By Ed Staskus

“The Hells Angels are so much aware of their mad-dog reputation that they take a perverse kind of pleasure in being friendly.”  Hunter S. Thompson

   When Frank Glass pulled his Hyundai Tucson into the back lot of Barron Cannon’s pop-up yoga class, on the border of Lakewood and Cleveland, Ohio, getting out with his rolled-up mat under his arm, he was brought up short by a fleet of Harley Davidson motorcycles parked outside the door. Once inside, he peeked into the practice space, where a mob of muscled-up bare-chested men were in awkward cross-legged poses on rental mats. Their denim vests and jackets hanging on coat hooks bore the Hells Angels colors and moniker, red lettering displayed on a white background.

   The bikers are sometimes called “The Red and White.” They are also known as “The Filthy Few.” Inside the club house among themselves they are “The 81.” H is the eighth letter of the alphabet and A is the first letter of the alphabet.

   The bikers are the best known of what are known as outlaw motorcycle gangs. The name comes from the P-40 squadrons of Flying Tigers who flew in Burma and China during World War Two. The pilots were known as “Hells Angels” because the combat missions they flew were literally death-defying. Many of them didn’t make the round-trip.

   Skulls scowled from the backs of the biker vests and jackets on the coat hooks. Frank gave the skulls a sly smile.

   He took a seat, instead of taking the class, seeing he was late for it, anyway, and seeing the room was full. He might as well, he thought, read the book he was halfway through, and go to lunch with Barron, as they had planned, when the class was over. The book he was reading on his iPhone was David Halberstam’s “The Fifties.” Even though the Hells Angels were formed at the turn of the decade, and ran riot in the 1950s, there wasn’t anything about them in the book.

   Yoga in the United States got going in the same decade as the Hells Angels, although it didn’t run riot. It kept a low profile until the next decade, the 1960s, when hippies made the scene, and adopted yoga as one of their signposts. Even so, from then until now, as yoga has grown exponentially, it has never run riot.

   The bikers and yoga have diametrically opposing outlooks on life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Hells Angels are noted for violence, fighting and brawling with fists, chains, and guns. They are notorious for being ruthless. They will cut the legs out from under you at the slightest provocation. One of the legs yoga stands on is ahimsa, or non-violence. It stands up for its own values, not going out of its way to chop anyone else down to size.

   When the class ended the Hells Angels filed out of the studio. It had only been them in Barron Cannon’s morning class. They slugged back cans of lukewarm beer, toweled off each other’s backs, and got back into their denims and Red Wings.

   “I’ll be damned if that was a beginner’s class,” one of them said.

   The biker standing next to him, his bald mottled head glistening, said, “That was a hell of a workout.”

   “Workout?” another one exclaimed. “That was some kind of torture.”

   The Hells Angels are the biggest biker gang in the world. There are more than 400 chapters on six continents. They are banned in some countries, like the Netherlands, where they have been labeled as a “menace to public order.” The Hells Angels don’t give a fig about the Dutch, so it’s a wash. 

   There are only a few requirements for becoming a Hells Angel. First, you have to have a driver’s license and a seriously badass motorcycle, preferably a chopped Harley Davison. Second, you have to ride it a minimum of 12,000 miles a year. Third, if you were ever a policeman, or ever thought of becoming a policeman, you cannot join the club. Fourth, you have to undergo a semi-secret initiation, resulting in being “patched.” Being patched is like getting tenured. Lastly, you have to be a man, and a renegade, to boot. No Barbies are allowed, although they are encouraged to anchor the rear.

   It’s best to be a white man when applying for membership. In 2000, Sonny Barger, one of the sparkplugs of the gang, said, “if you’re a motorcycle rider and you’re white, you want to join the Hells Angels. If you’re black, you want to join the Dragons. That’s how it is whether anyone likes it or not. We don’t have no blacks and they don’t have no whites.” When asked if that might ever change, he answered, “Anything can change. I can’t predict the future.” He was being disingenuous.

   As many Hells Angels as there are, there are many more men and women who practice yoga, about 300 million worldwide. It’s easy to do, too. You don’t need a $30,000 two-wheeler. You don’t need to ride it all day and night. There are no initiation rites, half-baked or otherwise. You can be whatever race, creed, and gender you want to be. You don’t have to be amoral, bloodthirsty, or ungovernable, either, all of which yoga is good at resolving.

