Town Gears Up for Biker Rally

HOLLISTER, Calif. —  Ever since a deadly Nevada casino shootout between rival motorcycle gangs in late April, a high-noon atmosphere has been building in this Central California farm town where the two gangs are expected on the Fourth of July.

Questions have surfaced that seem incongruous in these bucolic surroundings. Will the Mongols invade? Will the Angels retaliate? What will it mean for the lucrative Hollister Methodist Church pancake breakfast?

“I’m worried that the potential for trouble is high,” said San Benito County Sheriff-Coroner Curtis Hill.

Some here see the sheriff as a brave sentinel and others as a wet blanket tossed on this town’s biggest party.

Since it started five years ago, the Fourth of July weekend Hollister Independence Rally has annually attracted thousands of motorcycle club members--packs of leather-clad men and women astride growling Harleys. Most are harmless weekend enthusiasts. But a few are the self-proclaimed “one-percenters” from criminally linked outlaw motorcycle clubs.

Based on the town’s historic role in inspiring the famous Marlon Brando biker movie “The Wild One,” the three-day rally has become a huge production, doubling San Benito County’s 56,000 population. Stalwart civic groups such as the Rotary Club and the Methodist church enthusiastically pitch in, using biker largess to fund Little League teams and old-age programs.

But in light of the April 27 shootout between Mongols and Hells Angels motorcycle bands in Laughlin, Nev., people here are wondering if tiny Hollister has made a pact with the devil. In nearby Ventura County, after all, two biker meets were recently canceled.

“It makes me a little edgy that nobody in the community was asked if we wanted to give up our town for three or four days,” said Rick Jennings, a retired San Jose firefighter who lives here. “Meanwhile, the Laughlin episode tells us that something like that could happen here.”

It is one thing, said Jennings and others, to have their town invaded by hordes of middle-aged weekend bikers--Mild Ones--with bulging pockets.

It would be another matter entirely, they said, if a new generation intent on revenge arrived, packing automatic weapons.

Three men--two Mongols and a Hells Angel--died in the April shootout at Harrah’s Casino. Another Hells Angel was gunned down on the highway leaving town. Sixteen people were injured in the casino melee.

Since then, biker events have been held in Northern California and Nevada without serious incidents.

No Mongols were among the 7,000 leather-garbed participants at the June 7-9 Redwood Run Motorcycle Rally outside Garberville, north of San Francisco. Violence was also avoided in Elko, Nev., after city officials in that traditionally firearm-friendly community took the unprecedented step of banning weapons in the downtown area for the June 21-23 motorcycle jamboree, attended by 5,000 bikers.

However, Elko Police Chief Clair Morris reported one tense scene in which 50 uniformed officers surrounded three dozen bikers involved in a bar fight after a performance by a band named 38 Special.

In Phoenix, police are investigating possible gang connections to the June 11 slaying of a Hells Angels member, wearing his club regalia, from Ventura County outside a local bar. “It could be fallout,” Phoenix Police Sgt. Lauri Williams told reporters who asked about the possible Laughlin connection.

Hollister rally organizers seem fairly confident that the Laughlin episode will not be repeated here.

“We are right on schedule,” said rally committee staffer Ellen Brown. She said three Hells Angels chapters plan to operate booths at the rally, selling biker paraphernalia.

But law enforcement officials are anxious about reports that Mongols plan to crash the Hells Angels-dominated party.

With tensions building between the two motorcycle clubs, the potential for a showdown is such that Sheriff Hill said more than 100 state and federal outlaw-motorcycle-gang specialists, twice the normal number for the event, are planning to attend as observers.

He said he has added more surveillance cameras to the main intersections. The Police Department also brings in 40 officers from nearby law enforcement agencies just for the event.

The Hollister City Council enacted crowd-control measures, including one prohibiting the display of female breasts (except those belonging to nursing mothers). The council also banned glass containers (except for baby bottles) in the four-block downtown area reserved for the rally.

Meanwhile, the Mongols’ and Hells Angels’ Web site chat rooms are full of messages inciting the two groups to continue their open warfare.

