What are your experiences with motorcycle gangs?

They will not get involved with you if you don't approach them. Don't do business with them. These guys are not messing around.

However, I have had numerous experiences with people in the group you mentioned. I lived in a neighborhood where they had a clubhouse and it was much quieter and had less crime during their time there.

I worked in a kitchen at a restaurant they frequented for private parties close to that clubhouse. They smoked so much hash. This was decades ago. They tipped very well, were polite to the staff, and never caused a scene (we had a separate entrance in the back they used).

I have been aquatinted with people who were in different states of involvement with them. They had different outcomes. Some fine (tangential to crime not really involved) and others who fared worse. The fared worse guys were like useful pretty criminals who they took advantage of because they wanted to be associated with that group and wouldn't take the hint to get lost. I'm not discussing specifics.

Finally, if you're life their neighbour and they ask you to come over for a beer just say you're busy. If a guy shows up from out of town and you run into him in the driveway don't ask why he's there. They won't involve you in their business but might notice if you seem curious.

The big clubs are all an organized crime syndicate. How bad the situation will be mostly depend on your exact location. Especially with the Hell's Angels the involvement in organized crime depends a lot on the exact charter. Some just do illegal gambling, some light narcotics and gun trades while others are also involved in human trafficking and forced prostitution.

In most of the western world organized crime usually stays away from regular citizens. That's why many people here say if you don't approach them they will leave you be. But crime always affects regular people. And there is basically nothing you can do. It's just up to luck whether you specifically get affected or not.

When the Hell's Angels started to move into Europe most politicians just ignored it. But a war between locals clubs, the Hell's Angles and then the Banditos (who also moved into Europe) broke out almost immediately. Some people even got killed. But politicians only stepped in when a civilian got killed or severely injured because some gang member shot a rocket into a rivaling gang's bar. Then shit moved back into the shadows.

I have a very negative view of them.

I’ve been the victim of violence from a HA member, for no other reason than “he decided to sit down, extremely drunk and high, at our camp at a music festival”. After offering him a beer and having a chit chat, hoping he would lose interest, he decided to start groping a 16 year old. I was the unlucky person chosen to ask him to leave. That didn’t go very well.

Second, someone in my family unfortunately got mixed up in HA and received a prison sentence from dealing drugs. He has now escaped that environment but it left me in little doubt that there’s few “noble knights” in that group, only drug-dealing gang-members.

Thirdly the country I come from has witnessed multiple wars between immigrant gangs and HA, as well as between HA and Bandidos. At one point they were firing stolen anti-tank rockets into a building where the rival gang was having a party. It’s hard to have a great impression of someone who chooses to fire an AT-4 in through a building.

So yeah, HA no thanks.

My ex's parents were in one. They're some of the dumbest people I've ever met, so it just kinda confirmed to me that biker gangs are for terminally stupid people who think the vroom vroom sounds cool and that leather vests are badass.

The biker gangs in my area are typically just a few steps down from the KKK. They won’t outright do anything awful, but they are generally not nice folk.

So, I have very limited experience with 2 of them. One was Banditos. I was the bouncer at a dive bar on the weekends as a second job. This was 20 years ago. Banditos started hanging out there, and honestly they were pretty cool. They were loud, and drank a lot, but they never caused me any problems, and helped me solve a couple of problems in my time there. Some of them were local FOP which seems a little gross, but they never bothered me.

The other was black pistons I think? I don’t remember. My friends dad was in it, and she and I got to hang out at their clubhouse some. That was almost exactly like you would think it was.

I only hung out there like 2 or 3 times with her. It was a shitty looking trap house in the hood. There was Nazi memorabilia all over the place. There was a bar in the middle of the living room. Middle aged white dudes drunk and geeked on meth. Lots of guns.

One night one of the dudes showed up with a black crackhead prostitute from the neighborhood. I know she was from the neighborhood because she said she had been there a few times before, and I heard them talking about “seeing her around”. Anyway, she was running around naked half the night doing Hitler salutes with those chuckle-fucks. Drinking whiskey, and smoking, probably meth. The whole situation was incredibly off putting.

Imagine the intersection of the mafia and a bunch of college football players. Its a very tribal mentality. If you're nice and polite, treat them with the respect you would treat anyone who has the power to fuck your life up (but dont kiss their ass... imagine how nice you would be to someone from the IRS who just has "some questions" about your last return) and dont put your nose in their business, they will more likely than not be perfectly fine.

But disrespect to one is disrepect to all, as a group they ARE involved in organised crime to some degree and while some of them are regular guys, some are cold blooded violent people.

Just be warned though, if you have a job or may apply for a job that involves security clearances. Having 1%ers phone numbers on your phone or as Facebook friends can throw flags.

