupid dindus approaching strangers and asking them if they want to cop dope. They keep it to their circle and don’t have to get violent unless they are distributing, like when those 200 Hell’s Angels road through Harlem to straighten the dope situation out.

One of my friends belonged to DMI, a white prison gang, and when he was out in Hagerston [prison] he got a supply of soboxtin, that rehab drug that they use to treat junkies. He had a connection with a prison guard and when he brought that shit in those junkies didn’t want no heroin, they wanted that shit, because it’s better. Well, the Black Guerilla Family took exception to this and were going to throw down with DMI, but then the Pagan’s in the prison stepped up and took sides with DMI just for the hell of it—they weren’t even moving the dope—and you know those dindus backed the fuck down.

The Pagans have a good sense for compromising people and getting access to their assets. My one friend, him and his buddies sold to this loser crack head who had inherited a house down in Dundalk. They kept feeding him the dope for free, telling him they collect later. When it came time to pay that bill he had no choice but to sign the house over, so those fuckers invested a few thousand in dope to hook this guy and flipped that house for over two-hundred thousand.

The Chosen Sons and the Fat Boys, and colors wearing clubs like them that aren’t moving the dope, they tend behave themselves well—they wear the image but I haven’t encountered that bullying mentality that the Angels throw around. My friend in the Pagans did say that they have their bad elements and some of that shit goes down with them too, but they don’t seem to be as driven to threaten barmaids and gang up on some working man like the Angels.

For an old book review coauthored by a Hell’s Angel, click ‘Against The Grain’.

Big Ron's Baltimore: A Working Man's View of Urban Blight