George Christie on Dropping Out of the Hells Angels, Banning Drive By Shootings & More

34:42I know there's a guy, he's got a small YouTube channel, and he had a guy that was a former Ventura Hells Angel. And the guy, he disrespected me. So I just basically explained what I saw really happen from my perspective. You know, now the guy, it's like he wants to get in this verbal battle. You know, my attitude is, you know, come over to my house if you've got a problem, man. Right. I, you know, I'm not going to get into a rap battle with you. Yeah, but I mean, really, people end up with these sort of sick relationships with public figures because of the fact that they know that talking about that person is really like the.

35:25I guarantee that guy, you're probably the number one person he can talk about in order to get views on his content. I think you're absolutely correct. And if it wasn't the case, if you were number eight on the list, then he'd probably be talking about somebody else. But you're pretty much up there. So as a result, this is the world that he lives in. He's got to commentate on and critique. And probably as soon as this interview drops, and I don't know who the hell you're talking about, but probably he'll be watching this interview just waiting for that moment where you slip up and say something a little bit that could be skewed.

35:53It doesn't have to be you saying it wrong, but you could skew it and make it seem like a lie. Boom, we're in business. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's like I identified somebody as a government witness in my case. And he got, you know, he was a guest on his show and I made a comment. He should have, you know, the host should have researched that he was actually interviewing a government witness. He didn't know it. Right. You know, so look. the world has changed it's you know it's like 50 cent and p diddy fighting it out on netflix man i just saw that yeah you got you got an enemy that you hate more than anybody in the world so you get a multi-million dollar streaming deal with the biggest streaming platform to produce a four-hour piece of i don't know if it's fair to call it propaganda but for sure it's like on the cusp you know because i think so there are some things said in that documentary that really stood out to people like in particular they said that puffy didn't pay for biggie's funeral that puff daddy made biggie's family and and his own account pay for the funeral which is already like massively contested people are already coming out to say this is not true but it's in that documentary so it might as well be true yeah it's not going to change It becomes testimony.

37:11You know, when in 2011, I got and died in 2001, and I was in solitary confinement, isolated. They had a protective order. I couldn't talk to anybody about anything. And we had the Twin Towers, and it was like the whole world changed. I didn't know what transpired. You know, my wife Beverly and I were talking about it a couple of weeks ago. we went to New York we went to the memorial and I was looking at all these films things I never saw before and it was so it impacted me so much and it was so profound it's like it changed the world you know you got a bunch of guys living in caves attacking the United States and 95 % of America agreed that we should invade Afghanistan at that moment which is probably like the most united that america has ever been on anything right yeah yeah it's but anyways i what i'm leading up to is i i watched not only the world unravel uh i kind of watched what i felt the outlaw bike culture started unraveling really why do you say that well because uh we had a policy in the past like you're a hell's angel leader you get indicted you don't lose your position until we know whether you're getting sentenced and you're gonna if you're gonna go to prison then you step down somebody else steps in we don't want law enforcement dictating who is in charge and who isn't in charge because man that's untied that guy because we'll try to maneuver our guy into that lead position and you know we'll have an inside source but you know i had someone try to take one of my businesses uh i had someone go for my job you know if they were going to do that stuff i mean it's human nature, but at least wait till I get convicted.

39:09I was like, I came home, and I walked back into that world. And the first meeting I went to, it was horrendous. I confronted these different people. One of the guys had been convicted of a double homicide bombing at one time. I mean, these are serious guys that were making moves on me. And I started having second thoughts about things, re-evaluating things. And by 2009, 2010, I was thinking, we've become the people we rebelled against. And I wanted to kind of get back to the roots, so I quit the club. I walked into the meeting, and perhaps I shouldn't have expressed myself in the manner in which I did because I was very blunt.

39:58I said, look, man, we're fighting wars on five fronts. Throw the cops in there, that's six fronts. I go what's the point man you know these are wars they have no destination like would you get on a train with no destination I wouldn't no and so I said look we become the people we rebelled against I took my patch off didn't even see anybody in the room that I wanted to give it to I laid it on the table and it was like a 15 foot walk to the door and I'll tell you it was the longest walk I ever took in my life I was no longer a Hells Angel. I just pissed off 40 years of my life in a sense. And immediately I left in good standing.

40:42My status immediately changed by Sonny Barger to bad standing. Then the character assassination started. I mean, just prior to my quitting, I was in a meeting, Hells Angel meeting, officers meeting. supposed to be the toughest most hardcore uh outlaw motorcycle guys in the world and i'm arguing with another officer from another charter because i won't defriend somebody on facebook yeah at that moment when i heard you say that in another interview was the moment where i was like oh like this sort of much older uh generation of tough guys and gangsters are really like kind of involved with all the same shit that affects you know the teenage tiktok this was a guy that was my age yeah and you know he wanted me to defend someone uh i go this is i said do you know how ridiculous this is like we're actually gonna put this in the minutes yeah and uh you know but anyways i uh i made a decision uh and i'm happy with it i uh done a lot of things since i left the club you know i was wondering is there life after the hell's angels you know For a lot of people, there isn't.

41:53And it's kind of a crash and burn existence until they OD or they run into a brick wall on their motorcycle or something. But I've kind of got a whole new world going for myself. So do you still spend time on a motorcycle or no? I do. I have a motorcycle. I've got two hip replacements. I've got a sidecar on it. And my wife, Beverly, gets in it with our dog, Fonzie. and we go all up and down Southern California. Haven't gone cross country in it yet and I'm not sure I will at 80 years old. I don't know if I'm ready to ride across country. I'm not going to push it that far. We were going to go to Sturgis last year.

