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AGV Backmarker: Hollister Motorcycle Rally Cancelled
By Mark Gardiner

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I had planned to write a more conventional “Backmarker” this week—something that would come in around 1,000 words and deal with current road racing events. But I got sidetracked by news that the town of Hollister, California, has (again) cancelled its traditional July 4 biker weekend.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Hollister’s been in the news. On July 4, 1947, 4,000 “straight-pipers” rode into Hollister. Their plan was to spend the long weekend partying and watching the races, but the partying got a little out of control.

Even the local police admitted that the bikers “did more harm to themselves than they did to the town,” but the press blew the story out of proportion. When the Hollister “riot” was dramatized by Hollywood in The Wild One, America's image of motorcycling changed forever.

Over the years, the story has expanded. The boundaries have blurred between real events, tales told and retold, media coverage, and pure fiction. In the mid-‘90s, when I first researched Hollister, I realized that the clock was ticking; each year, there were fewer surviving eyewitnesses, and their memories were less reliable. Over the next few years, I was able to find nine people who were actually in downtown Hollister on the fateful weekend.

In talking to them, I was struck by the way that time makes even reality relative. Genuine eyewitnesses gave varied accounts. Take the “bikes ridden right into the bar” stories: did it probably happen? Yeah. Often? I doubt it. You’ve seen ‘40s-era Harleys; getting one of ‘em through a small bar’s doorway would be quite a challenge for the average drunk. But there were underlying themes that people wouldn’t have been prone to exaggerate; stories that almost certainly weren’t apocryphal. For example, several people mentioned bringing their children down to watch the goings-on; hardly something they’d have done if, at the time, the environment in downtown Hollister had seemed threatening.

Another interesting thing I realized was that if motorcycles don’t kill us, they keep us young. The guys I spoke to who remained active riders had the sharpest minds. Talking to some of them was like talking to a guy half their age.

Good historians, it’s been said, describe what happened. In that spirit, I submit my Hollister story. Appended to it are the key sections of my interview transcripts.

Be warned: this is long. You’ll find a “printer friendly version” here. By the time you read this, I’ll be in Daytona, and I promise to break a story that’s less than half a century old.

THE HOLLISTER MOTORCYCLE RIOT
At the end of World War II, the Central California town of Hollister had a population of about 4,500. The gently rolling farmland surrounding the community was well-suited to motorcycle riding; there were facilities for scrambles, hill-climbs, and dirt-track racing at Bolado Park (about 10 miles away) and at Memorial Park, on the outskirts of town.

Through the 1930s, Hollister had been the site of popular races sanctioned by the American Motorcycle Association and promoted by the Salinas Scramblers. Spectators rode in on AMA-organized “Gypsy Tours,” and as attendances grew, the Memorial Day races became as important to Hollister as the livestock fair or the rodeo.

Racing was postponed during World War II. When it was organized again for 1947, local merchants welcomed a major source of revenue back to the Hollister economy.

When peace broke out, many American servicemen were demobilized in California and settled there. As soldiers, they had earned regular pay, but they found little to spend it on. In sunny California, they spent their savings on motorcycles.

The veterans formed hundreds of small motorcycle clubs with names like the Jackrabbits, 13 Rebels, and Yellow Jackets. Members wore club sweaters, rode, drank and partied together, and organized informal motorcycle “field meets.” There was no sense of territoriality or inter-club fighting.

The AMA realized that the war had exposed many Americans to motorcycles; veterans came back with experiences of Harley Davidson’s WA45. Back home, shortages of metals and fuels had encouraged people to ride instead of drive. Eager to keep these new riders, the AMA sanctioned competitions and organized Gypsy Tours with renewed enthusiasm.

The army, however, is not a particularly good place to acquire social graces. The new motorcyclists drank harder and were more rambunctious than the riders who had come to Hollister before the war.

Beginning Friday morning, thousands of them poured into town. They came down from San Francisco, up from L.A. and San Diego, and from as far away as Florida and Connecticut. By evening, San Benito Street was choked with motorcycles. Eager to prevent the locals from straying into the crowd, the seven-man Hollister Police Department set up roadblocks at either end of the main street.

At first, the 21(!) bars and taverns in Hollister welcomed the bikers with open arms. It was a good joke when motorcycles were ridden right into at least one of them. But the bar owners quickly realized that the crowd required no extra encouragement. Taking the advice of the police, bartenders agreed to close two hours earlier than normal. A half-hearted attempt was made to stop serving beer, on the theory that the bikers probably couldn’t afford hard liquor.

From late Friday afternoon to early Sunday morning, the overwhelmed Hollister police (and many bemused residents) watched the “straight pipers” stage drunken drags, wheelie and burnout displays, and impromptu relay races right on the main street. Most of them ignored the sanctioned races going on at Memorial Park.

In total, 50 to 60 bikers were treated for injuries at the local hospital. About the same number were arrested. They were charged with misdemeanors: public drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and reckless driving. Most were held for only a few hours. No one was killed or raped; there was no destruction of property, no arson, or looting; in fact, no locals suffered any harm at all.

On Sunday, 40 California Highway Patrol officers arrived with a show of force and threats of tear gas. The bikers scattered and returned to their jobs.

The San Francisco Chronicle ran breathless accounts of Hollister’s wild weekend. While they didn’t actually lie, the stories carried sensational headlines like “Havoc in Hollister” and “Riots... Cyclists Take Over Town.” The AMA’s public-relations nightmare got even worse two weeks later when Life magazine ran a photo of a beefy drunkard, swaying atop a Harley, with a beer in each hand.

As time goes by, it becomes harder to separate the Hollister myths from reality. It couldn’t have been too bad, because the town agreed to allow the AMA and the Salinas Scramblers to promote motorcycle races again just five months later. Local bartenders welcomed the bikers (and their wallets) once more.

The community was the calm at the eye of a national storm. Hollister, which had actually experienced the “riot,” was ready to have the bikers back; meanwhile, towns across the U.S. that had only read the press coverage, cancelled race meetings. Police departments also fostered the notion that roving bands of ruthless motorcycle hoodlums might descend on their towns at any moment. This worked especially well at budget time.

When Hollywood dramatized the Hollister weekend in the 1954 film The Wild One, any hope of salvaging motorcycling’s image was lost. At best, it showed bikers as drunken misfits; at worst, sociopaths. The movie’s only redeeming scene comes when a ride on Brando’s Triumph weakens the resolve of a beautiful, but chaste, young woman. If only that were true.

Ironically, the sensational media coverage of Hollister helped to spawn truly criminal “outlaw” bike gangs. Once the public fear of motorcyclists reached a fever pitch, bikes held irresistible appeal for genuine sociopaths.

A few predators formed clubs (or took over existing ones, like the Hell’s Angels.) They were egged on by wildly exaggerated media portrayals of biker crime (including a widely reported and completely fictitious Hell’s Angels “gang rape” on a SoCal beach).

While those rape charges were bogus, by 1960 the Angels and several other clubs had indeed become gangs. Those hooligans made Marlon Brando look like, well, Marlon Brando. The AMA fought a public relations rearguard action until Honda saved the day with their famous “nicest people” ad campaign.

Despite the damage Hollywood did to motorcycling’s reputation, Honda unveiled its television-ad campaign on the Academy Awards. It was the first foreign company to sponsor the show.

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