Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was a Hells Angels Biker — Here’s Why I Walked Away | Jason Logan

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Jason Logan traded a firefighter’s uniform for a Hells Angels vest — but the price of brotherhood went far deeper than he ever imagined. Growing up in California, Jason was obsessed with motorcycles and adrenaline. He spent 12 years as a California firefighter, often battling wildfires side-by-side with prison inmates. But after burning out physically and mentally, he left the fire service in search of belonging, brotherhood, and purpose. That search led him into one of the world’s most infamous outlaw motorcycle clubs — the Hells Angels. Inside the club, Jason lived a life most people only hear rumors about. In this episode, he reveals what it’s really like inside the Hells Angels, breaks down the politics, rules, and hierarchy of club life, opens up about the mental health struggles members quietly face, explains how rivalries with other motorcycle clubs actually work, and shares the moment he knew he had to walk away. #HellsAngels #BikerLife #OutlawBiker #MotorcycleClub #TrueCrimePodcast #FormerBiker #MCCulture #RedemptionStory Thank you to BLUECHEW for sponsoring this episode: Visit https://bluechew.com/ and use promo code LOCKEDIN at checkout to get your first month of BlueChew & pay five bucks for shipping. Connect with Jason Logan: https://www.automotoentertainment.com/patched-podcast?utm_source=ALL+SOCIALS&utm_medium=Socials&utm_campaign=Coming+Soon&utm_id=PATCHED+-+Preview&utm_content=Show+Preview&fbclid=PAZnRzaAN1ocpleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp1Go2GqfRYAFTPpblGcvsdVRX7ZAXSCi92cNZ07bNKXUDTWizNvPLhwCo6BY_aem_0JdkF66dom5NOKKTDPj8Ig Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Shop Locked In Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Wild Club Stories to Start the Episode 01:10 Meet Today’s Guest 03:00 Growing Up & First Love for Motorcycles 05:20 Becoming a Firefighter: Purpose & Calling 08:10 Inside the Firehouse: Risk, Trauma & Brotherhood 13:10 The Truth About California Wildfires (Causes & Politics) 17:00 Working Alongside Inmate Fire Crews 19:20 Brotherhood, Loyalty & Life in the Flames 22:40 How He Joined a Motorcycle Club (The Reality vs The Myth) 28:10 Violence, Rivalries & Why the Public Gets It Wrong 36:30 Federal Pressure & How Clubs Get Targeted 42:00 How Club Rivalries Really Start & the Cost of Loyalty 51:30 Mental Health, Identity & Life Inside the Club World 01:01:00 Can Biker Culture Ever Be Unified? 01:12:00 Leaving the Hell’s Angels: What Actually Happened 01:18:00 Lessons, Regret & What He’d Tell His Younger Self 01:25:00 Advice for Anyone Thinking About Joining a Club Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Find them at your local Kroger in the creamer aisle. He belined it and hooked it at like 100 miles an hour chasing back after them. Maybe he was assuming we were going to follow. We didn't even know what it was about. By the time we caught up to him, he had a hole in the side of his neck and he was gone. How did you transition from firefighter to joining a motorcycle club? These guys infiltrate the clubs. That's their fucking job.

They're getting paid. No one's paying us to be in the club. There's not money being pushed across the table from person to person. The club costs your money every time you turn around. Do you know how these motoriansians? cycle club rivalry is genuinely actually even started. Some of the shit that we went through, we just know we can have the, we can just talk about it and we just laugh and we just know that like, we know what you went through.

We know what you have inside of you. We know what the grit that you have. Jason Logan fought fires alongside prison inmates for 12 years, then walked away from it all and became a Hells Angels biker where it nearly broke him mentally. Jason, welcome to Lockton, man. Thanks so much for coming out here and spend the weekend with us. Hey, we appreciate, I appreciate you having me. The Patch podcast is excited to be involved with us.

Yeah, I already had 50% of you guys on. I had Mooch and now there's you, which is so cool. And I think did Mooch was the one that connected us originally? Oh, no, I think George actually connected us. Oh, George. Yes. Okay, George Christie. Awesome.

Oh, so fairly recently. Fairly recently. Okay. Awesome. Yeah, Mooch is a great guy. He was sitting because I used to have the chairs reversed it and we just redid the studio. He was in this chair right here. He had done another podcast and then he was like, oh, I'll do yours.

And it wasn't even playing. And we sat there and it was great. Yeah, Mooch has got a great heart. You know, he thinks a lot about the culture and, you know, all the guys and, you know, and he really means well. So like whenever he's talking and we're discussing things and we have a guest on, you can just see the genuineness of like, there's a, there's a concern and I want to make sure we're helping these guys, you know? So like, I really appreciate that. That was kind of the whole reason why I wanted to do this with Mooch is because I knew that he had the background. that he did in, you know, helping people already.

Yeah. And he also kind of like who he is as a person puts down that kind of cliche of or of what people think of bikers that they're maybe not that smart or, um, or just all bravado. But he is very humble and super intelligent. Out of all the bikers I've interviewed, they've all been very, very smart. You know, no one's been dumb. Yeah. And oh, and like when you look at mooch, you see tattoos all over his face, you know, all over body and I you know for me I've got tattoos everywhere except for my face but it's like that

stereotypical like what's this guy going to say and why are we going to listen to it you know what I mean I mean maybe maybe the only thing that he's good for is beating somebody up in a parking lot right but like he is thinking about the he was always thinking about the people that he was involved with you know I mean and that that to me is like speaks volumes about your character you know and that's it's huge where do you grow up Jason I grew up in Newbury Park, California. It's a little town like 35, 40 minutes north of Los Angeles. What was that like growing up there?

Very, very easy, you know, like very blessed to have grown up there. No issues, you know, no, no street gangs, no, no homeless people or drugs, you know, around like basically almost kind of in the country, but not, you know what I'm saying? So like, and, you know, growing up in those. the late 70s, early 80s out there. It was a very peaceful time, you know, not to mention that the studios were kind of like filming in that area still. There was a lot of ranches that were still around, but yet there was a pretty good-sized town. Yeah, I have no complaints about my childhood or where I was raised. And like when people trip out, they're like, how did a guy from Newbury Park become a member of the Hells Angels motorcycle club? And so, yeah, I start to think about that too.

I go, it's pretty interesting, right? Because like, know, there weren't Hells Angels riding down my street or in my neighborhood, you know, so we had, I had to figure out how to meet these guys. And yeah, so like I'm, I'm pretty blessed to have grown up where I grew up. Were you fascinated by motorcycles at a young age? Yes. Like, I remember being in Santa Barbara and with my parents and we were little kids and we're walking down State Street in Santa Barbara. It's like the main drag. And my dad starts talking to this, this kind of like, what I'd call like an old timer, right, from an old biker. And they're sitting on the bench and we're having ice cream.

And this guy's, you know, like, I think his nickname was probably chopper or something like that at the time. But I'm like, your nickname is chopper. Like, you just look like you're out of a fucking, you're out of a book. You know, it's like, is this even real? And I just remember like that and then seeing motorcycles on the highway and of course, growing up in Ventura County, you knew about George Christie and you knew about the club. in Ventura. You didn't know about very many other clubs because we were kind of like isolated to that. You know, really predominantly Hell's Angels and only Hells Angels were in the Ventura County area.

So that's what I grew up around. I grew up always fascinated by that. Got my first tattoo at the chop that George owned, the Inc House on Main Street in Ventura. And I just remember like seeing him out front and saying like, wow, there's fucking George Christie. You know what I mean? Like, and I remember that they had a flyer. I was 19 years old. They had a flyer. It was the club's 50 year anniversary party. And it was being held at the Ventura Clubhouse.

And the flyer was in the tattoo shop. So all I could think of was like, I'm going to be there to see them come in for that party. And I remember standing out front on the fucking street as the PAC came in and just thinking like, man, here comes the fucking baddest of the bad fucking riding up from God knows where they came from. And they're just all coming into this. clubhouse to have a weekend, a weekend party. And I didn't know anything about the club at that time, right, except for like, wow, hells angels, the patch, you know, the movies, all the stuff that you saw in the media. I didn't know anything about the real club, you know, then. So that was like my first introduction into wanting to be around it or fascinated by it. But I still had to say to myself,

I got a good job. And I have, I've got other goals in mind. I want to, you know, buy a house, have a family. Like that, I wasn't going to, I wasn't going to just go after being a biker. You know, that was going to come secondary to me getting some stuff accomplished first, right? So I didn't, I didn't get into the club for, I'd say, another 12 years, basically. You know, like you asked before, I went to become a fireman for the state of California and fought wildland fires for almost 10 years. And that was a great job.

