My guys, we run staggered. Leave a lot of room for error.

I did the two by two thing a couple times. Honestly I was scared shyteless each time. And I've been riding 40+yrs.

Only wanna bes run side by side. Wanna be organ doners. :D

Best
Les

Was a motorcop for 13 years. I've run 2x2 a ton. That and wearing an open face helmet were two things I never really cared for. I volunteered to test flip up helmets well before they were common and eventually they became our standard helmet. But if we traveled in mass, we always traveled 2x2. Unless on a two lane road. I've never traveled that way on my personal bike.

FYI, we had about 110 motorcops, in the 30 years I worked, no organs were ever donated because of riding 2x2.

I give you guys a ton of credit Mike. You guys are THE most skilled riders out there. One if my best friends retired NYPD Highway. Incredible how you guys can toss full dresser around.
Ive been following Jerry Paladino for years.

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I was watching a motorcycle cop chase and catch a guy on a large-ish sports bike. The cop was as smooth as silk and unlikely to crash or get hurt. The guy on the sports bike was erratic, made mistakes and was just lucky not to crash. the cop caught him in no time.

Yeah, I've seen some of his stuff on YouTube. He's very good. I still take a few minutes before every ride to practice slow speed u-turns and different maneuvers. It's like my warm up, before I actually hit the road.

I tell ya what. It's not as easy as it was when I was riding every single day, Definitely a parishible skill.

I’ll add this to the databanks but for the life of me I had no idea these passing rules existed and, in my 40 years of riding sport bikes, I have unwittingly violated them. We used to ride too damn fast all the time- one time a friend had his bike impounded after a cop came flying into a parking lot and yelled at him to get on the ground. Turns out the cop had been chasing him, and thought he was running, but my friend had no idea he was behind him. He had just put on some Mikuni flat sides and was enjoying thrashing the bike to see how they ran, passing over double yellow etc like a total a-hole that he was.
We’d meet up in Yonkers NY and ride down to the Cross Bronx or Francis Lewis Blvd for the street racing scene… wouldn’t get home until 3am. My God, it doesn’t even seem real now.

My little 1%'er story:

It was about 1978 and I was a year outta high school headed up I-75 to Road Atlanta somewhere in the middle of GA. I was cruising along in my '70 VW bug and I look in the mirror and I see two rows of heavy bikes running about 80 mph. They started passing me and passing me and passing me. There must have been 250 of them and they were Outlaws. Outlaws were big in Florida at that time. Following them were about 5 GA highway patrol cars and local sheriff deputies. I never seen anything like it. They were a rough looking bunch. I asked somebody about it years later and they said they were probably headed to a funeral for a GA chapter's leader. I'm glad I saw them coming and was in the right lane.

I grew up on Vancouver Island, not far from Angel Acres…

I remember the massive bike groups in the 80s and early 90s.

I tried to get a sticker to put on my corvette when I was 17 so people wouldn’t screw with it after I was broken into the 2nd or 3rd time. I asked one of the members and he very politely told me that they didn’t give out their stuff to nonmembers and told me it would get me into more trouble than it would avoid.

For the most part, these were good guys that were held accountable by their club if they stepped out of line.

I don’t think they would want anyone discussing their activities online, members or not.

And of course the difference is training and discipline, the antithesis of the original subject group.
Well done.

Best
Les

They put more of their own stuff online, then anyone. Has to be at least eight that have YT channels and podcasts alone.

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I wonder if they are officially sanctioned and/or currated as PR/media? From what I understand they are huge, well organized groups, so it would not surprise me if they had folks specifically for media.

I know you hear a lot about various biker gangs being REALLY bad/nasty and into all sorts of crime (drugs, murder, etc...), but I don't really know anything about them other than stuff that I've read here or seen on TV.

What's the deal, is it that they've got a ton of members, some/most of which are essentially not criminals, but then a small percentage are criminals (think of it as the finance division). Or if you see someone with a patch for banditos, HA, outlaws, etc..., does that make them a drug dealing killer?

I have never heard of these passing rules, have passed some while in my 3/4 ton truck, will avoid passing on my bikes, don't need the BS.

unclebilly mentioned Angle Acres, the BC gov confiscated a clubhouse there and two others last year, proceeds of crime laws. Pretty sure all of the members are criminals, just at different levels.

I think they confiscated the clubhouse in Nanaimo. Angel Acres was south of Nanaimo near Cedar… I am pretty sure they are different locations but could be wrong.

