A soap opera of murder

I've been sort of vaguely following this crazy Hells Angels thing for a month now and I thought I'd share it with yall. I don't think it's really hit the national news, so if you don't read West-coast newspapers you may not be aware of it.

Way back in September, we had the annual Street Vibrations motorcycle convention. I am sympathetic to motorcycles and I try to always give them a lot of room and watch out for them on the roads, but I don't really like SV - they act like assholes on the road when they all get together. Kind of like how individual endurance riders out training are always careful to be polite to other trail users, but there are always complaints following a ride about groups of e-riders running trail riders off the trail. It's just kind of human nature. So there's too many bikes on the road (and too many bad California riders - Nevada isn't a lanesplitting state and it freaks us out when they do it!)

This year Street Vibrations went terribly wrong when a fight turned into a shooting at the Nugget. The president of the Hells Angels was killed by some dude from the Vagos, who was promptly arrested. Tragic but not really blogworthy.

The RGJ moved on to other Reno news, and the story picked up in San Francisco. A bunch of Vagos members were arrested with rocket launchers and hundreds of pounds of cocaine and stuff. Still not weird enough for me to blog.

Then the Hells Angels had the funeral for their slain president, and another member was killed. By another Hells Angel! Intra-gang violence at a funeral, woah. The shooter immediately disappeared, and the cops dug up the president's grave looking for the shooter's body. But a week later, they decided he was still alive and at large.

Today brought the weirdest twist so far. A guy driving a paratransit van deliberately ran over a Hells Angel dude on the 580. What the hell is going on with the biker gangs?

I also think it's interesting that this is being reported with the gang names. I don't read the LA papers, so I don't know if they name the gangs down there, but the SFGate rarely names gangs. There's probably a murder a week in SF/Oakland that's termed "gang related" but they never say "X was believed to be a member of the Bloods" or whatever. Just "rival gang member." I can't decide if this is discrimination against bikers or privilege because the Hells Angels are white.