And I fucking loved it and had a great group of guys that I worked with. And I still talked to this day, a group of them. And like some of the most fun I had in my 20s was running up and down mountains, chasing fires and falling down cliffs and all that stuff with chainsawsing your hand. And, you know, at night, it would just be like a glowing, you can't even imagine what it's like at night when the whole, a whole mountainside's on fire. And you're up along the side of it, you know, trying to figure out how you're going to get this from moving forward. or are you going to put it out or what's going to happen. But those are some of the greatest times in my 20s was fighting fires. Did you do that right after high school? Not right after high school, but a couple years later. Like I went to a fire academy in Santa Maria, and that's where I met one of my good friends who worked for Cal Fire or CDF at and he helped me get into that to the unit where he was at.

And that's someone I still talked to this day. I mean, the guys I worked with and they're now battalion chiefs and fire captains and, you know, paramedics and they're still on the job. I'm the only guy that left and said, I'm going to go do my own thing. And so when we get together, they're always like, Jason, you were always trying to figure something else out. And I miss that too. You know, I miss the guys, the camaraderie, but I just knew that it wasn't that it wasn't for me. I wasn't for it to be long term for that. And I think back, like, some of the guys that I worked for, and I probably gave them some headaches for sure

because I was so headstrong on doing my own thing all the time, you know. As much as I'm a team player, I still always want to try to figure something out, you know, common sense-wise, like how you could do something differently, right? So there's that. But, like, I cherish those days and the time I had with those guys and the people I met along the way. That was a great time of my life.

Why did you decide to become a firefighter in the first place? You know, I was doing construction since I was very young. And so, like, I knew I didn't really necessarily want to do construction forever, although that's what I do now. So I wanted to try something that wasn't just going to say, like, I'm just going to go and become an electrician, you know, or like, I'm just going to go and I didn't want to pigeonhole myself to do something. And I knew I wanted to do public service. I like helping out. So firefighting was the best thing for me in that. And I knew I was physically, I could handle the job.

And it is a physical job. And the more, the better shape you're in, the more fun you have with it. I mean, if you're not in shape, running up and down mountains is not what you want to be doing. So, you know, and there's guys that you're out there with and they're not in the greatest shape. But guess what? They give it, they give it their all. And that's all it care about. So, yeah, firefighting was a great gig, for sure.

How did your parents react to that career, Troy? they they you know they thought it was a very cool job to get into they worried sometimes when they'd hear that like fires were breaking down were on fires that are like 60 80 hundred thousand acres although those fires were the most safe in my opinion because by the time you get there and it's 50 60 thousand acres you're already doing us like a perimeter you know you're not like running into the center of it the fires that you don't hear about on the news the five acres the 10 acre, the 15 acre fires and grass woodlands on people's ranches that you'll never hear about. Those are the ones we are running after and trying to put out as fast as possible.

And those are the ones where a mistake can kill you. But as far as like a big campaign fire, it's usually just a lot of like surround and drown type situations. You know what I mean? Surround and drown meaning surround it and throw as much water on as you can and try to get it to mitigate itself basically. You know what I mean? but the most fun was on the small fires for sure. So how do you feel about the fire department getting so much blame for the fires in California this last year or earlier this year?

I think that they've been they've been so constricted on the old ways. They used to be able to control fires, you know what I mean? They used to do burns over the wintertime that they're no longer allowed to do because the California EPA, like the air air pollution control commission. And, you know, like I was on a fire in California. Catalina in 2007, a year before, they had taken all the goats off the island and those goats were keeping the brush mitigated, right, by eating it all. They took them off because they wanted to have a comeback to its natural habitat. Well, hey, nine to 12 months later, natural habitat gets

overgrown and the whole island was on fire. Everyone had to get evacuated. We came on. We, you know, put the fire out. The town came back. They were super happy and very, very gracious to all of us. But things like that just progressed with the fire department. And here we are today, right? You saw the Palisades fire and the fire in Glendale, Burbank area that burned all those homes. It's, I talked to guys that were still on the job and they're like, Jason, that was a fire condition that they've never even seen before. You can't prepare for that. I mean, you're talking about like a fire storm of fire embers blowing like a tornado through you and around you.

And you don't have enough water to put that out, right? So they're in a lose-lose battle until the state, until the federal government steps in. Or however, to do all the proper tree clearing, to do the brush control, to go back to the dozer lines on the top of ridge lines, like how we used to have it when we grew up, you'd be driving down the road. You could see a dozer trail basically on the top of a ridge line because that would prevent a fire from crossing over that mountain into the next. valley, right? But that's all gone now because they want everything to grow and be natural. Well, the longer you let it grow, the worse it gets. How did the majority of these fires get started? You know, a lot of them, a lot, arson is maybe, I'd say maybe 30 to 40 percent of it. But truthfully, it's electrical lines. It's people that are working with tools outside and it sparks.

It could be a welder trying to weld a fence. And he's got his mask down, but he doesn't notice that the fire kicks off next to him from a spark. And by the time he gets his mask up and looks and that fire has already spread 150 feet, you know what I mean? You can't chase that down physically if you don't have the right tools. So yeah, those things get going and they get out of control. And wind, you know, has a huge, huge effect. You know, there is no humidity in California.

So like you're talking about very dry conditions, a light breeze, you know, and boom, you've got yourself a raging inferno. This episode is sponsored by Blue Chew. Fellows, let's talk about stepping up when the moment calls for it. Blue Chew is the original service that delivers chewable tablets designed to help you show up with confidence and put in real work. The kind of performance that turns her into the one asking, so what was that? It's discreet, it's convenient, and it's a kind of upgrade that makes your downstairs start acting like it has a personal trainer, a hype man, and a five-year career plan. I'm telling you, last time I used one of Blue Shoes' tablets, my man below, didn't just wake up, he clocked in.

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Oh, yeah, lots of fires with inmates. Are our inmate crews throughout all of California. And those guys are very skilled and very tough. You know, obviously they're there because for certain reasons, but I appreciated to have them on a fire every single time they showed up. You're talking about 14 men getting off of a freaking bus, not maybe necessarily wanting to do that work that they have to do, but once they put their tools on the ground,

they are fucking kicking ass. And it is a huge help. I mean, you know, because we're in places like, let's say we parked the engine at a cul-de-sac or up at the top of a road. We could be five to seven thousand feet into a slope,

into a canyon with a hose line. And we might have to go even further than that. We have the hose can't reach, set up pumps and all that stuff to get the water out there. But we're like a mile in. And there is no access. There's no,

you can't get certain equipment into these things. It's all done by hand. So, like, we're literally brushing and clearing and, you know, and cutting line and, you know, climbing up steep, steep hills and going down into canons all by hand with hand tools. And so, like, those guys are a huge help for all those fires. Did you find that they're very serious? They take the role seriously? Yeah, they take it serious.

But, like, at the same time, we had many of cool nights on fires where I talked to these guys. and like, you know, they split the inmates up where guys from the south, they put them into the north. They put guys from the north into the south, right? So I worked kind of like in the central area of California off, you know, right below the foothills of Yosemite above Fresno. So you'd have a mixed bag. And sometimes we'd be on fires and those guys would be like, hey, where are you guys,

where do you guys from? They're like, oh, I'm from Culver City. And you'd say like, hey, you guys ever been to Tito Sacco's? And like three guys would be like, oh, fuck yeah, man, I know Tito Sacco's. So you had like, we could always relate with them and have stories. and like, you know, just kind of talk because, hey, they're helping us. I consider them to be firefighters. You know, they're fighting the fire.

They're not getting paid for it, but they're fighting fires. And they put a lot of effort into that and take a lot of pride in it, too. What did working as a firefighter teach you about brotherhood? So learning how to deal with the group, right, and how to manage different personalities is like your first step in that whole group, that whole environment, right? If you're on an engine with four guys, you're learning how those, how you can live with these four guys, right? And as it gets bigger in, you get to an eight or 16 or 24, 24 man group,

you're learning how to adjust to other personalities. And that is what I feel like is brotherhood's all about. You have to be able to accept the fact that this man next to you has strength and weaknesses and you have to appreciate those strengths and you have to understand those weaknesses and balance them out with your strengths possibly, right? Or just to understand that like not everyone's, not everyone's perfect. And you need this person to accomplish this goal.

