Hell's Angels Legend Does Not Like Harleys

My copy of the book “She’s a Bad Motorcycle: Writers on Riding” arrived the other day and was struck by what Sonny Barger, a founding member of the Oakland chapter of Hell’s Angels, said about Harley Davidson motorcycles.

First, Berger’s cred: Among other things, in 1988, Barger was sentenced for conspiring to blow up the clubhouse of a rival motorcycle club, the Outlaws in Louisville, Kentucky, and spent 4 years in federal prison in Arizona.

Oakland Hells Angels president Cisco Valderrama on Berger: If anybody deserves anything in this whole bike-riding world, it’s Sonny. He led the way. You see people wearing these fucking patches, “Ride to live, live to ride.” Yeah, right. As soon as the shit comes down, their bike is the first thing they sell. Sonny is the one who pushed the bike-riding lifestyle. There wasn’t an outlaw type of lifestyle as there is today until he created it.

Berger on Harley Davidson motorcycles: Hell's Angels started riding Harley-Davidsons mostly because, unlike today, they didn’t have much choice. In 1957, it was either ride a Harley or settle for a Triumph or BSA. They’d already stopped building Indians. It’s always been important for Hell’s Angels to ride American-made machines. In terms of pure workmanship, personally I don’t like Harleys. I ride them because I’m in the club, and that’s the image, but if I could I would seriously consider riding a Honda ST1100 or a BMW. We really missed the boat not switching over to the Japanese models when they began building bigger bikes. I’ll usually say, “Fuck Harley-Davidson. You can buy an ST1100 and the motherfucker will do 110 miles per hour right from the factory all day long.”