   “What did you say?” one of the Hells Angels asked.

   “Who, me?” Frank replied.

   “Yes, you,” the biker said, looming over him.

   “I didn’t say anything. I’m just sitting here thinking.”

   “Keep your thinking to yourself,” the Hells Angel said, stalking out of the room. Some of the other bikers glared at him but left without incident. One of them gave him a friendly wave and a wink. Frank breathed a sigh of relief.

   There was a roar of engines starting up in the parking lot. In a minute the bikers were swaggering down Clifton Boulevard towards downtown Cleveland. Frank had overheard one of them mention the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. He wondered whether there was an exhibit at the hall commemorating the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, where the Hells Angels had been hired to provide security. They beat dozens of fans with lead pipes. One concertgoer was stabbed to death in front of Mick Jagger.

   Barron Cannon stepped out of the studio space, wearing loose black shorts and a tight-fitting Pearl Izumi jersey. He looked cool as a cucumber. Frank jumped to his feet.

   “What in the hell was that all about?” he asked blurting it out.

   “Missionary work,” said Barron, as unflappable and insufferable as a post-graduate in philosophy can be. Barron had a PhD, although he eschewed academics in favor of his own leanings, which were economic Marxism, idealistic anarchy, and vegetarianism. He had grown up on the other side of Lakewood, camped out in a yurt in his parent’s backyard for years while he was in school, been briefly married, and lived in an 80-year-old vaguely modernized apartment close to Edgewater Park, a short bike ride away.

   Barron owned a Chevy Volt, but usually rode his bicycle, shopping for groceries, visiting nearby friends, and training on the multi-purpose path in the Rocky River Metropark.

   “Missionary work? What do you mean?”

   “Let’s go across the street to Starbucks, get some coffee, and some egg and cheese wraps,” said Barron.

   Sitting down inside the Starbucks, which had transformed a vacant Burger King the year before, their food and coffee in front of them, Frank again asked Barron, “What are you up to?”

   “Off the mat and into the world.”

   “The last time that came up you derided the idea, saying yoga had to stay close to the individual, close to its roots, and not try to reform the world.”

   “Times change, bud,” said Barron.

   “Trying to teach yoga to Hells Angels isn’t a hop, skip, and a jump.”

   “No,” said Barron. “It’s a great leap forward.”

   Barron Cannon took secret delight in conflating things like the moon landing and Chairman Mao, as though the past was play dough.

   “How did it go?”

   “Not bad, they got engaged in what we were doing. I think they might try a follow-up class.”

   “When hell freezes over,” thought Frank.

   Barron Cannon laughed.

   “That’s mostly true, but not entirely true,” he said. “No one is absolutely unsuited for yoga practice.”

   “Are you reading my mind?”

   “Sometimes.”

   “Are you sure they weren’t just grandstanding?”

   “If there’s anything uncertain about yoga, it’s certainty,” said Barron.

   Many law enforcement agencies worldwide consider the Hells Angels the Numero Uno of the “Big Four” motorcycle gangs, the others being the Pagans, Outlaws, and Bandidos. They investigate and arrest the bikers for engaging in organized crime, including extortion, drug dealing, and battery of all kinds. They raid their clubhouses and haul the Filthy Few off to jail. The police hardly ever bust up yoga studios, which are generally spic and span.

   Members of the Hells Angels say they are a group of enthusiasts who have bonded to ride motorcycles together, organizing events such as road trips, rallies, and fundraisers. They say any crimes are the responsibility of the men who committed them and not the club as a whole, despite many convictions for mayhem, racketeering, and shootings. One of their slogans is, “When in doubt, knock them out.”

   “How did you get them into the studio in the first place?”

   “I was at the Shell station up on the corner, filling up my hybrid, when a Hells Angel pulled in behind me. He moved like a wooden Indian. He had to lean on the gas tank to get off his motorcycle.”

   “And you suggested yoga?” 

   “You should try yoga,” Barron said to the biker. “It’s good for your back.”

   “Who the hell are you?” asked the biker, testy and suspicious, his arms tattooed from wrist to shoulder.

   “I teach yoga just down the street. You should come in for a beginner’s class. You might be surprised what a big help it can be.”

   “Fuck off,” the biker snorted.

   “So, what happened?” asked Frank. 