You need that extra set of hands. So you can't, you can't think that like everyone's going to be exactly like you. You have to adjust your group to have all different facets. And that's what I think that brotherhood is. Like I always try to describe it like, let's say you have a family of eight boys. Well, you're going to have the old.

oldest and the youngest are going to be completely different, right? Because, like, we're talking about a seven-year gap minimum in that distance, right? You have to understand that, like, the top, the bottom three kids are going to be close and the top three kids are going to be close. And the two in the middle, you know, might be close and they might be out in left field or, you know, whatever it is, but you have to work together, understanding that there's all different types within the same family, there are going to be different types of people. And so that's the same thing with, like, the motorcycle clubs with the fire department, you have to understand that, yes, we're brothers, but we are going to have disagreements. We are going to have good times. We're going to have bad times. But we all know

that we have a common goal. And we all know we have a common respect because we do that same thing and we appreciate how we do it. That makes sense. Yeah. Were you expecting to see or find that same level of brotherhood in the Hells Angels? I, when I first got into that, when I first sought out the Hells Angels, I was expecting it to be tighter than the fire department. That was, that was what I, kind of why I was searching for that was because in the fire department, you're still still dealing with the fact that someone's worried about their paycheck, right? So they're doing a job based on the fact that they know they're going to get paid. And when you're trying to advance in your career, now you take out the thing of like, well, I got to make sure I help so and so and so and so and so because

we started from scratch together. Well, now you're thinking about this is my career and they're not paying my bills. So I've got to get to that next level. However, I have to get there, right? And I'm not saying people are stepping on each other, but I'm saying you start to lose the team and it becomes individuality when that starts to get into play. I knew that the hell's angels, you're not getting paid. You have to want to be there. Right. So there's a different level of, there's a different level when people are volunteering their time or just have a want to be somewhere when they know they're getting nothing out of it except for that camaraderie, right? So I thought for sure that it was going to be a tighter thing in the club. How did you transition from firefighter to joining a motorcycle club?

Well, first of all, just telling people that you're going to join a motorcycle club, especially that. the hells angels are one of the top five and i hate to say top five or give it a tear or any like that but it just kind of it is what it is you know and you have to take into consideration that i appreciate every single motorcycle club out there whether it's brand new or it's been around for 80 years they all have a place and they're all part of the whole culture right everyone in my opinion is equal um because we need everybody in in this whole in this whole thing that we got going on we need everybody, right? So you can't, you can't, I, I am friendly and, and acknowledge every single person on two wheels, even if they're not in a club. I'll be riding down the highway and someone rides by,

like, I get upset if I don't see them at the last minute, I barely get the wave or something out. I go, damn, I feel bad about that. Because to me, every acknowledgement that you do can come back to help you. You know what I'm saying? So I'm sorry, what was the question again? About how you transition from firefighter to, uh, join the health. Yeah. So like, you know, transitioning from the from fight and fires to being in the club um had to have big discussion with my family you know because like you know obviously people were like wait a minute you were a fireman and now you're going to become a hell's angel i mean i'll tell you a funny story so i'm in the club might have been my first year as a member i go up we're riding back from sonoma and that's a

long-ass ride to get back to southern california from up there i mean it took all day like 12 hours we stopped at the Ventura club out, spent the night the next morning we get up. We're like, let's go to breakfast before we split off and go home. We split off. We go to breakfast. We're making a left at a left turn signal arrow. We wait. The arrow doesn't go because the bikes aren't triggering the thing to go.

A cop pulls behind us, right? And we're like, okay, well, here we go. We're in Ventura, first of all. And so we make a left, you know, they pull us over. Basically, we're at gunpoint. You know what I mean? Just for making a left-hand turn, get pulled over at gunpoint. There's two other members with me.

And they get my license. And I just can remember this to today. The officer grabs my license, looks at it, and sees that I have a class B license, which is to drive a fire engine. And he's like, why do you have this class B license on here? And I'm like, because I used to drive a fire engine. He got so fucking pissed. He was like enraged.

by the fact that I would gone from the fire department to become a member of the club. And so, yes, it was not an easy transition, you know, because people looked, you know, it's obviously a whole different thing, right? But yeah, that's just one of the many stories I have from transitioning from the fire department into the club life. And it's, it's, I don't, I, I, I love the club and I miss the club and I love all the guys in the club and all the clubs. I have connections with people all over North America and I cherish those. And I met a lot of great people in both the fire department and the club. And I think there's a lot of

similarities between these men. A lot of these guys want to do great stuff for people. They would basically step in front of a car to protect the child. You know what I mean? So I just think that the public looks at it two different ways, right? Here's the heroes and here's the villains. right and depending on who you are in the public right we could also be looked at as we're the last robin hoods you know riding down the highway at night being the last guys who are who are truly free you know what i'm saying i mean think about how many people wish they could own a motorcycle right so many guys i run into man i wish i had a bike i wish i could ride a bike now that's that's that's awesome if you could just take that right there and put that into your thoughts and say how fortunate i am

just to own a motorcycle, right? Now, take the fact that you're in a motorcycle club, and I don't care what club it is. Like I said before, all of them have their purpose and all of them are important. Now you're in a motorcycle club, and people are like, I can't even imagine what that's like.

So now you only do you have a motorcycle, but now you are in a motorcycle club. Do you know what people in your circle in the outside looking in? You're living in a fantasy land to them. You're somewhere on another plane. If people could just realize how fortunate they are to be in that situation, that alone I feel like could drop the tension down amongst the clubs.

Just understanding that how special it is that you have two legs, that you have two hands, that you have the ability to get on a bike, that you have the ability to afford a motorcycle, and ride it around your neighborhood, right around the city, right around your country. I mean, like, all those cool things that people dream about, we get to do. And I feel like we take it for granted, hugely. And if we could take a moment to reset and say, we should be so fortunate that we can do this,

we really need to look at that. That's how. What do you think made people so divided over motorcycle clubs? You're just saying that there's people that love them, there's people that hate them, Was it one act that you think villainized it? I think that, you know, if you look back, like when you talk to the guys who had been in the clubs for a long time, right? When they first got in the clubs in the 60s, they weren't allowed to go to, like,

certain motels. This is why they went to campgrounds and they camped on the side of the road. And that's what that whole thing started because they weren't wanted at places, right? Things kind of transitioned over the years. And then, you know, guys came into a little bit more money because guys had to have jobs. they couldn't just like nomad couched around for the for the rest of their lives and guys stayed in the clubs longer in the beginning guys were in the clubs maybe three years five years seven years if they were in for 10 years it's like unheard of but a few guys started to stay in for 10 15 20 years and

that's kind of how things have gone nowadays right guys stay in the club for they could be in the club for five years they could be in the club for 50 years you know it's just a lot more longevity thing And I think that just as things evolved and incidents happened, violent incidents happened, the public at first was like, well, that's what we expected from them, right? Like these are, these are outlaws, you know, and like, hey, something happens on a highway or between two clubs. It gets in a newspaper article. People read it. They're like, wow, this is exactly what we see when we see them on the highway, right?

and other people fantasize saying, God, these are like, these are like cowboys in the middle of the street having a shootout, you know, and they might think that that's cool as hell. Regardless, none of it's good for us as far as the culture is concerned. All those articles, all the stuff online nowadays, anything that's showing a violent act is not good for the clubs. And it's hard for,

you cannot tell people not to put that stuff out there. You cannot sway them from doing it, but it is not good. good for us. We need we need the public to be on our side. We need the public to be on a jury. We need the public to buy our merchandise. We need the public support in general. You know what I mean? So every time something like that happens, it pushes people back because people worry. Now, this is another reason why there are so many clubs nowadays. It's because these violent acts that have happened over the last 50 years between clubs, whether it's in the Northeast, the Northwest, it's in the

Midwest, it's in Southern California, wherever it's at, Florida. These guys who are coming around motorcycle clubs nowadays say, I don't want to deal with the politics of the big clubs. So I'll stay out of the big clubs and we'll start our own club, right? And I get that. You don't want to be involved in the politics. But guess what? All these small clubs are starting to have their own politics.

