The Clubs
Each outlaw club is a sovereign world — its own constitution, hierarchy, territory and enemies. These are the major brotherhoods, their origins, their colors, and the rules that bind them.
How a Club Works
For all their outlaw mystique, the major clubs are rigidly organized. The structure is remarkably consistent from California to Quebec to Queensland.
The patch (“colors”). The three-piece patch on the back of the cutoff vest is the club’s sacred object: a top rocker with the club name, a center logo, and a bottom rocker naming the territory. A “1%” diamond marks the wearer as an outlaw. Colors are earned, never bought, and losing them to a rival is the ultimate humiliation — which is why patches are defended with lethal force.
The ladder. A man starts as a hangaround, becomes a prospect (a probationary period of menial service and proving), and is finally voted in as a full-patch member. Above them sit chapter officers — president, vice-president, sergeant-at-arms (enforcer), secretary-treasurer, and road captain. Nomad chapters answer to no single territory and often act as a club’s elite or its muscle.
The rules. Clubs operate under written constitutions and bylaws, hold mandatory weekly “church” meetings, levy dues, and enforce discipline through fines, beatings, expulsion (“out in bad standings”), or worse. Leaving on bad terms can mean surrendering tattoos — by force.
Hells Angels MC
Red & WhiteThe Hells Angels are the world’s largest and most influential outlaw motorcycle club, and the standard against which all others measure themselves. The founding charter was chartered in “Berdoo” (San Bernardino) in 1948, drawing on the romance of WWII aviation — several origin stories tie the name to bomber squadrons. Early charters in Frisco (1954) and Oakland (1957) followed.
The club’s center of gravity shifted north when Ralph “Sonny” Barger founded the Oakland charter in 1957. Barger imposed organization, ambition and discipline; Oakland became the unofficial “mother charter” and Barger the club’s strategist and global ambassador for fifty years. Hunter S. Thompson’s year inside the California club produced Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga (1966), making the death’s head a household image.
From the 1970s the Angels went international and, in Canada, lethal: they patched over Montreal’s Popeyes in 1977, purged their own North chapter at Lennoxville in 1985, and under Maurice “Mom” Boucher fought the Quebec biker war. Today the club spans the Americas, Europe, Australia and beyond — and remains the central target of law-enforcement attention worldwide.
Key sources: Barger, Hell’s Angel; Thompson, Hell’s Angels; Lavigne, Taking Care of Business / At War / Into the Abyss; George, A Wayward Angel; Matter & Omodt, Breaking the Code.
Outlaws MC
Black & WhiteThe American Outlaws Association is the oldest outlaw motorcycle club, tracing to a 1935 club that met at Matilda’s Bar on Route 66 in McCook, outside Chicago. Reorganized in the 1950s and ’60s, the Outlaws adopted “Charlie,” the grinning skull over crossed pistons, and grew into the Hells Angels’ great American rival.
The two clubs’ hatred is institutional. The Outlaws’ acronym ADIOS stands for “Angels Die In Outlaw States”; the Angels answer in kind. Their war ran for decades across the U.S. Midwest, the South, and into Canada, where the Outlaws established a powerful presence in Ontario and Quebec and absorbed elements of Satan’s Choice in 1977.
The Outlaws expanded to Europe and Australia and remain one of the “Big Four.” Their long Florida-to-Great-Lakes corridor and their Canadian chapters kept them in continuous conflict with the Angels through the patch-war years.
Key sources: Thompson (Tony), Outlaws; Edwards, The Bandido Massacre; Lowe, Conspiracy of Brothers; Hall, Riding on the Edge.
Bandidos MC
Red & GoldThe Bandidos Motorcycle Club was founded in March 1966 by Don Chambers, a Marine and Vietnam veteran, in the Texas Gulf Coast area around San Leon and Houston. The club’s “Fat Mexican” — a cartoon bandit clutching a pistol and machete — and its red-and-gold colors became the second great global outlaw brand.
