Les MacPherson
leaderpost.com
"You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears." - Hells Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, by Hunter S. Thompson.
It is with some reluctance that I even mention the Hells Angels.
For hard-living, hard-riding bikers, they are surprisingly sensitive. The tiniest little thing can set them off. If you mistakenly spell Hells Angels with an apostrophe in Hell's, for example, you risk being dragged behind a Harley. The Hells Angels live by their own rules, including those pertaining to punctuation, and also to dragging people behind a Harley.
As many as 400 members of the club - don't call it a gang unless you have eight to 12 weeks to spend in traction - have gathered in Saskatoon this week for what other organizations would call a convention. The Hells Angels call it a "national run." The difference is that Mayor Don Atchison doesn't bring greetings from the city to a national run. Too bad, because the Hells Angels probably will be better behaved than quite a few other conventioneers. Yves Lavigne, a Torontobased author and journalist who has written extensively about the club, says its members will try to stay out of trouble in Saskatoon.
"You won't see any guns," he said. "You won't see any drugs." If only the same could be said of the Shriners' conventions.
Multiple shakedowns by city police tend to confirm that the Angels are on their best behaviour. As yet, no charges or arrests have been reported. It probably would be more fruitful for police to shake down the Kinsmen.
The courts in Saskatoon have been considerably friendlier than the police to outlaw bikers. It was here three years ago that provincial court Judge Albert Lavoie judge struck down a ticket issued under the so-called safer communities law to a local Hells Angel for wearing his colours in Ryly's bar.
Lavoie ruled the law to be an infringement of the biker's constitutional right to freedom of expression.
It helped that the Hells Angels previously had been granted a number of special event liquor permits by the province, and without any problems reported. The province could hardly condemn the Angels as a criminal organization while granting them liquor permits. Except for one fight seven years ago in a Swift Current bar, the province could produce no evidence at all of violent or criminal behaviour by the Hells Angels in Saskatchewan, and who among us has not been in a fight in a Swift Current bar?
Prosecutors did not appeal, conceding that the decision probably would stand. Instead, the province retooled the safer communities law to make it constitutional, apparently by exempting the Hells Angels, who are openly wearing their colours this weekend in Saskatoon. They're outlaw bikers; they're champions of human rights.
They certainly are getting respect. When they are riding en masse on their noisy Harleys, Saskatoon drivers are actually pulling over to let them go by, as if they were fire trucks or ambulances on an emergency call. Nobody likes to see the Hells Angels in the rearview mirror. Disappearing over the horizon is where we like to see them.
The problem is distinguishing genuine Hells Angels from the counterfeits. That guy on the chopped Harley with the leather vest and the beanie helmet and the big, Frye boots is more likely a dentist or a financial adviser than a Hells Angel. That peloton of giant Harleys thundering down the highway is more likely a police officers' motorcycle club. Cops and outlaw bikers have disturbingly similar taste in motorcycles.
Maybe the Hells Angels are getting a bad rap. On the first two days of the Craven Country Jamboree music festival last weekend, police arrested more than 80 people for various offences, handed out more than 60 tickets on alcohol-related charges and 150 tickets for traffic offences. Here, with 400 Hells Angels assembled, no arrests have been reported.
These numbers would suggest that country music enthusiasts are more trouble than outlaw bikers by several orders of magnitude. But we don't see the province making laws against the wearing in public of cowboy hats.
Read more: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Angels+Better+than+cowboys/6968326/story.html#ixzz21JNlj4AS
It is with some reluctance that I even mention the Hells Angels.
For hard-living, hard-riding bikers, they are surprisingly sensitive. The tiniest little thing can set them off. If you mistakenly spell Hells Angels with an apostrophe in Hell's, for example, you risk being dragged behind a Harley. The Hells Angels live by their own rules, including those pertaining to punctuation, and also to dragging people behind a Harley.
As many as 400 members of the club - don't call it a gang unless you have eight to 12 weeks to spend in traction - have gathered in Saskatoon this week for what other organizations would call a convention. The Hells Angels call it a "national run." The difference is that Mayor Don Atchison doesn't bring greetings from the city to a national run. Too bad, because the Hells Angels probably will be better behaved than quite a few other conventioneers. Yves Lavigne, a Torontobased author and journalist who has written extensively about the club, says its members will try to stay out of trouble in Saskatoon.
"You won't see any guns," he said. "You won't see any drugs." If only the same could be said of the Shriners' conventions.
Multiple shakedowns by city police tend to confirm that the Angels are on their best behaviour. As yet, no charges or arrests have been reported. It probably would be more fruitful for police to shake down the Kinsmen.
The courts in Saskatoon have been considerably friendlier than the police to outlaw bikers. It was here three years ago that provincial court Judge Albert Lavoie judge struck down a ticket issued under the so-called safer communities law to a local Hells Angel for wearing his colours in Ryly's bar.
Lavoie ruled the law to be an infringement of the biker's constitutional right to freedom of expression.
It helped that the Hells Angels previously had been granted a number of special event liquor permits by the province, and without any problems reported. The province could hardly condemn the Angels as a criminal organization while granting them liquor permits. Except for one fight seven years ago in a Swift Current bar, the province could produce no evidence at all of violent or criminal behaviour by the Hells Angels in Saskatchewan, and who among us has not been in a fight in a Swift Current bar?
Prosecutors did not appeal, conceding that the decision probably would stand. Instead, the province retooled the safer communities law to make it constitutional, apparently by exempting the Hells Angels, who are openly wearing their colours this weekend in Saskatoon. They're outlaw bikers; they're champions of human rights.
They certainly are getting respect. When they are riding en masse on their noisy Harleys, Saskatoon drivers are actually pulling over to let them go by, as if they were fire trucks or ambulances on an emergency call. Nobody likes to see the Hells Angels in the rearview mirror. Disappearing over the horizon is where we like to see them.
The problem is distinguishing genuine Hells Angels from the counterfeits. That guy on the chopped Harley with the leather vest and the beanie helmet and the big, Frye boots is more likely a dentist or a financial adviser than a Hells Angel. That peloton of giant Harleys thundering down the highway is more likely a police officers' motorcycle club. Cops and outlaw bikers have disturbingly similar taste in motorcycles.
Maybe the Hells Angels are getting a bad rap. On the first two days of the Craven Country Jamboree music festival last weekend, police arrested more than 80 people for various offences, handed out more than 60 tickets on alcohol-related charges and 150 tickets for traffic offences. Here, with 400 Hells Angels assembled, no arrests have been reported.
These numbers would suggest that country music enthusiasts are more trouble than outlaw bikers by several orders of magnitude. But we don't see the province making laws against the wearing in public of cowboy hats.
Read more: http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Angels+Better+than+cowboys/6968326/story.html#ixzz21JNlj4AS