And they don't understand that there's no greener grass. Anytime you start an organization, there is going to be green. groups within the group that are the doers. There's going to be guys that are waiting to have, waiting to be told what to do. There are guys that are like enthusiastic about riding a motorcycle. There's guys that are enthusiastic about working on engines. There's guys that are like, hey, I just, I just want to be part of this. And what do I need to do the bare minimum? And that's fine. I mean, everyone's got their own thing, right? But back to what you said about, like, the public. If we could figure this out and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

get to a normalcy within the group where we're not having these altercations at gas stations, I feel that the public will come back in abundance. If they knew that it was safer to come to an event, to support a club, to put on a club t-shirt, in support of that club, things would get back to a profitable mainstream. And until we kind of figured that whole thing out, and there's many levels of like how this would even work. And I always say like I think about the shit all the time. Like it can't just be two clubs trying to figure it out because then you left the other six to eight to ten clubs that are in that same realm out of the picture.

Everyone needs to sit down at the table and come to an agreement and come to a set of rules. We're never going to stop the violence. But guess what? We can put the knives and the guns down. You know what I mean? Those shouldn't come out unless we're protecting a woman or a child in my opinion. No one is going around trying to beat up bikers, right? We're only beating up ourselves.

People are scared of us when we go to places. They see us get off of a bike. We walk into a restaurant. Yeah, we might, yeah, sure, I guarantee we, we have great conversations with people on the road that have never seen us before. And people are like, man, I don't see what, I don't see what the big deal is. You guys are all nice. But there are people that still look from their car windows and go, watch out. So like I said, no one is.

coming after us except for ourselves. And if we could just figure out some way to, to, and I hate to preach about this or sound like that, but like I just see, I spent a lot of time with a lot of these different motorcycle clubs personally and got to know a lot of them. And I know that they're all the same. Every single club has got the same group of people, right? And they're all dealing with the same problems. And if we could get everyone together to just say, let's put the knives and the gun.

guns down. We'll slow down. We'll slow down the RICO trials. We'll slow down the deaths. We'll slow down the club, the club, the diminishing of people leaving the club because of the violence. The public will come back in droves, which will spark the sales of our merchandise, which is what we need to get people on the road and participate in the club and make things more fun for the members. Like all this stuff was starting to start coming back if we could try to figure this out. And believe me, the government has got us by the balls. Sorry if I'm going off on a tangent. No, keep going.

The government's going got us by the balls, right? They have an unlimited funds and they have an unlimited time, right? We're dealing with the fact that every single member has to go to work on Monday to pay their bills on Friday. And the club moves forward, even after an incident, we don't go back and look at it because it's too expensive to say stop what we're doing. and let's put money backwards when we have to keep moving forward with what's the next thing and what's the next thing and what's the next thing, right? So until we can actually take a break from doing all these next things and say we're going to focus all of our money right now, going backwards to take a look at how we can put this all together. And we also need one club to put the invite out

to the clubs, to the top clubs, to bring everyone to the table to focus on this for a little bit. I think if we just spent six to nine months or 12 months to try to figure this out and set up a little, set up a little bit of a parameter that I feel like, I feel like it wouldn't take very much to get back on track, to get things to wear, like, Mucci said before, like when he was in Illinois, like, riding with like three different clubs and going to three different clubhouses from major clubs, it was the most fun, right? Because we're all similar. We all, just because you have a different sweatshirt on than I have on, doesn't mean we don't have similarities. And if we could get back to that and just have an understanding that like whatever's happened in the past, it's happened in the past. And if we want to protect young guys that are on the road and protect the old timers that are out there riding by themselves and prevent any more people from losing a dad

or losing a son, then until we get to that basis, it's not going to change. The government's always going to have the upper hand. They're going to be able to swoop in on us. Every three to five years, pick a different club, focus on them, attack them with whatever they got to do, deconstruct the club, swipe the club out from all their funds and move on to the next club. And it's going to continue like that and continue like that for the next 30, 40, 50 years until we sit down. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount.

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it's just normal back to the basics? I think that we're never going to get rid of the violence, but like I said, if we got rid of the guns and knives, hey, man, you can't get in too much trouble if you're fist-a-cuffing it with somebody in a parking lot. It's up to you. It's up. No one else is in danger, right? What are they going to do?

get us on a RICO case because we fought each other in a parking lot like the old days. You know, I mean, unless somebody presses charges from one club to another club, what's going to happen there? But when people die, when people get stabbed and when people are in danger in the public because a gun went off, I mean, the list can just be thrown at you from a numerous amount of things, right? And then they can stop that entire incident and go through that entire group and get guys who have prior felonies and just add the charges up. I mean, you could have a screwdriver in your in your bag and that could be a felony. If you followed what happened in Texas in 2015 with the Waco shooting at the restaurant, ATF member infiltrates the Cossacks. With intent

takes them to a hardware store prior to going to a COC function meeting, which is a council of clubs meeting at a public place to talk about legislative information regarding the motorcycle world and regarding the motorcycle culture in Texas, right? It's a meetings that have been going on for 25 years. And all it is is to help people with like bike helmet laws and if they're being harassed by police officers, it's a legit meeting that goes on every other month all across the United States in different areas. ATF agent infiltrates the Cossacks.

Persuades these guys to stop at a hardware store. They're picking up hammers, chains, screwdrivers, anything that they think that is going to be used as a weapon because they're thinking they're getting into it with another club, right? Completely not the place for any of this stuff. But guess what? ATF agents are already waiting on a rooftop, right? You can see this if you watch the Atlantic Press video, right? People are being shot from the rooftop into a parking lot, right? So what I'm getting at is that they shut the whole thing down.

They were there. They surrounded the whole event. 177 people were loaded into buses, cell phones pitched into the trash can. Those people were away from their work and their family for four to five weeks before they got out. Can you afford to be away from work for four to five weeks? No, I can't afford to be a work for a couple days. Exactly. So like they have you, right?

They can get you. Now they also had this list of things on these people. people and it included all these weapons that they found on these guys' bikes. So not only were they persuaded to do this beforehand, but then they were trapped involved in this whole thing with a guy that they thought was a brother in their charter in their club. Imagine the mind fuck that happens with that. You think that, hey, man, we're all good together and then you find out that like, hey, he was just doing his job and hurrah America. Like, that's what's wrong with this stuff. Every, Every five to ten years, you'll hear somebody infiltrated a club.

People talk about Jade Dobbins. I'm like, get the fuck out of here with this Jay Dobbins guy. I'm sorry, but he got paid to be a fucking hang around in a prospect. That, to be a hangar around a prospect is the most grueling thing you can do to be in a motorcycle club. It is countless time. It is countless extra expense. And you're giving up, most guys give up time with their family or time taking care of their loved ones. to be a part of this, right?

You're making a huge sacrifice. Now, what's the sacrifice if you're getting paid? If that's your fucking job, right? So when people are like, oh, you know, this guy, these guys infiltrate the clubs, that's their fucking job. They're getting paid. No one's paying us to be in the club.

There's not money being pushed across the table from person to person. The club costs your money every time you turn around to make it keep moving forward, like I said. So do you think that those bikers never would have went to that hardware store if the other guy that was the undercover wasn't kind of antagonizing? Why would they have gone there? They would have gone to the meeting. They probably wouldn't have even gone to the meeting. First of all, you only send a few people to a meeting even if you send a few people from your group. They're collecting information to go back and read it at a room, right, at a meeting. You don't need to have 20 dudes show up to this thing. You bring 20 dudes to a meeting. More than likely, it's to pause. It's to, it's to posture. right and so if you're doing that you're already in the you're not already not in the right space to be doing that in my opinion like those meetings are to protect the culture it's not to freaking make it

worse and all they did all they did by showing up like that was make it worse i mean obviously something good came out of it we started the income the national coalition of motorcycle clubs after that we got a lot of clubs got together um at the same time we were we were working on save the padd the Mongols were in a huge trial to try they were after their after their licensing they were after their their patents you know all this stuff to take their patch away from them and and if anyone that was involved in that at the time knew that if we allowed the government to take away the Mongols motorcycle patch believe me we're all next we're all fucking next and like I knew that like our club the Hells