42:37At the last minute we kind of came to our census and our family was really glad. We said we weren't going. You ever been to New Hampshire? To the Laconia? Yeah. I'm from around there. Okay, well, you know, I was going to go there. I had planned on going there, and we got in a fight with the cops one year. Really? Several people wound up doing about 18 months. They got beefed and kind of lost interest. I mean, it's funny because my mom is from Laconia. I'm from Nashua, which is maybe an hour away. Where? Nashua, New Hampshire. Okay. I thought you said Nashville. No, yeah, people are, yeah. But it's like the southernmost part of New Hampshire.

43:17Laconia, you have to drive up there a bit to get to it. But I recall being like really young and my grandma had a neighbor who was like the most white trash dude I ever seen in my life. You know what? You got a wife beater. He's got teeth sticking out very angle out of his face. A crankster. If I had to guess was probably doing meth or whatever was the drug at the time, you know. And then I have like another memory of like soon after that going up to see my grandma. And it's like the biker weekend and they're everywhere. And I remember feeling like kind of the same thing that you're saying about seeing a real deal biker in real life and realizing that this was something that you really wanted to be a part of.

43:55And I remember that, but it didn't connect enough to be like, I want to do that. But it was more just the energy. I was just like, oh, I like that. That's the kind of guy that I'm interested in. You know, here's an example. we're in a gas station in you know 1967 you know three or four of us pull in and everybody locks their doors and rolls their windows up grabs their kids and we're laughing you know we think it's funny yeah you know 15 years later you pull in the gas station that happens you're thinking these guys are potential jurors and you know it kind of throws a different spin in it you know and this is law enforcement creates the paranoia you know you got guys now that are flipping you know you got a guy that used to cook crank and he gets 18 months has his four million dollars stashed and he does his time and comes home you know now uh they're going okay uh you're looking at 40 years uh but we could get you out of here if we could get a little help and they make they cut these deals man right and i mean i feel like that's probably a transition that your world is kind of going through that sort of mirrors the the rap world where uh snitching has become so much more normalized you see a lot of people who like in a previous era maybe like them telling would have been enough for them to not even be invited on platforms and all of a sudden now everybody wants to talk to them people just aren't are you referring to somebody specifically in hip-hop yes for sure we got a whole bunch of different examples of people i mean it's always every every snitch story is a little different it's always a little bit hard to ascertain exactly how uh awful their sins were but is is that that's a similar situation i think in your world where a lot of these absolutely you know it's it's and we had a guy i'm sitting in a meeting with a guy and uh i i go away in 86 i get this federal beep that said i ordered a murder of a informant i come back in 87 uh i'm in a meeting i'm sitting next to this guy and i'm wondering how did he rise to the west coast sergeant at arms because i always thought he was a lame uh he's got a brand new cast on and he's asking me these provocative questions he's bringing up provocative subjects that he shouldn't be bringing up in a official meeting and uh he's got a bug in his cast i find out later yeah and And he's trying to prompt me into, he's asking me permission to go blow these guys up that we're already at war with.

46:31In my subconscious, I'm thinking, you don't need my permission, man. You want to blow these guys up? Go blow them up. Yeah. Morally, that may not be correct, but I'm not going to break a law and tell them to go blow these guys up. But a lot of that stuff doesn't really need to be said so explicitly. No, it doesn't need to be said. And it definitely doesn't need to be reiterated later on. No, you know, it's like I met a lot of old mob guys the first time I went to prison. Sam Sarantino was an underboss. You know, these guys used to – I'd sit around with them, Michael Franchise and I, and Rosario Gambino.

47:05You ever heard of the Pizza Connection? No. Big mafia deal in the 80s. Okay. All the heroin. They were responsible for all the heroin in the United States. I was in prison with him, you know, Sam Sarantino, other mob guys. You know, these guys, they would look at each other and have conversations. They're just old school gangsters, man. You know, they didn't sit out there and just overtly make these cavalier statements. And I think that as the Hells Angels became educated as to how low some of these cops will go. Look, there's a lot of decent cops out there. I've got friends I consider, and they're cops.

47:51got other people out there man you know they'll they'll break the law to enforce the law those are the guys you have to worry about right well i mean it's probably easier for you to have a good relationship with cops now that you're not breaking the law day in day all right you know beverly and i walk around we ran into a judge a while back you know like i said no hard feelings right george and uh you know no no hard feelings it's just all you know to me if they weren't coming after me, I figured they were slipping. And if I wasn't on guard, I was slipping. But can you imagine an alternative universe in which the outlaw biker world had not gotten the level of scrutiny from law enforcement that you did and in which you were able to sort of cultivate a little bit of a different image or was the outlaw branding inevitably going to land you with that amount of attention?

48:42I got to be honest with you. I think everybody, not just the Hells Angels, the outlaws, the Mongols, the banditos, there was a time when everybody embraced that kind of outlaw gangster vision. I'm sure just liking rap music. Oh, yeah. Rap music started off in a particular manner and kind of ranced off. Because if you really want to sell an image to people, the people who are buying, they want to see the extreme version of it. They want to see the violent version of it. The same way, if you're a young, up-and-coming Republican politician and you want to make a name for yourself, you're not going to get anybody paying attention to you if you just say, hey, crime is bad.

49:26Right. But if you say, I'm sick of these black people committing all these crimes. Right. All right. Now they're talking about you. And I see this pattern over and over and over where the people are drawn to the hyperbolic. And, you know, the more intense, the more extreme you can make things, the more you're going to be able to make people pay attention to you. And so now our culture is just entirely full of people who are willing to sort of break through that wall. Now, you know, on the other hand, now I'll give you an example. There was a war going on in the Nordic called the Great Nordic Biker War in the Scandinavian countries.

