GOMC - Celebs

Sonny Barger says, Let's Ride

What happens at the Hells Angels clubhouse in Phoenix stays at the clubhouse. Suffice to say, the Jager is served in Dixie cups decorated with seahorses.... Read my profile of Sonny Barger, originally published July 6, 2010.

Hell hasn't frozen over yet: Hell's Angel Sonny Barger

Los Angeles Times, © 2000. Reprinted with Permission.

By Susan Carpenter

Noel Barger had two words of advice when I left to accompany her husband on a trip across Arizona: "Full throttle." For Sonny Barger, the leader of America's most notorious outlaw motorcycle club, that's as much a philosophy for life as it is a style of riding.

The 61-year-old Barger averages 5,000 miles a month at full throttle. My trip with him, which he allowed to promote his new book, "Hell's Angel" (William Morrow, $24), was no exception. Side by side, we sped down the road, Barger on the left, fringe flying as he rode his navy-blue Harley-Davidson Road King, and me on the right, following his lead on a yellow Heritage Softail.

The $30,000 bike he rides today is a far cry from his Indian, the motorcycle he bought for $125 in 1956 when he helped form the group's Oakland chapter. But that's not all that has changed for Barger, who transformed an innocuous, eight-member riding club into a legendary international organization with thousands of members, many of whom have been prosecuted for drug dealing, money laundering, murder and prostitution, among other things.