Angels has got a more protective structure because we're not connected with a pyramid right and I'll tell us to people all the time. We don't have a pyramid. So there's nobody on the top. Nobody's given down orders for anything, right, regardless of whatever it is. Nobody's given orders. Every charter is autonomous. That protects us in a big layer. But guess what? If they could wipe out all the other major motorcycle clubs, they're figuring a way to wipe us out too. And so I always said someone's got to play defense here. We can't be offense. We can't always be on the offense. We have to figure this out and be part of this culture. We can't just step aside and be like, we're the cool guys on the

block, right? Going back, because our club held such a prestigious thing in the motorcycle culture for so many years, and still does, of course, we sent a lot of guys that didn't make it into our club running because he still wanted to be in a motorcycle club to other clubs. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with that. Believe me, if you didn't make it in one and you can make it in another, do it by all means. If that's your dream to be in a motorcycle club, go find what fits for you. there's guys that are in hells angels and then become a vago there's guys that are in you know in mongles over the years that it became hells angels there it goes back and forth but none of it's really great for the culture if you know what i mean because when you send a guy when you send a

guy with a negative taste in his mouth to another group what's you going to talk about just natural if you left a company and you left it on bad terms and you went to another company and they're like hey how was it over there you think you're going to say oh everything was freaking great no the natural conversation is going to go negative right and then that negative stuff comes out and then it fuels the problems that are already there it fuels the fire right so like there's all this stuff like that's why like it's so important when we talk on the podcast about guys mental health after being in the motorcycle culture because there are so many things being thrown at you all the time how to act when you're going to your own church how to act when you're in public how to act

when you're on the road what do we do if we run into this club what do we do if we run into that club Are we at good terms with this club? If we go into this state, what do we have to worry about? If we go into that state, what do we have to worry about? Okay, so-and-so is not doing well. Okay, you know, I mean, there is so much stuff on top that you've just accepted. Being a part of this, you just accepted a whole other amount of stress in your life. And for guys getting out of the clubs and even guys that are in the clubs trying to deal with that and having no way to vent because you can't act like you're not tough.

Get what I'm saying? so these guys will push it down a lot of times, right? And then that stuff comes out later, right? And then when the clubs pulled away from them, they're alone. And then they're thinking about they go into dark places, right? If you don't have a good support system when you get out of the club, you can go into a dark spot. And so, like, I know firsthand by talking to a lot of members that have left clubs, especially after we did the podcast, they reached out to us and say, like, these episodes are getting us through bad times. and I know what they're going through.

You know what I mean? I was very fortunate. I have a wife. I have a family. I have great parents. I have a job. I have a charity organization that I started with a couple of guys. Very humbling.

And like all of that stuff balances out so that when the club's taken away from you, I had something to fall back on. Right? And I missed the club. And I missed the guys. And I missed the cause that I was involved in. and I missed the guys from the other clubs that I was involved in because we were all trying to do what was right. I was always trying to work on how can I justify being in the club if I'm not doing everything I can to keep people safe and be able to tell people that I'm trying to do good things by being a hell's angel.

You know what I mean? Like, yes, I loved riding and going to parties, but I liked going there before to help the guys get ready for the party. I like spending one-on-one time with a brother. One of the jobs I did in the club was I would set up the tattoo room every year. We do a tattoo room at the USA run. Whether it's on the West Coast or the East Coast. So when it was on the West Coast, I would help set up and plan the tattoo room, right? Being in that room while guys, members who are tattoo artists, tattooing members who are coming in to get a tattoo, the run tattoo,

and sitting there and listening to those stories when guys have two hours of one-on-one time, that is so magical. When you're amongst the whole group and you're like, let's say we're having dinner or we're at a bar or whatever like that, you don't get that, you don't get that feeling, right? So I felt very fortunate to be where I was at all the time in the club. And I have so many great relationships with guys. And like I just so fortunate to, like I said, I own a motorcycle, be able to ride that motorcycle, be able to join the club.

understand that the club I joined was the best club and the best club in the world to me and the best club for me to be a part of. And I like for people to say that are in other clubs that the club you're in is the best club in the world to you and it's the best club in the world for you to be a part of and you've got to acknowledge that.

You can't say my club's the best and your club's the worst. That doesn't get us anywhere. I've talked to guys all over the United States, bro. And I was in, I was in Mississippi at a meeting for bikers rights. And we're in a bar at a hotel bar. A guy sits next to me, plain clothes, you know, and we're not, we didn't take over these hotels. There's always, like, guests, like running around. I always thought to myself, like, these people were like, I must have booked the wrong weekend.

You know what I mean? Like, could you even imagine? You're like, show up to hotel. Here's Mongols, outlaws, hell's angels, banditos, sons of silence. People are like, what's going on? Are we about to be in another freaking skirmish, right? So we're sitting at this bar. This guy's in plain clothes.

I'm there. I got my stuff on. And he looks to me and says, hey, would you have a drink with your enemy? And I'm like, I'm, what?

Well, now you've got my attention. Like, first of all, I'm probably, I'm definitely going to engage with you, right? Because I don't look, I don't look like,

you can't talk to me. So I'm always going to engage with the public, right? This guy says this. And I said, yes, of course. And so, like, we sat there and started talking and he goes, you know, I've never, ever met a Hells Angel in person, but I've always been told that we're supposed to hate you. And I was like, oh, really? I'm like, so tell me about yourself. And he was an outlaw from, from Michigan, I believe, not Michigan. Maybe it was Milwaukee, somewhere up in the upper

north area. And he's like, I've never ever talked to her met a Hells Angel, but all I was told, is that we're supposed to hate you guys. And like, so we talked for about 45 minutes or an hour. And after that, he was, and we got the whole story of like, how did you become an outlaw? You know, he's like, well, because I met a guy. And like, that was, that was the club that was in my area. And I'm like, that's how I became Hell's Angel. I met, I knew some people.

And that was the club that was in my area. So the similarities right there of how you become a member in the club, boom. It's the same story, just mimicked throughout the country, right? how you, whether you become a member of a small club, a big club, is because you know somebody in that group and you're friends with that person, right? And that's how it all works out. So like, there is no, you're seeking out to become a member of that club because you're seeking out and hoping that you can destroy the other club.

That's not on anyone's mind. All these incidents happen because of circumstance. I'm sorry from jumping around. Yeah, you're good. Everyone rides on Sundays, right? clubs are coming back and forth from events. You know, they're going, they're going to the Harley store. They're going to an event here.

There's major freeways and everyone's on them at certain points, right? If you did an overview shot with a helicopter showing a freeway on a Sunday, you'd see freaking five different clubs or 20 different clubs going through that same freeway at certain points. It just happens to be the timing as to why you see these things happen at these gas stations and why you see these things happen on the highway. It has nothing to do with, intent intent guys aren't waiting for other guys to come by on the road to get in a problem with them it's because they happen to link up like this and then nobody knows what to do and what happens

when you don't know what to do ego machoness whatever you want to call it bravado all that stuff comes into play first right it's not like hey we should pull over and let's try to figure this out it's well, shit, someone's got to act first. And it usually goes south, right? And in that act, it just takes a second for someone to get hurt and something you can't come back from. But it's all because of some circumstance that they just linked up at the wrong point of time. And so like, back to what I was saying before, if there were some certain protocols in a place,

at least if we knew what to do when this happened, we would avoid half of it just right there. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So, sorry about it if I was going off of the original question. My grandmother slept on a futon her whole life. Lived a 96, walked every day. I thought that wisdom was lost.

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But I can just say this from all the stories that I've heard. It's usually a personal issue that gets brought to the club, right? And I don't mean like it's brought like, hey, someone says, I've got a personal problem. it's somebody has a personal problem with somebody else in a motorcycle club and because they have patches on and because it goes down guess what the whole club gets involved because you're not going to turn your brother away if he did something like that or and you're going to be very upset with the other club if something happens to that brother does that make sense yeah so it's very

it goes very quick if guys if guys were a little bit more honest about why they didn't like this person or what happened actually to why this went down at that bar, then these things could be, they could be worked out a little faster. Does that make sense? And it's hard because, like, you know, you're not going to tell somebody, you're not going to, you're not going to,

no one's going to knock somebody for, for standing up for their club. That's like the ultimate form of, of respect in the club. You stood up for your club. Someone says, go fuck yourself. Someone says, go fuck your club. You take care of business.

you're going to get that respect from everybody, right? And everyone's looking for that in the club. That is a weight that's out there. That's, it's there. Like, people don't realize that, like, that weight is reality. Like, if you don't, if you get called out to fight somebody and you don't fight, you can be out of the club. Like, all that is there, right?

