It is hard enough to get unskilled work while wearing shoulder-length hair and a gold earring… it takes an employer who is
either desperate or unusually tolerant… but to apply for work as a member of a nationally
known „criminal motorcycle conspiracy” is a handicap that can only be overcome by very
special talents, which few Angels possess. Most are unskilled and uneducated, with no
social or economic credentials beyond a colorful police record and a fine knowledge of
motorcycles.
So there is more to their stance than a wistful yearning for acceptance in a world
they never made. Their real motivation is an instinctive certainty as to what the score really
is. They are out of the ballgame and they know it. Unlike the campus rebels, who with a
minimum amount of effort will emerge from their struggle with a validated ticket to status,
the outlaw motorcyclist views the future with the baleful eye of a man with no upward
mobility at all. In a world increasingly geared to specialists, technicians and fantastically
complicated machinery, the Hell’s Angels are obvious losers and it bugs them. But instead
of submitting quietly to their collective fate, they have made it the basis of a full-time social
vendetta. They don’t expect to win anything, but on the other hand, they have nothing to
lose.