49:58and the Hells Angels and the Banditos were fighting it out over there. I mean, a serious fight. Now these guys have rockets. They're shooting in each other's clubhouses. They have automatic weapons. They have pistols. They have hand grenades. Where do you suppose they got all these things? You tell me. Well, I was shocked when I found out. Each town has a militia. and at the edge of town is an armory that has a small single padlock on it and these guys were cutting the locks off these armories and taking the stuff these guys were shooting rockets into each other's clubhouses had a shootout in the international airport in denmark yeah so they reach a point in time they know that i'm flying to europe i'm trying to resolve this i'm dealing with the text banditos out of texas who run the banditos and why why are you even invested in solving it because i don't want the war bleeding over into the united states we're already fighting the mongols and we're fighting the uh outlaws and we have an on and off relationship with the banditos at the time so i uh i fly to europe i go to amsterdam call a meeting everybody in europe shows up at the meeting and i'll never forget the meeting uh i go there and I'm trying to be the voice of reason, and I'm saying this.

51:24And this is, you know, we have to put our differences behind us, and you have to follow history, and, you know, all wars come to an end, and, you know, things are resolved. One of the, I don't know what charter he was from. He looks like a big Viking, you know. He's 6 '6", which you'd think a hell's angel looks like. He stands up, you know, we are going to kill every bandito in Europe. And I'm going, you're not going to kill every bandito in Europe. I've been fighting the Mongols and the outlaws for 10 years. You're not going to just genocide them out of existence. No, it's ridiculous. So anyways, Scandinavian government gets word that George Weger is leader of the banditos and myself are negotiating.

52:09He's making trips to Europe. I'm making trips to Europe. We're not going together. We're going separately, talking to our people. So the Scandinavian government petitions our government to issue special visas for leader of the Bandidos in Europe, a gentleman named Tom. His last name escapes me. And Hells Angel. Both these guys are felons. Blondie, who represents our club, I don't know his real name. I can't remember it. Blondie had killed two people in daylight. He walked up to them and shot them in one of the streets in Denmark. They are allowed special visas. They come over, and Bandito George and myself up in Spokane, Washington, host a meeting to resolve this.

52:57And they go back, and it shows you how the governments are different. They go back, and they televise the peace negotiations. Really? And there's a one, I don't know what you call her. She's either a congresswoman or like a senator. I don't know what her position is, some sort of parliament or something. Right. She's there. The lawyer's there. Blondie's there and Jim's there. And they're shaking hands. It's all televised. The war is over. And I think that shows that the government, governments are willing to compromise when it benefits them. You know, we all know this. Yeah. But I kind of got off on a tangent.

53:44No, but I mean, that level of international diplomacy, the fact that through your role with the Angels that you were, like, expected or that you just rose up and took it upon you. I was a little disappointed when there wasn't some, you know, Nobel Peace Prize nomination. I mean, yeah, honestly, that would be fair. I mean, people do talk like that about, like, you know, there's some infamous L.A. like gang rivalries that kind of ended after, like, many decades of war. Right. And I mean, yeah, people make YouTube videos celebrating the people who are able to kind of get those truces done. Do you think that the motorcycle world like is talking about the idea of them having unity?

54:23Is that as absurd sounding as the idea of like all the L.A. street gangs having unity? Like, could you ever see a path towards that or is it just unrealistic? I think it's unrealistic. You know, I had a pretty good run. I had almost 10 years moratorium of no violence where you could really ride across the United States without a, you know, bulletproof vest on. And then, you know, it slowly deteriorated because what happens is people with different agendas get into positions of leadership and power. There was a Harry Bowman, if you look it up on the Internet, United States of America versus Harry Taco Bowman.

55:03And Taco was the head of the outlaws. He was the international leader of the outlaws. And he started getting pressure from a younger member named Spike. And, I mean, I had developed a real close relationship with Taco close enough where he called me up on the phone and said, these peace talks are unraveling, George. He goes, I'm getting a lot of pressure. People think I'm weak. He goes, what are people saying about you? I said the same thing. I go, being in a position of peace in a warring culture, it's not popular, man. You know, people use that against you. Your political adversaries use it against you.

55:38And he goes, well, I don't know what's going to happen, man. I think it's going to unravel. And it did. You know, it put a murder contract on me. It came to Ventura to kill me for whatever reason. They didn't follow through. They didn't come just once. They came twice. But you can look it up online, actually, to talk about they were going to target Sonny Barger or me, and then they decided to target me. But most of these leaders, Taco, you know, he died in prison, racketeering. 2019, he petitions for a compassionate leave. He's got cancer. He's dying. Their attitude, let him die here in prison, man.

56:23Yeah. George Weggers, the leader of the Banditos, he passed. The new leader takes his place. He's doing life. Jeff Pike, he's doing life. I mean, these are guys that I knew and I was friends with. You know, Beverly and I talk about it, you know. Where would I wound up if I would have stayed in? Would I be doing life somewhere? Would I be dead? I mean, you don't know. Once you become a target of the government, you know, or a target of somebody that takes exception to what you're doing. I mean, look at this Charlie Kirk. I mean, I don't know really. And I'm not going to say anything good about him.

57:06I'm not going to say anything negative about him. Right. You know, but, you know, the guy became a target. but with that situation you're kind of getting a glimpse of what like real constant political violence in the u.s might look like because people talk about like a civil war as if everybody's just going to rise up and go against each other no but what how long that would last five minutes right but the charlie kirk thing to me was like oh that is kind of like the start of what yeah because then it's going to be oh if if a week later some democrat in a similar position it got shot in the head and then it happened to go in the other way then it's going to start feeling like we're in a civil war well it's you know i guess you could paint it that way yeah it's not a real civil war because i don't think the government will allow anything like that to happen it'd be yeah unless the somebody had enough influence to control one military uh uh you know branch and somebody controlled another military branch yeah uh you know then you'd uh you'd have a friggin mess yeah Yeah, I think they understand how to avoid something like that far better than we understand their understanding of it.

