After writing this joint about Schott NYC's custom jacket for The Bikeriders movie, I reserved tickets immediately and was in the theater that night. Leaving the cinema, I felt like I was born in the wrong decade. I felt nostalgia for a time I never lived in and a motorcycle culture I never experienced.
Unfortunately, that culture is long gone. Along with the launch of The Bikeriders comes news that an entire Bakersfield chapter of the Outlaw Bikers Stick With Harley Despite Foreign Production was arrested in a multi-agency investigation.
Six members of the motorcycle club were arrested on Tuesday following a joint investigation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the Kern County Sheriff's Office, and the California Highway Patrol. The seventh member of the chapter was already in custody.
According to the ATF, five of the members are "active, patched members" of the Hells Angels, Bakersfield Chapter. The other two suspects arrested are members of the Sons Of Hell Motorcycle Club, which is a sub-affiliate club that takes orders from the Hells Angels, according to investigators.
All suspects were charged with first-degree robbery, kidnapping, criminal threats, false imprisonment, participation in a criminal street gang, assault with a firearm, intimidating a witness or victim, elder abuse, and criminal conspiracy.
Investigators executed eight search warrants at various locations throughout Bakersfield and found approximately 25 firearms, ammunition, high-capacity magazines, and gang-affiliate paraphernalia.
In case the last two paragraphs didn't make it blatantly obvious, motorcycle gang culture has changed irreparably since the '50s and early '60s and isn't something I imagine people will look back upon with rose-tinted glasses.
