It was about this time that my long-standing rapport with the Angels began to deteriorate. All the humor went out of the act when they began to believe their own press clippings, and it was no longer much fun to drink with them. Even the names lost their magic. Instead of Bagmaster, Scuzzy and Hype, it was Luther Young, E. O. Stuurm and Norman Scarlet III. There was no more mystery; overexposure had reduced the menace to an all-too-common denominator, and as the group portrait became more understandable it also became less appealing.

For nearly a year I had lived in a world that seemed, at first, like something original. It was obvious from the beginning that the menace bore little resemblance to its publicized image, but there was a certain pleasure in sharing the Angels' amusement at the stir they'd created. Later, as they attracted more and more attention, the mystique was stretched so thin that it finally became transparent. One afternoon as I sat in the El Adobe and watched an Angel sell a handful of barbiturate pills to a brace of pimply punks no more than sixteen, I realized that the roots of this act were not in any time-honored American myth but right beneath my feet in a new kind of society that is only beginning to take shape. To see the Hell's Angels as caretakers of the old "individualist" tradition "that made this country great" is only a painless way to get around seeing them for what they really are -- not some romantic leftover, but the first wave of a future that nothing in our history has prepared us to cope with. The Angels are prototypes. Their lack of education has not only rendered them completely useless in a highly technical economy, but it has also given them the leisure to cultivate a powerful resentment . . . and to translate it into a destructive cult which the mass media insists on portraying as a sort of isolated oddity, a temporary phenomenon that will shortly become extinct now that it's been called to the attention of the police.

This is a reassuring viewpoint and it would be even more so if the police shared it. Unfortunately, they don't. Cops who know the Angels only from press accounts are sometimes afraid of them, but familiarity seems to breed contempt, and cops who know the Angels from experience usually dismiss them as an overrated threat. On the other hand, at least 90 percent of the dozens of cops I talked to all over California were seriously worried about what they referred to as "the rising tide of lawlessness," or "the dangerous trend toward lack of respect for law and order." To them the Hell's Angels are only a symptom of a much more threatening thing. . . the Rising Tide.

"Mainly it's the teen-agers," said a young patrolman in Santa Cruz. "Five years ago it was only a matter of talking to them, telling them in a friendly kind of way just what they could or couldn't get away with. They were just as wild, I guess, but you knew they would listen to reason." He shrugged, fingering the .38 Special cartridges that circled his waist. "But now, goddamnit, it's different. You never know when some kid's going to swing on you, or pull a gun, or maybe just take off running. The badge doesn't mean a damn thing to them. They've lost all respect for it, all fear. Hell, I'd rather bust a dozen Hell's Angels every day of the week than have to break up one fight at a big high school beer party. With the motorcycle crowd you at least know what you're up against, but these kids are capable of anything. I mean it, they give me the creeps. I used to understand them, but not any more."

The trends and problems of law enforcement have never interested the Angels, however, and even after their temporary détente with the Oakland police, they still viewed cops very simply as the enemy. Nor do they take much interest in their emotional or ideological connection to other rebellious elements. To them all comparisons are either presumptuous or insulting. "There's only two kinds of people in the world," Magoo explained one night. "Angels, and people who wish they were Angels."



Excerpt from "Hell's Angels" by Hunter S. Thompson.