58:17You know, like they've got. I understand that you understand. They've got a lot of measures in place, I think, with which they could control society and not allow it to get there. But who's really running the country? The shadow government, you believe, is in there? I don't think that. I think there's people with a lot of money and a lot of. I'm not a big conspiracy guy, but I still watch the John F. Kennedy assassination every time it's on. My wife's laughing at me because she always tells me. She's a spoiler. She always tells me how it ends. But what I'm saying is people with money and power, they somehow, sometimes they don't want to be up front.

59:00They want to be the guys in the background. We were guys like that in the club, the guys that made the good drugs in the 70s and 80s. They didn't want the power, but they wanted the power. I mean, if me and you had a scam going where we were each making a million bucks a year. How can we do that? Well, I would love to find out also if you've got any ideas. We'll talk about that off the air. If we had that going, the number one thing that we should do is never tell anybody and keep it to ourselves. Most people don't really move that way. They usually seem to find its way out there. They can't resist talking about things.

59:35That's why when people say, well, this happened to that, I'm going to go, no, it didn't, because people can't keep their mouth shut. Exactly. When people try to tell me that the moon landing was fake, I'm like, okay, so you think that there's tens of thousands of people who all have been keeping their mouth shut about this for all these years? Nobody decided to write a tell-all book or anything? Like, come on. You know, I think it's funny. Who was it? Buzz Aldrin finally cracked and beat the shit out of somebody. Yeah. I don't blame him. It's got to get to a certain point. And I mean, he devoted his, basically you're saying your whole life was alive.

1:00:08Yeah. And it's like one of the greatest achievements in human history. And like a couple of weeks ago, Kim Kardashian was quoted as saying that she doesn't think that it really happened because she saw some TikToks because she saw some TikToks. This is somebody who has access to all of the information that has ever been learned throughout human history through Google. Is she doing it to be provocative? or does she believe it? I think she said it on the TV show. And that's the first question I always ask. Are you doing this to be provocative or are you serious? It's like paranoia and rumors and conspiracy things.

1:00:46We used to sit in the room, man, and things got so bad towards the end. We didn't know who was good and who was bad. we had a fishbowl and everybody like I quit using people's names at one point in the club I would use numbers everybody be assigned a number you'd be number 236 and you'd know your number so you can write 236 down and you know people know and we had a drawing to search people you know would be you'd get searched you never know when you're going to get searched right to prevent people from coming in with a wire but you know we used to uh as a leader i would cheat if i thought somebody was good i'd draw his number two or three weeks in a row and uh kind of send a message to him but uh you know there was a particular individual that uh didn't seem right you know and uh he used to introduce conversations and then he'd leave his phone and leave the room.

1:01:49We found out later his phone was bugged. It was a direct mic to the cops.

1:01:59Conspiracy is easy to breed in people. It's very easy. The feds used to do it to us. I don't interview many people on my show but I interviewed Jay Dobbins. Saw that.

1:02:13They did it excellent job but I think there was also some political play in the ATF going on I think there was somebody that didn't want Jay Dobbins to be the first agent to infiltrate the Hells Angels and you know they they closed the the thing down just he was on the cusp of getting you know did he get officially voted in the club or not you know there's controversy about it so you don't know that he 100 % was a full-patch member at any point? Well, he tells the story. He's told me the story. It sounds very credible. What happens is you get voted in locally. Then George votes in Bill along with the Ventura members.

1:03:00George goes to the West Coast officers' meeting, announces at the meeting, okay, Bill is now a Ventura Hells Angel. From there, it'd go to the East Coast in the old days, and then it would travel. Nowadays, you go to the officers' meeting, West Coast officers' meeting, and they put it out. They've got a click, everybody's email around the world. Jay Dobbins is a new Hell's Angel. It didn't get to that point, but did they locally believe? I think they believed. I didn't buy into it, and I told Jay this. nobody kills somebody and takes a picture of it and he had a you know staged a murder and he was showing people the the body he you know the guy he'd killed a supposed or alleged mongrel i mean i've known a lot of people that are killers and they don't take pictures of their work yeah very rarely is someone like jay is he looked at as uh you know an enemy of of the motorcycle sort of fan club that exists online and stuff yeah they really look down upon all that i interviewed him you're a traitor man right well you know what man that was jay's job yeah he wasn't a rat he's doing what he's supposed to do he was an atf agent yeah that took an oath and look i think he was a dedicated guy he got shot the second day he was at work right he could have sued him and went for the big bucks he wasn't even trained officially but he didn't you know he wanted a career and uh you know if you do any background on him uh you know he was a pretty good college ball player yeah yeah and uh i think he was a team player all the way and he you know he left that football scene and joined the atf and uh you know cost him some bullet holes yeah yeah no definitely do you think that the sort of outlaw motorcycle scene is it dying or would you say it's growing and i don't mean like the overall motorcycle culture i mean more like the outlaw criminal side of it the gangs side i think that like i said i stated earlier in the show with you that the hell's angel is not a criminal organization but it's an organization that has criminals in it at one time i think there were more motorcycle riders than criminals, but it may have made a transition.

1:05:21You know, there may be more criminals than motorcycle riders. I don't know, you know. It's, you know, me personally, I had a different vision for the club. I think that should have been structured a little bit better. But then on the other hand, the autonomy of each Hells Angel charter has kept the RICO laws from working with us. so you know the al-laws uh leader dies in prison uh second in command uh or whatever you want to call him spike he's he's doing life in prison jeff pike he's doing life in prison these are all tear up type organizations where there's a international leader right i mean it feels like due to a bunch of the different reality shows that have come out over the past few years or like the Sons of Anarchy influence, all these different things.