I generally don't care about bikers. Don't ride anymore and encounter them rarely but I thought 1%-ers we're a very small subset of any given motorcycle "club". The true hardcases. Just because you're in a bike gang doesn't necessarily mean you are a 1%-er. yes/no?

Back when I dipped a toe in these waters (late '70's to early '80's), these were very much just "clubs". The guys in them tended to be a bit rough around the edges, but all of them held jobs, most were family men, etc. Granted, you absolutely did not want to cross them, as they all loved a good old fashioned fist fight (and were thus pretty damn good at it, plus when you fought one you fought all).

Yeah, there were some guys selling pot, coke, meth, and that kind of a thing. They were by no means making a living at it though. Some of them stole motorcycles, mainly for the parts they needed for theirs. Low level schitthead kinda crimes. None of it organized by nor sanctioned by the clubs. It was all just an offshoot of what kinds of guys were attracted to the clubs. They would have been doing that crap club or no club.

It didn't take long before many in the clubs started to notice there was money to be made through these criminal enterprises. And, well, they had lots of willing, eager, experienced co-conspirators that they already called "brothers". I think it was just an unfortunate, but in hindsight completely expected and natural evolution - these clubs became full-on criminal enterprises. Lots of members now making their living that way. What used to be "riding territories" are now "criminal territories" and, as a result (due to the profit motive) are much more violently defended than when it was just who gets to ride where.

Much has been written by former members regarding this shift. I know a few guys who got out when it looked like the lives they had built with careers, family, homes, etc. were in jeopardy simply through association. One of the more compelling stories I heard from one of them was when a "brother" got popped for some really high level, big dollar drug dealing. He was going down for the count, needed a lawyer, and on and on. My friend was actually expected to take out a second mortgage to help pay his "brother's" legal fees. Yet this "brother" had never shared the largess from his drug dealing. Kind of a one-way street. Granted, it was a good thing he had not shared, or my friend would have gone down as an "accessory" or something.

So, yeah, my impression (granted, from a good deal of distance these days) is that most are organized criminal enterprises. The Mongols just lost a federal RICO case and their national president is in prison, along with a bunch of their officers. They almost lost the trademark to their patch as well, and did so initially, but won it back on appeal.

The Bandidos, Pagans (these scholars spell it "Pagan's"), Outlaws, and others have suffered similar losses. The HA had inadvertently devised the very best organizational structure there is to avoid all of this - every chapter is its own entirely autonomous entity. There are no national officers nor organizational structure. I'm sure this wasn't intentional, since they have been this way from day one, but it has served them well in these modern times.

1%ers have their own clubs wherein every member is a "1%er". Either the entire club is or no one is.

Haha, when I was a teenager I was living in a dodgy part of town. It turned out a big group of Satan's Slaves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satans_Slaves_Motorcycle_Club were living just down the road. I thought they would beat me up for riding a Triumph and not being a gang member. One day the bike wouldn't start and the gang stopped. The said they loved the Bonneville Saint I had and if I hadn't managed to get it going they would send one of the boys down with tools and parts to fix it for me.

Sounds like they figured out the RICCO Act before it was enacted.

The "outlaw biker " demographic has changed a lot since the 70s. It's no longer just smellly dirtbags.

There are 1%ers that are across all walks of life and economic levels. Especially in the major clubs. A lot of them you would never expect to be in an outlaw club.

Have one good friend that is in one of the Big 5. Owns a few very successful businesses. Had some before he became an outlaw MC member. Has a beautiful family. Lives in an extremely nice house and vacation home.

Knew another HA a few years back that was a Wall Streeter.

Granted there are plenty of criminals in these groups, but there are also ones that aren't.

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Absolutely. There are guys in the big clubs who wear three piece Brooks Brothers suits to the office every day. No visible tats (when they are wearing the suit), clean cut, highly educated, very articulate, well read, and so forth.

From what I'm told, these are the real "movers and shakers", the "brains of the operation". While some are undoubtedly "clean", many are only there for the lucrative "business opportunities" available through membership.

This sort very cynically knows exactly who they have underneath them - a readily available, easily manipulated legion of "foot soldiers" who are climbing over one another to prove who is the baddest ass in their little world. In other words, they will do anything for the club. Anything. And they have absolutely no idea who is pulling the strings. It's all for the club... :rolleyes: