Chapter 1 Summary and Analysis

Hunter S. Thompson chronicles a two-year period of the Hell's Angels, focusing on the San Francisco and Oakland chapters of the California-wide gang. He discusses their origins and background in general terms, their social significance and their unlikely rise to national fame through media exposure following several violent crimes. Thompson then details a motorcycle run to a particular destination. He followed the Hell's Angels and participated in their revelries. The text concludes with a discussion of the Hell's Angels in a larger social context, as well as a reflection on their nature and essential character.

The first motorcycle gangs appeared around the mid-1940s in Southern California; they were largely composed of self-identified 'One Percenters', or individuals who proudly saw themselves as the lowest 1% of the dregs of society. Numerous gangs arose over the next two decades, most of them small...