agingrebel.com
One percenters live by a code that embodies courage, strength, pride, individualism and that does not tolerate humiliation.
The motorcycle club world is not about
money – although enough money is always delightful to have. It is about
honor and about living by an honor code. That code is not about being
the mafia on wheels, or selling drugs, selling guns, selling women, or
bullying civilians. The argument can be made that it is Beowulf’s code.
The honor code is strict enough that it inevitably leads to violence and
that violence fascinates authors, television producers and reporters
who simply cannot imagine any reasons for say, the Twin Peaks bloodbath
other than profit or insanity.
So most of what you will read about
three parking lot murders in the last two days – two in San Bernardino,
California and another in Daytona Beach, Florida – will be fatuous and
condescending.
Vagos
Sunday evening in San Bernardino, about halfway through 60 Minutes,
three members of the Vagos Motorcycle Club got into an argument at a
bar called the Sports Page. They took it outside. It ended quickly. The
police haven’t speculated what the argument was about. A Berdoo police
spokesman named Mike Madden told the San Bernardino Sun. “There
was an altercation in the bar that spilled out into the parking lot. It
looks like the suspect and victims all knew each other…. All of the
involved parties are members of the same outlaw motorcycle gang.”
Scott Gardner, the president of the San
Bernardino chapter of the club and Brian Davis were pronounced dead at
an unnamed “local” hospital. A third Vago, Beau Gabriel Hempel fled the
scene on his motorcycle and later turned himself in to county sheriffs
in Morongo Valley which was about 60 miles away. Hempel was charged with
two counts of murder and is now being held without bail. He is unlikely
to be executed but he will face the death penalty.
Outlaws
Last night, about 25 hours after the
fight at the bar on the edge of the California desert, a member of the
America Outlaws Association named Christopher “Louie the Lip” Keating
got into a fight with two men in a Daytona Beach bar named the Crook’s
Den. The fight spilled out the back door and Keating was mortally
stabbed. He was pronounced dead at Halifax Health Medical Center. No one
has yet been arrested. A police spokesperson named Lyda Longa later
identified the suspects as members of the Pagans Motorcycle Club.
The murder in Florida may attract the
most attention. There are currently at least seven one percenter
motorcycle clubs in South Florida including the Outlaws. Pagans,
Mongols, Warbird Warlocks, Harpy Warlocks, 69ers and the Kinfolk. The Aging Rebel
believes this confluence of clubs has attracted the attention of at
least one federal police force but is unaware of any details of any
ongoing federal investigation.