Outside North America the outlaw world is largely bipolar: Hells Angels versus Bandidos. The Bandidos expanded across the U.S. South and West, then into Europe, Australia and Asia. Insider Edward Winterhalder’s Out in Bad Standings documents the club’s structure and its fateful expansion into Canada.
That Canadian chapter ended in catastrophe. After absorbing the remnants of the Rock Machine in 2000, the Bandidos’ Toronto “No Surrender Crew” collapsed into the internal purge known as the Shedden massacre in 2006 — eight men dead, the club effectively erased from Canada.
Key sources: Winterhalder, Out in Bad Standings; Edwards, The Bandido Massacre; Arvast, Bloody Justice; Coulthart & McNab, Dead Man Running.
Pagan’s MC
Blue, Red & WhiteFounded in 1959 by Lou Dobkin in suburban Maryland, the Pagan’s are the most powerful of the regional clubs — and a deliberate exception to the globalizing trend. They never expanded internationally, concentrating instead on dominating the U.S. Eastern Seaboard from New York to the Carolinas.
Their emblem is Surt, the Norse fire giant, brandishing a flaming sword. Famously decentralized and volatile, the Pagan’s warred with the Hells Angels for decades as the Angels pushed east, and feuded with rivals up and down their corridor. Anthony Menginie’s memoir Prodigal Father, Pagan Son opens the club from the inside — a world the author was quite literally born into.
Key sources: Menginie & Droban, Prodigal Father, Pagan Son; Thompson (Tony), Outlaws.
Mongols MC
Black & WhiteThe Mongols were founded around 1969–1970 in Montebello, East L.A., reportedly by Latino riders the Hells Angels would not admit. That origin set the tone: the Mongols became the one club to consistently beat the Angels on their home ground. In a defining act, they fought for and took the “California” bottom rocker the Angels claimed as theirs alone.
Under national president Ruben “Doc” Cavazos the club expanded aggressively in the 2000s. The rivalry exploded onto the casino floor at Harrah’s in Laughlin, Nevada in 2002. The club was then penetrated by ATF agent William Queen and later targeted in “Operation Black Rain,” leading to Cavazos’s racketeering conviction and a landmark government attempt to seize the Mongols’ trademarked patch.
Key sources: Cavazos, Honor Few, Fear None; Queen, Under and Alone; Falco & Droban, Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws.
Vagos MC
Green & GoldThe Vagos (“Green Nation”) emerged in Southern California and spread across the West and into Mexico. Their patch depicts Loki, the Norse god of mischief, riding a motorcycle. Long overshadowed by the Big Four, the Vagos became a major regional power and a frequent target of infiltration.
Their inner workings were exposed by ATF informant Charles Falco, whose Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws recounts how he infiltrated the Vagos first, then used that credibility to penetrate the Mongols and Outlaws in turn — a rare triple infiltration that produced cases against all three.
Key sources: Falco & Droban, Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws.
The Canadian Clubs
Multiple ColorsSatan’s Choice. Built by Bernie Guindon from 1965, Satan’s Choice was once among the largest independent outlaw clubs on earth, dominating Ontario. Much of it was absorbed by the Outlaws in 1977 and later by the Hells Angels. Lorne Campbell’s memoir Satan’s Choice tells the story from inside the patch.
The Rock Machine. Founded in 1986 by Salvatore Cazzetta as a Montreal rival to the Angels, the Rock Machine fought the Hells Angels through the Quebec biker war. Outmatched, it was absorbed into the global Bandidos in 2000 — a merger that ended in the Shedden disaster.
The Loners & others. A web of smaller Ontario clubs — the Loners, Annihilators and others — fed members and feuds into the larger war. Wayne Kellestine, later the central figure of the Shedden massacre, passed through several of them.
Canada produced the most lethal outlaw conflict in the Western world. For the full story see the Wars page.
Key sources: Campbell & Edwards, Satan’s Choice; Sanger, Hell’s Witness; Sher & Marsden, Angels of Death; Langton, Showdown / Fallen Angel; Parker & Vronsky, Biker Wars; Martineau, I Was a Killer for the Hells Angels; Calendino, To Hell and Back; Buck, Takedown.