And so there's a lot of pressure with that. And that goes back to why these guys are dealing with so much stuff. And that's why it is tough to be in a motorcycle club way beyond the conditions of riding on the road. It's just the whole mental thing behind it. And when these guys leave that world, trying to get back into society where you don't have to act because nobody cares about if you're standing up for yourself or if somebody says the F word, you know what I mean? how does that affect your life, right? Truthfully, it doesn't. I mean, nobody really has an enemy.

Does that make sense? You choose to have people that you don't like. But in reality, you don't have enemies. We all know where everyone's clubhouses are. We all know where these people, we know where people live. If we wanted to stop at all, it could all be stopped. If you wanted to extinguish a club, yes, you could extinguish a club. But that's not the goal, really.

the goal is to try to live in your own harmony within your own world like i said circumstances keep that from happening continuously right and it's all just real quick and boom we're set back three years we're set back five years now we're in the eyes of the government again now there's now there's a financial burden on the club now people are leaving because of the financial burden or because we're at war with another club again it's like all that stuff goes into play and we can't go backwards to look at it. And so it's continually, it's the same continual fight we've had in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the early 2000s. We're dealing with it again right now with other clubs. And it's like, and I'm not talking about the Hells Angels as being the sole person dealing with.

I'm talking about every single club in the top 10 or even the clubs in the, like, let's say, the next tier below, which I hate to say that, but like I'm just saying, like in general, if you had to specifically categorize it, they're all going through this. And it's like they don't realize that they don't stop it. We're just allowing, we're just allowing these government organizations to have another loophole

to open up another investigation, to put more money towards this, to put more money after that, to keep people off their bikes, to keep people away from the events because they get on non-association. It's a downward spiral. And like I said,

unless we take a break from it all to try to figure it out and then get back on track after we get it figured out and figure out some things, it's going to be a continual thing that's going to affect people forever. And you're going to see a lot of like, you know,

a lot of guys are going to be in the club. A lot of guys are going to be out of the club. A lot of guys are going to be sad that brothers are gone and, you know, sad that they can't, you know, can't do things. And I really feel like there's a possibility, there's a way out of it. There's a way out of it.

And like the least I can do and why I do the podcast is just to help the brothers that are out trying to, trying to get back into normalcy. And that's what Mooch and I feel is so important about the podcast, just giving the guys an outlet to talk, those that want to talk. And given the guys that don't want to talk, something to listen to. I mean, from an outsider's perspective, it doesn't seem like the rivalries could ever end so long as you have the old people teaching the new people that those are the enemies. Yeah. And it's not even like that, right? So older, older members are not saying to younger members, you need to do this or you need to do that. Remember, it's the pressure of like, I look up to this older guy and they went through all this.

So I want to mimic that in a way. And they're not asking for it. But when it comes, you step, some certain guys step up to the plate. That makes sense. And if you don't step up to the plate, what happens? Is there repercussions? Well, no, there's no repercussions. but like, you know, there's ways to avoid all that stuff.

You could be on the road and run into people and have no problems, you know, but it just depends on who's in the group on each side. You know what I'm saying? So like I said, there's many dynamics to the whole thing and there's no rule set in place. So people don't know really what to do. And that's what makes it, that's what makes it hard because you don't know if like you're going to, you make the right decision by maybe not getting into it with them or you made the right decision by getting it into with somebody.

And like, you know, things start out with words. And then they escalate quick. And so if we could keep it to words and fists, I think we would solve a lot of problems and keep a lot of people off our back. Now, will we ever keep people from infiltrating the clubs? I don't know if that's possible. You can't, you don't really know everyone all the time and everything about them. I mean, you can only, you only have so much time in the day, right?

If you have a charter of 12 to 15 guys, you don't know every single thing about every single member. You don't know what they're going through from week to week. You don't know what happened. you don't know what they might have gotten busted for that you don't know anything about like you don't know you're trusting the fact that you hope that everyone's got the same heart and mind in place thinking about the club and everyone within the group you hope but the reality of that is this life we're humans people have mistakes people you know people fuck up people people think that they're doing the right thing and it ends up not being the right thing you know it's like there's so many factors there

because it's the human condition, you know? And so, yeah, it's just, it's, it's tough, man. When you think about it, like, you could go just down a rabbit hole, just trying to, trying to put yourself in, how could you make this all, how could you make it all normal? Because none of it's normal. I mean, like, when you think about it, we're like riding off into the middle of the night, we're fucking, you know, we're going this place. We're, we're doing 700 miles in a day. None of that's normal to anybody in the public. They don't understand how you could even be on a motorcycle for over 500 miles. That's, those are just things that, like I said, going back to it, if you could just admit that you're at a level by being in these clubs and doing these things, that you're a level that most people can't even fathom. And if you could just appreciate just those basic things and understand that you're something that people look up to, take it as a win.

You don't need to go any further with it. People don't need to, people don't need to know that you beat up some guy out of freaking gas station. They just assume you beat people up at gas stations. You know what I mean? let them have the fantasy in their head. Keep the brothers safe. And the people in the clubs who have the common sense, who have the time,

who have seen all the problems, they need to be the biggest advocate for all this stuff to try to keep everyone safe and out of trouble and make sure that there's no wife that's without her husband, that there's no mom without her son, that there's, you know, like, there's nobody without their brother. you know what I mean?

Because certain people can't get over that, you know. I saw a lot of death in the fire department, you know? Worst thing I ever did was responded to a car accident. Concrete truck ran into the back of a car and crushed, crushed the back end of the car. Two parents were in the front seat alive. The two kids in the back seat were dead. and picking those two kids up and putting them onto the gurney dead, you know, in front of the people.

That was probably one of the toughest things I had to deal with until I went to the club. And then when I was in the club, I was out one night with my friend, and he was out because I was in town. And we were out of light. Seven of us, we made a left. Other guys on the other side of the street were on bikes, and there's car following them.

but they didn't have patches on and we thought to ourselves, this guy's riding around. One of the guy I was with, he be-lined it and hooked it at like 100 miles an hour chasing back after them. Maybe he was assuming we were going to follow. We didn't even know what it was about. By the time we caught up to him, he had a hole in the side of his neck and he was gone.

This is a guy who came out to be out with me, you know what I mean, to hang out with me because I was in town. So, yes, to think about could that have been avoided? Absolutely. right to think about the kind of psychological effect it has of us being together in this pack mentality like it makes me sick sometimes to think that why do we need to feel that way why do we need to why do we need to think that like we need we're larger than life that we need to take on this other stuff that that because we have our boys with us we can fucking do all the stuff who do we have anything to

fucking prove to. I walk into a bar with my stuff on, man. I'm about getting a drink and saying hi to some people, bro. I already know how people look at me. And I mean, they're wishing they were in our spots or they're wishing that we don't come next to them. That to me is plenty enough to have to never, you know, to never think that I need anything more than that. To think that all this violence could have been avoided, that these people could still be on the street, that people could be out of prison with their families. It keeps me up at night. Just thinking that it could all be fixed.

And like, like I said, it's going to take a huge reset to do that. And I hope it happens, man. I mean, like, I think about it a lot. When an incident like that happens, it's blasted all over the news. And it makes the motorcycle club even from an onlookers perspective, even more dangerous than what it might actually be. Yes, absolutely. So I take it like that. The public, they start to less people come to your events because they're worried that like, hey, there might be an altercation.

You know what I mean? Like at the event. So you lose, you lose your participation at your public events. Let's say we go to trial. Now you got people on the jury that are like, well, I used to think, but now I saw that article and they must be, you know, they must be bad, right? So you're talking about guys not getting any breaks, right? Because now a lawyer's got to fight not only the case, but he's got to fight. the jury to try to make it to prove that you're not a bad person, but all that the, all that law

enforcement has to do is just go down this list of articles that have been published all over the United States. It's impossible for us to fight that. I mean, like, we're in a lose, lose battle to try to, just starting out going to, going to, going to a court trial. We're going to lose battle. I mean, it's just a matter of how much it's going to cost and how much is someone going to give up in their life because of that. It's not even a matter of, are we going to win? We're never going to win. It's a lose, lose. Now, why do you think that members of the organization or of the motorcycle club can't just go out and have conversations like this to get it out there more to the public or to the members or really explain what happens? I think we're at a, I think

that one, it's not as easy as it sounds, right? Two, like I said, Over the years, many clubs have tried to work it out one-on-one, right? Two clubs try to say, let's figure this out. It might last for a little bit. It might not. You know what I mean? They try. It is worked.