The friction surfaced about two years ago when the upstart Mongol group, whose “patron saint” is the 12th century warrior Genghis Khan, began opening chapters in traditional Hells Angels territory, including Oakland and Hollister.

“Never forget those who died for the Mongol Nation,” wrote one supporter from San Jose. “Remember, brotherhood is forever. Never let anyone take your kindness for weakness.” Such talk has local lawmen concerned.

“You have to wonder when the next shoe is going to fall,” said Hollister Police Capt. Bob Brooks, an 18-year veteran. “I think we are fooling ourselves to think that they took care of things in Laughlin. Something will happen in the future. Will it be in Hollister?”

Rally organizers say the authorities are being alarmists.

“We have more trouble at our local rodeo parade,” said Independence Rally Committee marketing director Mark Maxwell, who helped found the event in 1997. “More fights, more drunken incidents. More general problems.”

Tooling into town on bikes that cost up to $25,000 each, the visitors, Maxwell estimated, spend an average of $350 on food and lodging during their stay, producing $5 million to $8 million in income for the local tax rolls, which amounts to about $200,000 in tax revenue.

Maxwell contends that the visiting bikers have too much invested, too much respect for the town and too many miles on their personal odometers to make any trouble here.

“This is a whole different phenomenon here,” he said. “These people are just buying an image as little outlaws for the weekend.”

The outlaw image has been much cultivated since the first Independence Rally in 1997, which was held on the 50th anniversary of what has become known as the Hollister Incident.

In the years just after World War II, California became a magnet for weekend motorcycling, popular with returning servicemen, many of whom had learned to ride bikes in the military. The July 4, 1947, a motorcycle race outside Hollister was attended by 4,000 people, including members of a badly behaved motorcycle club called the Boozefighters.

At the 1947 races, a few Boozefighters, true to their name, got very drunk, jumped the curb and rode their motorcycles into Johnny’s Bar on Hollister’s main drag. One Boozefighter was arrested for attempting to pour alcohol into a bus radiator.

Mostly, it was about “partying and playing. There wasn’t a riot, nobody got raped in the streets and nobody burned the town down,” one Boozefighter veteran recalled on the club’s Web site.

The 1947 revelry was captured in a famously staged Life magazine photograph showing a loutish male rider swilling beer from a bottle on a parked Harley roadster, a sea of empties around his front wheel. The picture inspired a fictional Harper’s magazine short story by Frank Rooney. The short story, in turn, inspired the classic 1953 film “The Wild One,” starring Brando.

Evocative of the contemporary rivalry between the Mongols and the Hells Angels, the movie depicted a split between two motorcycle gangs, the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club headed by the Brando character, Johnny, and the Beetles led by Chino, a loathsome character played by Lee Marvin.

The film carried a disclaimer that would be endorsed enthusiastically by some Hollister residents: “This is a shocking story that could never take place in most American towns--but it did in this one. It is a public challenge not to let it happen again.”

Thus the “outlaw” biker image was born, earning Hollister the right--nearly half a century later--to dub itself the “Birthplace of the American Biker.” Maxwell said he expects 80,000 people to attend this year’s rally. Cherise Tyson, owner of Johnny’s Bar, the unofficial center of the biker rally, said she has to hire 32 additional employees, including seven bouncers, to handle the huge crowds of bikers.

“Over a five- to six-day period, I do three months’ worth of business,” said Tyson, who describes her clientele as “the nicest people you’ll ever meet and the biggest tippers in the world.” Another enthusiastic rally supporter is the Rev. Ardyss Golden, pastor of the Methodist church. Since the first rally in 1997, the church has hosted a $6 all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast.

Golden said that last year the church “cleared about $7,000 in three days” from the breakfast, by far its biggest source of money for charity projects.

A gentle Nebraska native, the minister also participates in the annual blessing of the bikes at the local Catholic church. She said some Hells Angels even attend religious services. As for the events in Laughlin and their potential violent spillover into Hollister, Golden said she is not concerned. “We are a church,” she said. “We would welcome even the Mongols if they came. God’s love is also for the bad guys.”