I live in an area where the Pagans have a pretty sizeable presence but no real competition so we don't exactly have turf wars or anything going on. They definitely have their criminal activity going on, but by and large it's out of sight and out of mind unless you go looking for it or are unlucky enough to live next to them or something. In general if you keep your nose out of their business they'll keep out of yours. They can even be pretty reasonable at times, I have a friend lived basically next door to a bar they used to hang out at a lot, and after last call all the bikes leaving at like 2AM made a bunch of racket. His dad pretty much just politely asked their leader if they wouldn't mind leaving the other direction where there weren't really any houses instead of going by the residential areas, and that was pretty much the end of it, never really had a problem with them again, and a few years later they ended up finding a different bar to hang out at.

Don't get me wrong, they're bad dudes, you don't want to get involved with them, but if you don't do anything outrageously stupid you're probably not going to have a problem with them. That said, out of an abundance of caution if you can, it's probably best to just avoid them and the places they frequent altogether.

Pretty much everyone around here knows a few pagans or knows someone who does. Some of them think it's cool, and those people tend to be idiots. Otherwise it's just kind of a fact of life, everywhere has their local troublemakers, ne'er-do-wells, assholes, and criminals, it just happens that some of them around here wear denim vests.

Also for what it's worth, I live in the suburbs, so probably not exactly the epicenter of where the worst of their activities take place.

They are mostly racist tweaker assholes

A friend joined them to get protection because he got beaten a lot. He left again after his first drug trafficking job was offered to him. (and fortunately he was allowed to leave because he didn't know enough yet)

My schoolmates rented a club house for parties and the bikers wanted to do the security themselves. The have beaten people and kicked one drunken guy lying on the floor who argued too much with them. Completely unprofessional.

This was late 2000s in rural Germany.

I'm in the UK and Imo they're not good people. I know several tattooists who have been threatened/had their place trashed by them when they've opened a shop in my city.

I also went to a Hells Angels bar once when a music event was being hosted there and they were awful people. Charged more for drinks if they didn't like the look of someone, one guy threatened me because a glass fell on the floor and smashed (it was nowhere near me) and made me clean it up. I'm a small woman, I was scared, so I did it and left 😬

Some biker gangs are trying to look out for their community. Most of the time, that community stops when your skin color gets too dark. Hell's Angels are no exception to this. Co-founder Sonny Barger said in a 2000 BBC interview, "The club, as a whole, is not racist but we probably have enough racist members that no black guy is going to get in it." So essentially they are saying racism isn't a deal breaker for them.

So they are extremely racist, typically fascist as by their organization structure, and typically don't add to society.

That all said, there are exceptions to every rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikers_Against_Child_Abuse is a biker gang against child abuse. They go out of their way to keep children safe. Although there are a few members who have actually been convicted of the very thing the gang hopes to prevent. So, overall I'm still suspicious if the BACA's intentions are truly their intentions. Additionally, you could see that BACA intimidation and vigilanteism are likely not a good answer to the problem they are trying to solve.

You should have a negative view of them. Just because they don't personally fuck with you doesn't mean they aren't worth putting down.

I've had gang related people fuck with me. It sucks and at times made me want to kill myself and I still deal with that pretty much daily. I have PTSD. I know a lot of the people that fucked with me and now it feels like I live in the same town as my rapists* and I have to see the fucked up faces occasionally.

They are heartless and worthless.

Cops don't care when I try to get help.

• Rapist is the best term I've found for them even though I wasn't physically raped or anything. They are heartless.

They deserve to be fucked with... but don't do it if you're not ready for ...basically war... burglary, robberies, identity theft...

I lived close to their "national hq" in my country for years, and apart from the occasional loud motorcycle they were absolutely unnoticable. I wouldn't even have known they were there had someone not pointed it out to me.

As others have said, stay out of their way and they will stay out of yours.

Hell's Angels lived next door to me 25 years ago. Always doing meth and taking about weird stuff.

I did some work at a gang headquarters once. Not many people were there, it was just a normal job.

Unknowingly smoked weed with a gang member once, close to 20 years ago. He was pretty chill.

Generally I think if you leave them alone, they will leave you alone, but you're always going to have some people who ruin it for everyone.

I've always wondered, in the colder regions of the world in winter, what do motorcycle gangs do?

I guess the answer is sell drugs and punch people?

Haven’t interacted on anything more than a superficial level. 15 years ago when I was in a band and playing shows, I encountered a lot of Warlocks. 90% of the time they were awesome. That 10% of the time was coo-coo-nuts-bullshit. There were two “guards” outside of a bar I was playing a show at that looked goofy as shit to me, but I didn’t inquire and I didn’t care. They had some crazy looking dude inside at the bar and I just stayed away from all of ‘em. Never had an experience more negative than that one, but again, 90% of the time they were actually solid people to be around.

They like their hair and beards braided. Don't offer to decorate them with rubber bands because they won't care that you're a huge fan of Cpt. Lou Albano.

No personal experiences per se, but my partner has good friends whose son got briefly entangled with the HA, they ripped him off and fucked up his life a treat, not good people. But they are far from the worst gang here