It is not worked. The way to move forward, in my opinion, is you got to bring eight to ten clubs in the room and have accountability for the club that starts to slip up from that. Those other clubs put pressure to say, come back. We need you to get back into this. We can't divert from the plan. if we can if they not we i hate to say we because i'm not in the club anymore but my opinion is that if they can get eight to ten clubs in the room to figure this out and i've always said this that i think

the banditos should be the mediator in all this because of the way they handled the um the all of the stuff that we we were involved in after the waco shooting they were excellent when it came to all the relationships with the other clubs and i believe that they are the ones that could be the actual mediator involved in all this stuff. There's a lot of good men in every club. There's a lot of smart men in every club. And I believe that it just takes four to six guys from every club to show up to a couple of meetings to figure this out. And it's about time and money. That's in a nutshell. I mean, if we had unlimited time and unlimited money, this would have been figured out 10 years ago. It's because we have to keep moving forward and it's like you forget about it, right? You have

pay your bills. You have to take care of your family. You have to take care of the guys in the clubs. Someone just got cancer. Someone just died in a motorcycle accident. Shit keeps piling up. You can't go back and say, well, shall we figure out our problems? No, the next problem happens, and we're right back in the same shit, right? So until they can say, we're going to take a break from all the moving forward and to go back and we do need to include these eight to ten clubs, and you've got to, you've got to include them all because everyone has feelings. And if anyone admits that they don't have feelings, they're full of shit. Everyone's got a feeling.

Everyone wants to be acknowledged. You have to acknowledge every single club on the same playing field in order for this to work. Now, without a doubt, the hell's angels, the outlaws, the banditos, the Mongols, the pagans, the sons of silence, the devil's disciples, the Vagoes, the outsiders up in Washington, the gypsy jokers. you know, black clubs like the chosen few, they've been around a very long time. They all have to be acknowledged. Because if you don't include them at some point, you're going to have people that are like, well, fuck all that, right? And in order to make this work, everyone's got to feel special.

You can't do it without it. If you want to get back on track to where we're making good money by selling merchandise, we have to do this. if you want to have the membership, the membership grow as opposed to the continual rotation of people coming in and people leaving, we have to do this. And I believe it's very possible.

I believe it's not out of the realm of being able to happen. There's, like I said, and I've said this many times, there's lots of very smart men in these clubs who are very passionate and have a very, huge hearts. And like,

they could all be in a room if they knew it was going to protect people. So it is possible. I have hopes that it could happen in the next five years, possibly. You know what I mean? Like, there were rumors just a few months ago that there were, that certain clubs were trying to reach out to do things. But I just don't think that they need to include more clubs in it to make it work, right?

And so we'll see. I'm optimistic. I think that I think we're in a new time, like I said, like if you would have said 10 years ago, let's talk about your mental health. I started laughing. You know what I mean? Like, hey man, buck it up, fucking push it down. You got to move forward and get your shit done.

You have obligations to people. You have obligations to yourself. You have obligations to your family. Nowadays, I believe it's a huge thing we need to talk about. I think the only way to move forward is for us to fucking, you know, admit that we're not invincible. Admit that there's problems. We've got brothers committing suicide.

We've got brothers on drug addiction. fucking alcohol problems. I mean, like, all this stuff can be helped. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton.

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RX only. To stay informed about serious side effects, go to row.com slash safety. And help the entire culture if we can just figure this shit out. When you were in the club, how did you feel about guys that were getting marked out bad? Were you thinking about how they were feeling or what they were going through, that they lost such a big piece of their life? Yes. And when you're in, when you're in it, when you're in the club and you see like, hey, so-and-so got put out bad, you don't really know the whole story. you don't know why they got put out bad you're just like oh fuck man that guy got put out bad like

jesus like it's like the scarlet letter right getting that getting that label put on you right and then now that i've been out of the club and been out bad for you know seven years and like you know i understand exactly why you know but um yes knowing now what i know now about discussing all this stuff about mental health, I can't even imagine for some of these guys that gave so much of the club to be, have it taken away and then have the fact that they could never talk to anybody in the club again and how that affected them. And that's, that's, that's had to been tough, you know, it has to be tough for these guys. I mean, I, I knew guys that, like, coveted their patch so much that they would hold it, like, in their arms when it wasn't on their back. And to know that

if that got taken away from them, that's all they had. So like I said before, I was blessed. I had family. I have friends. I have businesses. I had a career in the fire department where I felt like I accomplished something there, started the charity, the nonprofit charity for kids with autism and Asperger's. And I felt like that was a huge accomplishment. And then being in the club, like I said, able to ride a motorcycle, able to afford a motorcycle, the ability to be in a club and ride with the club and be proud that I was in the club, I felt like those were all huge achievements. And I take that like that. But some people don't look at their lives like that. They look at it like, now what am I going to do? You know what I mean? I mean, I've had people ask me like,

hey, are you going to write a book? And I'm not into, I'm not really about that. I'm not really trying to, to, I never intended to be on camera. I never intended to do any of this stuff. When I left the club, I wasn't even involved in social media. I was never going to talk about it about the club. I will never talk about about the club. I love the club. And so when people ask me about writing a book, I'm like, well, all you really want to do is talk about the club. You know, because every time I meet somebody and I talk to them and they go, oh, well, you know, tell me about yourself. And I, like I say, I say, like, hey, yeah, I was a fireman, started a nonprofit charity. Oh, by the way, I was a hell's angel. They don't just like, the whole conversation screeches. And they want to go right back to that

because that's the exciting part, right? But I don't want to, I'm not here to, to make the club my life. You know what I mean? There's so much more to a man's life besides being in that motorcycle club. You can't focus all your, all that information on that, in my opinion. I'm not knocking anyone that's ever written a book. I'm not knocking anyone that's on doing a podcast or talks about, whatever they talk about. However, you do your business is your business. But for me personally, it's not on my radar. It's not my intent. I'm not trying to make money off. of this. I seriously care about the people in the group. And whether, I don't care what patch you have on your back, I care about you. And I feel like we are missing out on a fucking huge, huge possibility

here. If we all got together, and I've said this before, we would be larger than the Teamsters Union across the United States. And that would be an unstoppable force. We've talked for years about having a property we could actually go to where we wouldn't have to be worried about being denied to come and do an event there right we could we could afford to have one of those on the on the west coast one of them on the east coast we could afford to make it really really fucking awesome and have all the other clubs come like there's possibilities are endless for the fun that could be had we have to get out of our own headspace and we have to get out of our own way we have to include everybody to make it happen it seems like a daunting task but i'm telling you it's possible why did

did you decide to leave the Hells Angels? Well, I was involved in the Bikers Rights stuff. I was involved in three charters. When I was in SoCal, I was approached by a member, said, hey, I think maybe you should go to Ventura and help them out. And I took that as like a real like, hey man, like someone's asking if I can go help out of charter. And I lived in Ventura County at the time and thought to myself, like, yes, I would love to do that, right? I'll be closer to home. I mean, I was driving two and a half hours to get to the charter I was going to in L.A. I could have gone 20 minutes and get to the charter in Ventura, right? So me being who I am and the relationships I had with other motorcycle clubs and the connections I had to these other, these other biker clubs.

And listening to the guys in Ventura and a couple times, guys would come to the room and they'd have these, like, you know, we always have an issue with the public, right? and I don't mean we have an issue with them. The public's trying to be something that they're not by giving us information, right? They're trying, they're trying their hardest to be in our world without being in our world. Does that make sense? So they're giving us information to say like, hey, we saw the Mongols were at the Harley Davis dealership. Or we saw the Mongols were at this bar.