1:06:14That probably kind of inflated the number of people who were involved with this culture for a while, but I would assume that that's kind of coming back down to earth at a certain point. Well, you know, I think what people fail to realize, Sons of Anarchy, was a show. You know, Kurt Sutter tapped into something. What did he get? Six seasons? Seven seasons? Five seasons? I mean, that's a lot of seasons for a TV program. It was successful. He gets a spinoff, the Mayans. In my 2011 case, I died in 2011. In 2013, we're seating a jury, and I wrote some of the questions out. One of the questions I gave to my daughter, who's my lawyer, gave it to the judge.

1:06:59I wanted the jurors ask, do you watch Sons of Anarchy? Right, yeah. And if they answered yes, do you believe the leaders, Jack and I forget the other guy's name, do they know everything every member's doing? Because to me, that was very important. And, you know, Judge Wu's a smart guy. He was the federal judge I had. And Judge Wu knew we were setting up an appeal because every juror said they watched Sons of Anarchy. that during the course of the dialogue, and I don't remember if he called me George or if he called me Mr. Christie, but he looked at me and said, do you watch Sons of Anarchy? And I said, no, Your Honor, I haven't watched it.

1:07:39And he goes, why is everybody in this room watching it but me and you? You know, I just kind of chuckled. Did you give it a try and you just weren't feeling it? Well, look, the first show, I think they blew up somebody and they shot four guys. and I mean that's that's not the lifestyle but I understand they're trying to entertain people I watched maybe two episodes of it probably like 15 years ago and I didn't really get fully into it but yeah I don't have much of an attention span for that kind of shit to be honest are you ADD what do they call it ADD ADHD yeah for sure yeah yeah but for some reason like a podcast can hold my attention a lot better than a full quality production tv show or movie which doesn't make a lot of sense well it does because we're jumping subjects yeah you know and and you know you get burned out on a subject and you make a transition to something else yeah and you know you kind of spark your attention and your interest uh i was that way in school i was dyslexic you know i was gazing out the window all the time oh yeah i don't i got nothing to do here yeah this doesn't make i'm constantly having the experience of like falling into a train of thought about something for five to ten minutes and then snapping out of it and realizing that i didn't comprehend anything that was happening you know if i'd be driving to work listening to a podcast yeah no i listen to a podcast and then 15 minutes later i realized i haven't heard anything in the podcast for 15 minutes because i just got stuck in my own brain thinking about something something they said and you're it's like a real video a looping video in in here yeah yeah uh yeah i i you know i don't know if school's any better now you know everybody's got this uh homeschooling and i just don't know if it's if i don't know if they get anything out of it yeah i mean we've talked about it so much but i feel like okay if the woman is working or you know if both parents are working then it doesn't really seem that realistic you know it's like if the if one of the parents is staying home i think it makes a lot more sense but then also your kid needs to socialize your kid needs to form actual meaningful relationships.

1:09:49So you basically have to create like a pod with other like-minded parents. And then what do they do? They hire a teacher for X amount of hours per day or whatever. So you create your own public school. Yeah. And the money basically ends up being about the same as you would spend on a good private school. So if you really want to keep your kid out of that element, you know, it's possible. But you end up basically sinking a lot of money into things that are kind of mirroring that experience. Well, you know, what's interesting is we talked about my boy earlier. He's diagnosed high-functioning autistic.

1:10:25He wound up with what they call home hospital. It's something they offer. He found it. I don't know where in the hell he found it. He had a teacher come to the house from the Unified School District. I don't know how he pulled that off, but he had his own private tutor. and really saw a lot of advances in him with this one-on-one type. Of course, he had no social skills. Yeah. And you don't say that to be cruel. That's just the actual facet of autism. No. He has no filters. He's learning. Beverly and I work with him constantly. He's got an older sister who he admires. It's an interesting conversation.

1:11:11You know, he's my oldest daughter's in her mid 50s. You know, he's 22. She got this big span, you know, to watch the two children that I raised myself, you know, but personality differences. Do you look at the younger generation and does it stand out to you that while you were someone who was super intrigued by the streets, by the freedom of being outside and all these crazy experiences that you were drawn to that the younger generation just doesn't necessarily exist the same way? This is the same generation that has been taught since birth to stare into their phone and to basically just go home and watch shit on Netflix when they get home.

1:11:56Does it stand out to you that there's a big gulf between you and the way that you grew up in this younger generation? Sure, yeah. I look at young people sometimes, and I see them looking at me, and they're probably just looking at me going, Who's this guy? What's he all about? you know i beverly and i are walking somebody goes by an electric bike and you know comes close to me and he you know i think he's going 50 miles an hour and i i go jesus christ you know the guy almost hit me you know beverly goes he didn't almost hit you you're an old man yeah yeah and i'm going bullshit i go he was close yeah i could feel him you know so you know look you know i'm a old white guy it's like

1:12:43people get upset I've misgendered people before I don't do it intentionally yeah I mean that's just what I've been brought up with man I don't give a what you do I don't care what you do at home I don't care what you do in the bedroom I don't care what you do as long as it doesn't affect me in a negative way I'm cool with it yeah no totally um when you were still in that life was was there always a a thread of so i feel like anytime you have like a group a social group of white people that you're kind of always going to be on alert for racist sentiment to be creeping into it was that was that a constant thing that you were kind of battling against well i'm still battling against it you know it's uh we don't have any blacks in the club you know uh why Why?

1:13:31Because we took on the prison guidelines. Right. Race in prisons. You know, they have a color line and you don't you don't stray from it. You get killed. Seems like it works out pretty well for them because they talk about it like that's how it needs to be in order to maintain order. And when you really get it into your head, like, oh, if a black guy steals from a white guy, they are not allowed to go fight each other. Right. the white the black guys have to discipline the other black guy which is like okay now you're describing a system in which you're keeping order in a pretty intelligent way honestly and you know what happened was there were black members in the club in the 60s you look at some of the old pictures man there's there's black members black interactions with people people start going to prison the lynch report came out in 1965 targeting the hell's angels and other California motorcycle clubs and people started going to prison and people came back and a lot of the things they were talking about, I never even understood it until I went to prison myself in 1986 and I came back and I was like I was enlightened, oh okay I understand what they're talking about but I know at the end of the 70s a lot of guys came back and one of the things we did which the general population might find ludicrous, the death head emblem on the back had an open mouth on it.

