The Wild Ones

He wore black denim trousers and

motorcycle boots And a black leather jacket with an

eagle on the back. He had a hopped-up cycle that took

off like a gun, That fool was the terror of Highway

101.

--Jukebox Favorite

Organizing a weekend "gypsy tour" to the tiny California mining town of Angels Camp (pop. 1,163), the Northern California chapter of the American Motorcycle Association won eager support from the Angels Camp Lions Club and police. The Lions agreed to sponsor A.M.A. races, borrowed $1,000 from the bank to pay advance costs. The police department increased its force from two officers to eight after warnings that motorcycle hoodlums sometimes dog the A.M.A. riders, sometimes get violent. (Ten years ago they almost wrecked nearby Hollister, Calif, during a three-day beer and battle orgy.) One day last week, as predicted, almost a thousand of the black-denim trouser set trailed 3,000 A.M.A. riders into Angels Camp.

The A.M.A. pitched its camp in the fair grounds just outside town. The hoodlums, their waists girdled by metal chains and their leather jackets emblazoned with gang names--Vampires, Huns, Tartars--parked their cycles on Main Street and tossed their bedrolls beside Angels Camp's bubbling trout stream. Then they took over the community. They bought all the beer in town (100 cases), buzzed over to neighboring Altaville for more, and for wine. They guzzled fast, tossed empty cans and bottles into gutters. Residents soon found drunks stretched in their doorways. A group trailed a town girl; while one yelled obscenities, the rest of the pack twirled waist chains menacingly to discourage interference. Three of Angels Camp's four bars shut down; merchants decided to close early. Then came action. Flashing down the Main Street hill with muffler throbbing, a long-haired youngster wheeled artfully through a knot of idlers, snatched a can of beer on the fly. Hundreds of daredevils kicked their starters, ready to meet his challenge.

"You're Dead." One motorcyclist roared down Main Street with a wine-swilling companion on his shoulders; another stood on the saddle of his speeding motorcycle and drained a bottle. Others spaced beer cans along the street, wove in and out on their cycles in an impromptu slalom race; soon the steeliest of the girls stood beside the cans as markers. An Angels Camp policeman darted into the street to pick up the beer cans, retreated amid hoots and catcalls when a cyclist buzzed him. Other gangs organized drag races, reached 50 m.p.h. from standing starts. Some settled for simple horseplay. One doughty fellow teased his friends with a mop until they charged him with chains, beat his face bloody and banged his head against the pavement. "Get up and you're dead," said a buddy, who kicked him in the groin and slouched off.

Along the streets more bodies were piling up. Drunken riders lost control, pitched off on their heads and lay still. Outside Angels Camp a girl riding behind her husband was killed when he slammed into a gasoline tanker. Two hoodlum outriders headed toward the fair grounds, the A.M.A. territory. They charged a formation of six A.M.A. riders just topping a rise in the road. All eight crunched together in a pile of twisted metal and spinning wheels. When the wheels slowed, two of the eight were dying. Carried to an ambulance with his foot sheared off, A.M.A.'s Richard Casparian, 25, watched a leather-jacketed form lifted in beside him. "You put him in here with me," spat Casparian weakly, "I'll kill him."

Get Out of Town. At that point Angels Camp and the A.M.A. both had had enough. A.M.A. members volunteered to clean out the town. Police Chief Joe Spinelli refused, instead persuaded them to cancel a scheduled parade. Spinelli telephoned the Calaveras County sheriff for reinforcements, moved his seven men to the town's edge to join arriving officers in a show of force. The power play was effective. Hoodlums sprawling along Main Street found themselves suddenly pinned between 30-odd policemen walking quietly into town from the south and 14 carloads of state highway patrolmen rolling in from the north. The cops wrote 300 tickets for defective motorcycles and improper licenses, arrested all who protested, quickly jammed the tiny ivy-covered Angels Camp jail with 23 prisoners.

In the face of such action, hooligan bravado collapsed. The gangs packed bedrolls, hid jackets to prevent identification, whined their way past police checkpoints, and rolled quietly into the darkness. With relief, Angels Camp watched them depart.

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