We saw so-and-so at this place because they think that they're helping us by giving us this information, right? So they were, these guys came in the room and they're like, hey, man, you know, the, the Mongols were at the Harley-Davidson dealership. Can you believe that shit? And I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking, well, we all have motorcycles. And if you need a part, where are you going to go, right? And do we own the Harley Davis, Harley-Davidson dealership? No, we don't own it. Do they own it? No. So anyone can go there, right? Anytime. If they're open, hours are open, you can be there. And so after hearing this back and forth and guys, you know, complaining about these guys in the county, I'm like, dude, does anybody even know any guys from the Mongols out here in Ventura County? No. Okay. So,

and I knew, I knew someone. I had a connection. So I said, well, let's do this. So there aren't any surprises and there aren't any incidents. Let's, I had this idea. Let's get everyone together. And I wasn't trying to say we're going to get together to make a peace treaty. I'm saying, let's get together so you know who you're talking to. So you know who you're mad at. So you know how we can resolve this issue by knowing who it is there's a problem with, right? Let's get to the bottom of it quick and get it squashed if there's a problem. So I had the, I had made my connections and got permission from, not permission from my club, but permission from the Mongols, talked to little Dave and said, hey, I want to reach out and can we get the Ventura County Mongols charter to come to the

house, to my house? And they agreed because they knew who I was for years, being involved with the COC and being in those rooms with those guys, they knew I wasn't going to set them up, right, or pull any bullshit. So these guys came to my house, willing to come to my home, right? They're coming to Hell's Angels home. And I had my guys,

I don't say my guys, like they're my guys, but the charter I was in, they said, let's go and we'll do the same thing. And I said, we're not trying to say, we're going to get along. I'm saying that we're going to say, if there's a problem, we know who to talk to.

And if there's a real problem, we know who to fist fight it out with, right? And so it was very simple. I said everyone start by around the table, start by give me your name. If you have a family, what you do for work, how long you've been in the club for, right? We went around the whole table doing all that. Everyone got to get the information out. Hey, so many similarities.

I do the same job that you do. I have kids. I have a wife. You have a wife. You know, you're involved in this. How long have you been in the club? Okay, you two know, you know, have a lot. common. Like, it was that simple, right? Wasn't hard. But word traveled like wildfire with that.

And there was an incident. It happened in Washington between the two clubs. And so people, because of how the club is, people get passionate, right? Very passionate. And I don't blame anybody, believe me. And so to help better the situation, I knew everyone's eyes were on me, right, because they knew that was my fault, not for the incident, but for the communication, right? And I knew that the charter I was in at the time wasn't going to be able to communicate that well. So I'd be standing alone. So, and I spent a lot of time traveling and a lot of time away from my family. So I made a decision to say, I think it's time for. for me to leave the club.

And it wasn't something that I wanted to do. It was something I knew I should do, right? And, uh, because I had already gone to an officer's meeting on the East Coast. I was called to come out to one of those, um, probably of my third year in the club. They were asking me what I was doing and what, why was I going to these meetings and being around these guys from other clubs. But once I went there and described what I was doing and the importance of why I was doing it, every, the whole room dropped down, right?

And these guys were like, hey, Jason, keep up what you're doing because someone needs to be involved and someone needs to know what's going on right so i did that one time but i knew that after this incident if i went to go do that again i'm there's a possibility that i might have you know things might have gone real south right and i i wasn't going to put my family in jeopardy for me to be a part of the club to go through that again so i chose to leave and uh like i said i miss it i miss the guys. I think about the guys often. Sometimes I'll have, every once in a while I'll have these crazy dreams where, like, an older member is, you know, like this guy, Jeff from Burdue, right? He was the president for years. I looked up to him, I loved him, right? And he was in my dream one night,

and he puts his, I keep, he's putting his arm on my shoulder. And he, I get fucking, this, this, This shit just, it's like, it feels so real. And he says it's, it's all right. He goes, I know you were doing, I know you were doing what you thought was right to help. And that, that to me is, it means everything, you know. I, like I said, I still think about it. And I still worry about people on all sides.

On every team, I, I just know that this is, it can be fixed. And the shit that these guys are dealing with and it's so, it's so, it's so daunting all to have this image on this bike, to ride down the highway and feel this freedom, but you're so fucking, you're so fucking trapped by it all. sorry, but it just really weighs on you. You know what I mean?

And like, there's this connection that you have with the guys, and regardless of the motorcycle club, you can just look in their eyes and you can say, I know, I know what you dealt with. I know what you saw. I know. I know what you gave up. And there were so many good times.

to go with that, we used to have this softball tournament that we would do East Coast, West Coast. And that was so much fun because it was a time where for four hours, you didn't think about that. We were cheering each other on and everyone was having a good time without any of the stressors of fucking is someone going to die on the highway? is someone going to leave the club because they're fed up with it?

Are you ever going to see them again? Did you ever think that that was the last time you're going to put your arms around somebody? Sorry. These are things you can't talk about with people that don't know what you're going through or what you went through. You can't go to a therapist

and bring this shit up. They can't even fucking comprehend it. And we laugh about this. stuff too, man. I mean, it's not, it's not all sad. Believe me. Some of the shit that we went through, we just know we can have the, we can just talk about it and we just laugh and we just know that like, we know what you went through. We know what, what you have inside of you. We know what the grit that you have. And guys that are in the military correlate with us all the time, man. I mean, we have lots of guys from the military that have been through way worse, way worse.

And I can't even fucking fathom the things that they've seen, right? I'm just talking about the bullshit we deal with here in North America, the land of the fucking free. And we put all of ourselves in these scenarios day in and day out. And I just, I hate to say it, but it's like, for what? You know, I mean, like, yes, we covet the patch and we love the fucking brotherhood and we love the fucking club we joined. But can we not just say that your club is the best club for you and it's the number one club in the world because you're in that club.

and my club is the best club for me and it's the best club for me to be a part of and if we could just get that fucking those words out and understand what that means the whole thing could fucking come back to a sense of fucking fun the way it was in the early 60s the way it was in late 50s

what drove all these men to want to be part of that when they came back from Vietnam when they came back from Desert Storm when they came back from Iraq all this stuff that they're looking for. It's all there. Little pieces are what keep pushing it back. But it's all there. All the building blocks are fucking there. We have to get back to build. Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15 a month plan that I've been

enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistance assistants switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch. Up front payment of $45 for three-month plan, equivalent to $15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra.

See full terms at mintmobile.com. Building that bottom level again. And that's all I have to say about all that. Now, just because you left the club doesn't necessarily mean you're out bad. So what happened to get you marked out bad? because of what I put together while you were in the club

while I was in the club and because of what went down I mean had it been maybe we had five years of like no no violence between the clubs it might have come off totally different but everything happens for a reason right

and I believe that that's why I'm doing the podcast now is because of timing wise everything happens for a reason like I said I would have never thought that I'd be on camera talking about this stuff or doing this stuff, but I believe that it's so important for people that are out there

that feel alone to know that we're there for them, right? That there's a support system somewhere. And so, yes, I will go through this shit. I will fucking bring all these old memories back up. I will deal with it all again if it can help some people. That's how I feel about it. If you had the opportunity

to rejoin the club, would you? People ask me that a lot. I'm not sure about that. I can't answer that right now. What would you tell your childhood self, the young teenager that was passionate about motorcycles and had an interest in them? What would you tell that person? I'd say do more research before you jump into it. I'd say get to know people better before you jump into it.

Like the advice to give people that are going to the clubs these days, get to know people better. Don't have the fantasy. You know what I mean? Don't have the tunnel vision. Don't see it as the goal is getting in the club. I'm like, see it as the goal is to spend the time with the guys to get to know them. Understand, would you want these guys to come to your house for dinner? Do you want to be on the road with them on end? Would you want to go to jail for them if you had to do? Would you go to jail for them?

You know what I mean? Would you put your life on the line for somebody? What about them is special? Are they doing good things in the community? Are they taking care of their family? Get to know these people before you. you do this stuff. Don't just jump into it and say, hoorah. You know what I'm saying? Put the thought and the time into it. Get to know what you're getting involved in truthfully. Understand the

commitment that it takes to be in the club. Understand that that commitment's going to be, you need to do that commitment year in and year out. You can't do it for two years and give up on it and just try to do the status quo. Understand the importance of why you need to be on the road, why you need to be with the guys, why you need to show up to the events. why everyone together is a very powerful thing. And when you're not there, you're just adding, you're decreasing that value. So that's my advice. That would be my advice to my 19-year-old self with the visions of grandeur saying,

I want to be an Elizangel, or I want to be a fireman, or any of that shit. Understand what you're getting involved in. And when you make the commitment, make the commitment. And stick with it. Jason, I appreciate you coming on the show today. Yeah, thanks, brother. Appreciate you having me. Yeah, thanks for giving me.

us an incredible interview. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate you. Safe travels back. Thanks.