1:14:53And we argued for six months. The guys that came back from prison said, the mouth needs to be closed. We don't give information. And, you know, it finally took six months, you know, and we voted on it and we had to close the mouth on the death head. It was a new patch. You know, the patches made three major transitions from the small bumblebee death head original then we went to uh what we called the betty patch it was a woman in san mordino named betty she made the patches for all over the world and uh then when the guys came back and we made the transition to close the mouth on the death head it was all the prison guys you know they insisted the mouth be closed do you think that ultimately uh you know keeping it racially pure not allowing other races in was that good Was it good or bad for the overall brand in the long run?

1:15:51Or was that just how it had to be? I think that if we would have had some,

1:16:00we would have taken a stronger position and became our own kind of tip in prison and said, this is the way we do it. I think we could have survived. But people didn't do it. People, they got in there and they fell in line. First thing they ask you, three times I've been to prison, if the prisoners don't ask you, the cops come in and ask you. Oh, yeah. They're in on it too, yeah. Yeah, they're all in on it. So I go to a federal prison. It's immediately understood. I run with the biker car, the white guys, and you know some mexicans and filipinos and whatnot in it uh but the black guys run with the blacks uh the you know pecker woods or whatever you want to call them they run with uh the white guys and the mexicans run with the mexicans yeah because like ah so growing up uh in new england it was like there was hardcore crews that were basically like associated with like the punk and metal music scene right and like there was there was a crew in boston that were what year is this well i'm talking like uh late 90s early 2000s were they like straight edge yes okay yeah all right yeah and they were the hardest dudes especially the hardest white dudes out like or at least that we knew about you know these guys were running shit in boston and they actually ended up getting like crazy federal rico basically i remember yeah i think rolling stone did a big yes exactly but i recall and the lore about them like the legend that was always told about him was the scene the music scene had like you know nazi elements that would kind of creep into the scene people would come to the shows they have swastikas on their show whatever and that these were the guys who would beat the out of them and make sure that the scene had no place for that kind of thing because it make people feel uncomfortable or whatever and then as the years go by i start to see because you know that kind of crew the motorcycle world is like what they upgrade to as time goes by i started to realize and like then we started to see some pictures of some members of that who would be hanging out at certain motorcycle spots and there would be swastikas hanging on the wall and shit and i remember like in that world we were so shocked by that but you initially know where that regalia came from you're just saying it's like world war ii memorabilia type shit absolutely you know it's spoils of war i mean this is things that armies have conquering armors have armies had done for years yeah yeah and you know the guys came back now my dad was in the navy he was in the pacific you know he brought back japanese souvenirs right my uh other buddy's dad was in the uh army he was in the european theater he came back with uh swastika stuff he wanted my stuff real bad i wanted his stuff real bad you know i wound up with a youth dagger with a eagle and ss uh bolts on it uh a helmet uh who i i remember stevie binger he's dead now uh he had it chromed you know he had a nazi helmet yeah and he had it chrome and he was riding wearing riding around wow you know that's a statement yeah you know but it wasn't hey i'm a nazi yeah it was hey you guys you know just like you know people go i've they're homosexuals man they're you seem kissing you know yeah it was like a big shock thing yeah i mean our culture as it is now kind of forgets about the fact that like the sex pistols would be wearing swastikas and shit like that like it was just kind of a statement of rebellion at a certain point you know i walked in a a a was like a head shop.

1:19:50It was called Wild Planet Ventura. And I took Stevie Jones in there and we were walking around. I was showing him all the Sex Pistols stuff. I was involved in protecting the Hells Angel brand. So I was just telling him, you know, they're selling your shit everywhere, man. And he had no idea they were selling all this stuff. But I thought it was funny. I had Stevie Jones from the Sex Pistols in this shop where they're selling all of his posters. They had no clue even who he was yeah i didn't introduce him to nobody i just went in there and hung out and uh later i ran into a couple of the guys that ran it and i told my girl you didn't know who that guy was man yeah it's embarrassing that is crazy but certain bands like you know like the the misfits logo like probably way more people are familiar with the misfits logo or the dead kennedy's logo or a metallica logo or some shit than like familiar with the drummer from any of those bands never mind the singer no you know the uh hell's angel uh brand is very very strong very recognizable very powerful brand you know we had the same intellectual uh lawyers as coca-cola mastercard and whatnot sunbuck simbock and uh limbock limbock and sutton up in san Francisco and Coca-Cola and the other brands found out that they were representing us and basically like me at the Department of Defense go choose who do you want you know do you want to represent the Hells Angels do you want to represent us we don't want our brand brushing up against the Hells Angels right was there ever any consideration of the Hells Angel like logo and insignia being like commercialized and like sold in stores and now I mean oh it is now it well on the internet i mean oh i don't know who's controlling it but you know i have people i had a guy write me a few months ago and he goes hey man i need to ask you something and i you know i try to answer anybody that writes me as long as it's you know reasonable and he goes did i just buy your bike did i send you a thousand dollars because because i because I've lost track of this guy.

1:22:01Yeah. And I go, look, man, I don't know who you sent$1 ,000 to, but it had nothing to do with me, and it wasn't my bike. Wow. You know, you've got guys that, look, I'm trying to identify where my brother is buried or my cousin is buried, but do I really have to pay$500 and join as a supporter before I can? And it's classified information. We can't tell you without you being a member. But for$500, we can fix you right up. Oh, that's hilarious. There's people using the brand's strength, a strong brand image to basically do that. Now, back in the old days, somebody's infringing on our brand. Hey, animal, Tiny, let's go down here.

