Right…because it isnt
FTFY
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My college was not far from there, and according to rumor it was the quietest block in New York. Crime was high in those days, but not on East Third.
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For those who are understandably skeptical of the Daily Mail tabloid, keep in mind that the accounts come from Hynde’s autobiography.
Well of course, it was the voice of patriarchy down the ages. The “goobers” doubtless agreed but knew not to say that kind of thing out loud.
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Long Island is fun.
Hells Angels are moving there.
That’s prime real estate.
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I’ve heard variations on the theme “the local gang keeps our neighborhood safe” a few times. I’ve never bought it.
These days I notice that the “local gang” in these narratives has always been white.
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They’re not all bad people. Hmm. Nice view of the canyon from up here…
But hang around with them long enough, … do we really need to get closer to the edge…
and shit will happen. … why are you pushing me…
Maybe to you. … Nnnnoooooooo!!!
Hunter S. Thompson found that out the hard way. Epitaph
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. . .Vincent (Big Vinny) Girolamo, of plaque fame . . .
Who has plaque so bad it’s famous?
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The Hell’s Angels around here hire blues bands for their big parties. I was the “girl singer” in a band that was hired for two Christmas parties, and the only problem I saw was when one reeeeally drunk member wanted to win a raffle prize someone else had won (a grill, IIRC) and had to be taken outside.
That being said, the husband has been in many bands that have played many MC club events, and he has Stories. (spoiler: The Hell’s Angels weren’t the worst)
eta: Yeah, having a clubhouse on your block is an “as good as it is, is as bad as it is” situation.
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Always nice when the trash takes itself out. Of course, not so nice for the neighborhood it’s infesting.
You misspelled “Altamont”
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For 1970s UK Hells Angels, it wasn’t really sex, drugs & violence, more a wet weekend on a canal boat, watching Doctor Who:
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Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (1967, Random House) is an exceptionally good book – every page is both informative and entertaining. Great writing, a great story, straight from the heart without apology. Thompson invited parody later, but in the sixties he was an unadulterated force of nature.
Yes it’s about the Angels, but it’s really about America. (My fellow Americans, if you have not read this book, get busy. If I had my way it would be standard reading in high school American Studies class.)
One for the ages.
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Everyone loves the local gangsters when they “keep the neighborhood safe”
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especially when they’re white gangsters keeping the neighborhood safe from those other people
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Streets where Mafia live or have their clubhouse are also similarly “safe.”
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Ha that’s very well put. I lived in the hood in the 90s and there always seemed to be someone outside their clubhouse looking, as you put it, Hells Angely. Almost cartoonishly so, but their reputation preceeded them so there was a lot of menace in that. Personally I always got the feeling that they were there sort of as a challenge, trying to drum up a confrontation, but maybe that’s just me projecting based on their reputation.
On a sidenote (@petzl) I rented parking a little farther east (7th Street between b and c I think), which at the time was dicey, but it was the safest block around because of all the drug sales. So I guess gangs were the way to have a safe block in NYC back then. Now the whole city seems to my now tourist perspective to be almost disappointingly safe, but that’s another topic.
Fuck those guys. They are a cancer on whatever communities they infest.
HA basically run the crime world here in BC. For the most part they let the lesser gangs do all the killing of each other, but they run the place. Nobody waxes poetic about their huge parties at Willy Pickton’s farm (where he killed about 50 marginalized women and fed them to his pigs over a couple of decades). No way they didn’t know he was doing it either.
May they all get spontaneous flat tires on their bikes at the same time and crash into each other in a giant explosive fireball.
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In Europe the Angels’ fights with the Bandidos (and Satudarah and Mongols) over red light district supremacy, racketeering and drug dealing still make the headlines with regularity.
I wonder about all the romantisizing posts here?
While in the US the Angels seems to be a white-male criminal organisation that at leasts rides motorbikes, in Europe it’s seems more like a rocker-cosplay of macho-male pimps from various ethnic backgrounds, who prefer riding expensive tuned Mercedeses.
Everything about them is revolting, anti-emancipatory and they’re one of the real world problems most of left/liberal people rather not talk about, coping out with “it’s just another capitalist problem, created by a capitalist society”.
Well, true, but fuck’em anyway.
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