Riding with Hells Angel Sonny Barger

In 1957, Sonny Barger helped found the Oakland, Calif., chapter of the Hells Angels, the outlaw motorcycle club. Barger became a leading figure of the group, which played a major cultural role in the 1960s. Barger himself appeared in Hunter S. Thompson's 1966 "Hell's Angels" and was at the disastrous 1969 concert at Altamont. Barger has been arrested more than 20 times and spent 13 years in jail.

Today, Barger, 71, lives in Arizona, where the L.A. Times' Susan Carpenter went to ride with him and talk about his sixth book, "Let's Ride: Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcycling, How to Ride the Right Way -- for Life."

Having logged more than a million miles and suffered only one serious accident, Barger is the rare rider who could write such a book with authority. In fact, "Let's Ride" is just the latest example of how he has used a marginalized form of transportation to elevate himself from troublemaker to an author who has sold hundreds of thousands of books worldwide. Leading a controversial life in his youth is clearly paying off in old age.

"I'm making a better living today than I ever have," says Barger, who was running a motorcycle shop when, a decade ago, he decided to trade on his checkered past in the bestselling memoir "Hell's Angel."

"Say what you will about the Angels," writes Carpenter, "one thing is not in dispute: their skill and devotion to motorcycling." Susan Carpenter has written extensively about motorcycles for the L.A. Times (see her Throttle Jockey stories here), so she knows of what she writes. Nevertheless, when she takes to the Arizona highways with Sonny Barger and a close-knit group of Hells Angles, she writes, "I felt fearful."

-- Carolyn Kellogg
twitter.com/paperhaus 

Photo: Sonny Barger of the Hells Angels with Susan Carpenter in Phoenix in May 2010. Credit: Susan Carpenter / Los Angeles Times

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Comments

[Ray]

Why do they need to glorify these criminals.

[casey bakerink]

criminals? have you ever met one? its pretty easy to run your mouth when you're sittin on a computer....know what your talkin about before you speak.seems to me that way to many people have been watching gangland or somethin...i have never met a nicer group of true gentlemen. need i remind people of all the charity work they do?? ya gotta take the bad with the good...but thats with ANYBODY,not just the guys that ride,etc. ugh,ignorance apalls me...

[Tom M.]

The Hell's Angels are a criminal gang, fullstop end of story.Drug running, extortion, murder etc etc. Gentlemen they are not.... Will the Los Angeles Times to be doing a ridealong with the Crips and Bloods next week??

[casey /666sweetums]

excuse me? please DO NOT correct my wording!!! we all have a right to our opinion, i say gentlemen,you say whatever...there are "bad seeds" everywhere......i could go on and on about this,but the ignorance level is raising my blood pressure...