The
Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington (POB for short) was a
motorcycle club that, in 1947, along with the
Boozefighters and the
Market Street Commandos, participated in the highly-publicized
Hollister incident (later immortalized on film as
The Wild One).
After the Hollister incident, a prominent Pissed Off Bastard named
Otto Friedli (28 Jun 1931 - 17 Mar 2008) split with the club and formed his own group on March 17, 1948 in
Fontana, just west of
San Bernardino. He called it the
Hells Angels Motorcycle Club. In 1954 Otto's new club merged with the Market Street Commandos to become the Hells Angels San Francisco Chapter.
Official History
They were the original outlaw motorcycle and car club. A few miles south of
Berdoo, in the small town of
Bloomington in 1945, a particular group of veterans and POBOB founder
Otto Friedli who was too young to have served in the war, found civilian life to be too slow and set out to get more thrills by riding motorcycles and hot rod cars. Then on July 4, 1947, in
Hollister, California where the
AMA (American Motorcycle Association) sanctioned the Gypsy Tour Run, the
Boozefighters, POBOBs (Pissed Off Bastards Of Bloomington) and the
Market Street Commandos took over the town for nearly three days. The POBOB's played an integral role in the
Hollister incident, on which the movie "
The Wild One" was based, staring
Marlon Brando.
