How Gonzo fueled the creation of Outlaw Kulture: A Strange and Terrible Saga

Posted on 07. Feb, 2010 by Coyote in Entertainment

Hunter S. Thompson’s Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga is an American classic.  It, at the same time, launched the aggressive, experience based form of journalism that would come to be known as Gonzo, and helped further fuel America’s obsession with the last of the western outlaw’s…Bike gang’s.   During the writing of Thompson’s novel, the American Government was doing their own investigation into our two-wheeled hoards that roamed California in a lust for freedom.  Tales of horror at the the sight of the gangs and their frequent rides had small resort town fathers locking up daughter’s and boarding up windows.  The liquor store better have enough beer or you could bet your ass it was gonna get rolled under.  The gangs number’s were almost always highly overestimated as well as the effect of their passing through…We as Outlaws, became in a sense, caricatures of ourselves.

Thompson describes us…”like Genghis Khan on an iron horse, a monster steed with a fiery anus, flat out through the eye of a beer can and up your daughter’s leg with no quarter asked and none given; show the squares some class, give em a whiff of some kicks they’ll never know.”

This novel immortalized the early bikers and they in turn became the mold for what today has become our sub-culture and its industries.  The symbols which we use to define us as Outlaws, living and operating under our own fucking rules, just trying to get one last sip of the nectar of freedom before its been sucked dry.

This book is a must read for any body who is interested in Outlaw Kulture, filled with embellished stories of Outlaw glory and the timeless prose of one of our nation’s best writers.  I give it an enthusiastic Fuck Yeah!!!!  buy it on Amazon for $10 and give it to your kid.