1:22:52We're going to talk to this guy. He's using our brand. And you go in there, and I used to laugh. I called it out-of-court settlements. Everything was out-of-court settlements. We'd go in there and say, we're not going to do this. Do you understand? And they always understood. But nowadays, you've got some guy on a computer. I don't know where. Where do you think he is? India? Yeah. Might as well be. Yeah. I mean, I don't know where they're at, but they're selling memberships. They're selling Hells Angel patches, full patches. somebody took a picture of a guy in a store a couple days ago and sent it to me and it you know hell's angels world well there's there's no rocker like that yeah it's a fake patch yeah and it looked pretty good but it's gonna get this guy in trouble if he gets caught wearing it somewhere yeah no that's crazy i mean it's it's funny because like i i watched the and i get sucked in by these youtube videos from time to time but i i got sucked into watching one that was like the rise and fall of west coast chopper and jesse james yeah and i'm watching it and just like realizing like how powerful that logo was and how cool it was and how they sold it though didn't yeah but that they mass commercialized it to the point where the logo meant nothing by the time they were done with it well and the tv show these are all the things you do that will remove the hardcore aura from something like pretty rapidly you know you're absolutely correct it's like von dutch you know yeah you ever heard of von dutch yeah well i knew von dutch yeah and uh first time I really got to interact with Von Dutch that Satan Slaves and the Hells Angels were at a bar.

1:24:24We were waiting for these guys to show up. We ran them out of the bar. The owner said, if you guys run these guys out of the bar, I'll give you free beer all night. Von Dutch showed up and somebody hit Von Dutch across the face with a little dog collar chain. He had it on. He was whipping people with it oh and he cut dutch's cheek open and bill reed who was a satan slave at the time put him up on the bar and sewed him up with a needle and thread because von dutch was not leaving because it were free beer whoa and i mean that's the kind of guy von dutch was if von dutch knew what had happened uh with his name and logo i mean you know he probably would have turned over is great but i mean they were selling von dutch screwdrives shitty screwdrivers for 750 dollars you know it said von dutch yeah i mean it's crazy there's so many examples of that of like the people who are the architects of the culture that we now live in who their brands at some point got sold and became total parodies like even the ed hardy things the father of like modern tattooing and you had like a year or two there where it was this really really cool fashion brand and then at a certain point that you know influx of like so many people wearing it caused it to become a joke well and now it kind of feels like it's been long enough that i see celebrities wearing it like it's it's cooled off so much that they can kind of appreciate it again you know it's like in the video diddy's wearing a von dutch shirt oh yeah that's why i was thinking about von dutch the other day on dutch shirt look von dutch was a sad story man he died in a warehouse in Santa Paula.

1:26:07He was an alcoholic, man. You know, he was taking care of a good friend of mine. He was taking care of all his antique automobiles. And he was still making, you know, he made guns by hand and a combination of guns and knives. I mean, he did all kinds of cool stuff, but he died in poverty, man. Yeah. I heard they sold his whole estate or whatever was sold. the name itself was sold to a conglomerate in japan for 12 million dollars is that true i don't know you know yeah no definitely somebody gonna buy my uh any rumors out there i mean it's not the worst idea ever yeah yeah why not you know like the george christie brand there you go man if there's any buyers out there but i mean the irony is like if you had been making shirts with a certain logo for many many decades that it like you know it's really just that repetition in people's minds and if something existed since that age you know i had a t-shirt company you know what the most popular shirt was off really yeah it said off big letters and this is in the 70s late 70s the hell's angels in los angeles gave that to me as a gift really uh when i got in the club uh took it over uh started uh doing it up and just out of ohio oakview california and find out later i was under investigation for uh obscenity uh considerations because it's it was i was using the postal service to send this t-shirt around the world that said off that's amazing yeah we don't hear about obscenity law much anymore but that was like the story of america for a long time all the like the comic book artists that i was into when i was in grade school were like constantly under fire getting their work stolen out of comic book stores because it was too extreme violent sexual whatever it was yeah i had a tattoo business so i had like guys that would come in there and just do incredible tattoo work and some of them were working on like i'm gonna do a comic book thing yeah you know uh remember well you maybe you don't remember surfer magazine uh it sounds familiar you remember murph the surf well he It was a little cartoon, and every issue they'd have Murph's Adventures, and it was like four or five panels.

1:28:25Well, you know, Rick Griffin, he wound up up there in the scene with the Grateful Dead. Like, I'm talking to this guy, and one of the band members introduces me to him, and it's the artist, Rick Griffin. He's making all these pop posters, and I'm looking at him, and I go, Murph the Surf. and he was like totally in shock he goes how in the hell did you know that and I said well I used to surf man I remember reading your little cartoon things and he got killed in a car accident he's an incredible Americana it's like I went to a Beach Boys concert and I go to the backstage and I say you know got four or five guys man we want to come in and check out the concert and Dennis Wilson comes out he can't believe who's that Brian Wilson's dad no it's the drummer oh the drummer was okay he drowned ultimately but he was the guy that hung out with Charlie Manson for a while yeah yeah and uh he uh he came out there and said why would the hell's angels want to uh come to a Beach Boys concert yeah that's Americana man oh man like us I grew up on the Beach Boys yeah so hardcore and I watched they have a great documentary on Disney plus about the Beach Boys and people forget about this sort of like rivalry they have with the Beatles and how the Beatles kind of like changed them so much and their music just went in so many crazy directions.

1:29:53Remember Jan and Dean? Who was that? Jan and Dean? Jan and Dean. Jan and Dean. Surf City, Here Week, I think that was it. I'm looking at my wife. She's in her head. We're from the 60s, man. But Jan and Dean and he got in a wreck and uh they wrote a song about it i you know i'm i know so much shit i can't keep it sorted in my head definitely over the years and that's not because i'm really smart it's because i've been around here a long time yeah yeah yeah you know you talk about intaking this stuff and then you get caught up in things but i mean i'm 42 i feel old as i realize that that's offensive to not but i i uh i'm going to 100 man you know i had an uncle that went to 102 i had another went to 100 You don't got any bad habits left?

