There's truthfulness in our life. We're all tied by a bond of friendship. A friend is the most important thing in life. We're wealthy and we don't have a dime. Just friendship.
THAT Salvation Army-style sentiment is the unlikely canon of a muscular, bearded band of "hog" riders known as Hell's Angels. A hog, of course, is a motorcycle, and the Angels have long been first among riders of the open road. Born in California in the late 1940s, the black-clad, swastikaed Angels and their roaring bikes became the terrors of Highway 101. Guzzling beer and shaking the countryside with obscene laughter, they broke up legitimate motorcycle rallies and often sacked small coastal towns. Perversely, pop music (Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots) and film (The Wild One) romanticized such outlaw riders as tragic, misunderstood loners, giving the Angels a place that they scarcely deserve in American folklore.
As the bike culture burgeoned, the Angels' legend became as grimy as their beards, Levi's and leather vests. In 1965 they tore up an Oakland peace rally. Four years later came Altamont. Commissioned to protect Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones at a rock concert held at the California speedway, the Angels waded into the crowd with pool cues, leaving an 18-year-old black, Meredith Hunter, dead in their wake. (The Angel who killed him was acquitted on the ground of self-defense.) It all bolstered the legend that the Angels were the toughest, meanest cyclists around.
Last week an upstart band of East Coast rivals called the Breed decided to challenge the Angels' preeminence. The arena they chose was a Cleveland motorcycle show. The results, after only 60 sanguinary seconds: four members of the Breed either stabbed to death or dying, including one of two Breed castrated; one Angel, Jeffrey Coffey, 22, of Hartford, Conn., dead. A total of 21 others from both gangs were injured, and 57 were charged with first-degree murder. It was the deadliest rumble in the history of maverick motorcycle gangs.
Charity Event. The fight had been brewing for months. The Breed are a band of newcomers, created about two years ago and concentrated mainly along the Eastern Seaboard. They grew quickly by the simple expedient of accepting virtually anyone who wanted to ride with them. They are generally younger than the Angels (many of whom claim to be Viet Nam veterans) and are eager to make names for themselves. Recently they began bragging that they were tougher than the Angels. According to one biker, a local Breed member entered a sleazy Cleveland bar three months ago with a spray can and wrote: BREED—H. A. STOMPERS in 2-ft.-high letters behind the bar. At Christmas in the Golden Nugget, another Cleveland hangout, a dozen Breed members took on—and whipped—an equal number of local Angels in a fistfight. The Breed were ready for a full-scale rumble.