1:30:41No drinking, no smoking? I don't drink. I don't smoke. Don't really. You know, I microdose sometimes on LSD. Nice. But, you know, not an everyday thing. I got like a Vicodin prescription because I have two hip replacements. I only take them if I absolutely can't handle it. Yeah. Beverly don't want to hang out with me until 100. She's not on board? She's not on board for 100. Oh, she. She looked younger than you. Well, she's actually a year older than me. Oh, shit. But Beverly and I have known each other since we were 12. Really? Beverly married a good friend of mine. She was married for 57 years.

1:31:20I was running the streets crazy. I was in Spain working on a project. And Bob, I was good friends with her and Bob. And after 57 years, he died, man. So I stepped in, man. Wow. What year was that? three four years ago oh okay beverly was a witness at my first trial she was a character witness and because she came to bat for george christie leader of the hell's angels they froze her bank account uh irs audit uh surveillance on her store she had a high end uh women's boutique in ventura so beverly and i we got long long history together i mean if talking to you reminds me of anything it's how much i need to avoid getting involved in organized crime because it just doesn't seem worth it doesn't seem like a good idea it's not you know michael franchises and i laugh yeah i don't know you know you know yeah i've seen you guys talking yeah yeah you know we were in prison together and you know y 'all by the time the journey's over man if you made any money you spending on bail and lawyers exactly so you might as well go to work man i mean getting sued for random bullshit is bad enough having to deal with the law never mind god i i got friends with fed cases this is a whole nother level of bullshit and you know this internet stuff's like you gotta make sure you're not doing nothing uh off the wall you know you could be doing something without even realizing you're doing something these days you text somebody the wrong thing yeah absolutely I'm real careful what I do definitely yeah okay man it was great talking to you not exactly the sort of encyclopedic chronicling of your story the way that my boy Vlad TV did and everything but definitely I feel like it was a good hang out well I'm glad you enjoyed yourself sometimes I get locked into a particular era some eras are better than others like the 70s man it was real dangerous but you know one weird thing that kept happening to me while i was like researching this is that the youtube sidebar is suggesting other videos and it kept being these really salacious titles that would get me to click like you know hell's angels you know confront biker for over a fake patch yada yada and i click on it thinking it's going to be this raw iphone footage of somebody getting pressed at the gas station and then it's like a scene from a reality tv show i know which when you're talking and i'm kind of like hell's angels yeah and i'm kind of just like oh okay so this this scene is being pimped out for content to the max yeah right you know the channel our channel's been around a little bit uh we had the patreon thing and then we started the youtube thing you know i keep it kind of raw uh but you know i'm just playing by ear because you know this is a whole new it's a different world man like you've been in how long you've been into this really uh i did bmx content bmx bikes that was my thing for like 20 years and uh but i was doing content online about it for 10 years so really about 20 years of making a living from doing content online which sounds crazy i don't know if i've ever actually verbalized that yeah well congratulations before it was youtube it was blogs i just writing articles about bikes and shit you know it's it's interesting uh i think that the world has changed so much and i'm thinking i started doing stuff i write books i've got my own books i i do this stuff i'm trying to make a historical record of how it really was because i figure 100 years from now man some guy's gonna probably well this is what really happened i've been researching it and uh that christy's full as shit yeah no no i mean that that's the reality of it is that if you don't relentlessly chronicle what's going on within subcultures and these sort of smaller movements and stuff then it's going to get lost to time because so little of our culture in general gets documented when i think about all the bands i was into in high school and stuff that seemed like they were really important at the time and you know in the sort of like most important band some shit that like zero percent of the people out there but like there was all these bands that you know there was a band called uh on broken wings and this band called bear your dead and this was just like a scene for that band i don't remember what the content i just remember the title because i thought it was a cool title i throw those out there to just say that there was this whole era of music that i was super invested in and if somebody had made like a cool documentary or something during that time period it would be much easier to explain that time period but there wasn't a lot of media so it's like what it's almost like it didn't exist i got a great story for when i was in texas uh my last beef they sent me to uh latuna prison in texas and every week i get a postcard and like the writing starts on the outside and goes to the to the center sometimes it starts in the center and goes to the outside and it's exena from x the band x okay and uh the security intelligence guys in the prison think that she's some sort of russian it's in code yeah they think she's some sort of a russian uh provocateur or something oh wow and uh uh exena serenka i think is her name so they're they're coming up with all these uh theories and i finally had to break it down for them they actually called me into the end for an interview who is this person and why are they in a different town every week and i said because they're on tour yeah that does sound kind of suspicious from a correctional officer's perspective yeah but anyways crazy uh george honor great to talk to you man i love talking to somebody who's uh been through it all and somehow made it out uh well i'm not out yet yeah well no you're out you're you're uh you're living a good life i am i'm feeling you've been getting social security for like two decades almost that's pretty good right well since i was 62 as soon as i was eligible i took it man i figured i'm going to 100 hell yeah well because you have to make that choice if you want it at what is it i forget but if you wait four years or something then you get more yeah but you don't get that much more yeah it's not that much right and it wasn't worth it and i thought i might not be i might be dead in six months exactly yeah yeah you gotta take it now yeah for sure all right man all right george christie thank you so much everybody out there go subscribe to his channel he's pumping out content on a consistent basis or go watch some of his other interviews everything like that no jumper coolest podcast like comment and subscribe we will be reading the comments appreciate y 'all suicide boys gray day tour 2026 with special guests get tickets friday at live nation.com lineup varies by city