   “The next thing I know, there they were this morning. They took over the class, one of them standing outside turning everyone else away, saying the class was full, until I got started.”

   “How did it go?”

   “They wouldn’t chant, and they didn’t want to hear any yogic philosophy beforehand. They told me to get down to business, so what happened was that it turned into a plain and simple asana class.”

   “How did they do?”

   “They’re strong men, but most of them can’t touch their toes to save their lives. They tried hard, I will give them that. They were terrific doing the warrior poses, but things like triangle, anything cross-legged, and some of the twists were beyond them. Most of them were stiff as two-by-fours.”

   Yoga plays an important role in reducing aggression and violence. It helps you by becoming more thoughtful about your actions. It makes you more flexible in tight spots. The brain-addled in prisons have been especially helped by the practice.

   “Attention and impulsivity are very important for this population, which has problems dealing with aggressive impulses,” says Oxford University psychologist Miguel Farias about prison inmates

   Simple things like pranayama breathing techniques release tension and anger. Doing headstand is a good way to get it into your head that you can’t stay mad when you’re on your head. Mindfulness and awareness flip the misconceptions of anger.

   “We can see anger in terms of a lack of awareness, as well as an active misconstruing of reality,” says the Dalai Lama.

   Even the yoga concept of non-attachment can be a big help. No matter what patches you wear, you aren’t that patch. You are an individual who is free to make individual choices. The Hells Angel emblematic skull’s head is a reminder of the transitory nature of life. Make the most of it. Don’t be always punching your way out of a paper bag, although be careful saying that to a Hells Angel.

   Frank and Barron finished their coffees and stepped outside. At the crosswalk they paused at the curb. The traffic was light on Clifton Boulevard, but a biker was approaching. He was a trim young man on a yellow Vespa. He pulled up and stopped at the painted line of the crosswalk. He was wearing a turquoise football-style helmet. Both his arms up to the sleeves of his sleeveless black t-shirt were freckled. He waved at them to go. They went over the side of the curb into the street.

   Stepping up to the curb on the other side of the street, Barron said, “There you are, Frank, not all angels are bats out of hell.”

By Ed Staskus

   It was a late morning in May when Frank and Betty Glass went visiting Barron Cannon, who they hadn’t seen much since they first ran into him picketing Cleveland Vegan, a café and bakery near where they lived in Lakewood, Ohio. They had dropped by his yurt, which was on a bluff overlooking the Rocky River Metropark Reservation, once in November but after winter got cold and snowy had not paid him another social call, not that Betty minded, or even gave it a thought.

   The first time they ever saw Barron had been the past September, when they were attracted by the red and blue flashing lights of a Ford Police Interceptor at the vegan eatery, and were greeted by the sight of a slender pony-tailed man in his early 30s waving a picket sign on a stick. Faces peered through the plate glass windows. Passersby stopped to see what was going on. There was a single word scrawled on the placard. The word was HYPOCRITES! It was in capital letters. It was written in blood red crayon. 

   The exasperated policeman who had been called to the scene by one of the outraged servers was telling him he had to call it a day. He told him protesting without a permit wasn’t permitted. Although Barron maintained he had more than enough reason, and cited his first amendment rights, making an impromptu speech about animal rights, he finally agreed to go home and strode off, his picket sign bouncing up and down on his shoulder.

   The bemused policeman walked away shaking his head. “He’s like the cranky old guy who’s always on his front porch yelling at the neighborhood kids,” he said to the offended server standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips.

   Betty and Frank were going the same way as Barron, up West Clifton Blvd., and after falling into step with him were astonished to find out he was himself a vegan. “Eating is an act of nourishing my body and soul,” he said. “I choose to do no harm to myself or other living beings.”

   He did not eat animals, drink their milk, or wear their hides. He eschewed all animal products. He didn’t eat anything deep-fried and never snacked on refined sugar. He avoided Worcestershire sauce because it contained anchovies. He considered eating honey exploitive. He had more reasons to not eat something than most people had to eat anything.

   “I can’t stomach people who eat animals, and since that’s just about everybody, and since that is not changing anytime soon, here I am, a lonely voice in the wilderness. At least I don’t have to live with them.” At least as long as they weren’t his parents. Although he lived alone, he lived with his parents. He lived in their backyard.

   “My parents are as bad as everybody else. They are always bringing chicken, pork, and ground beef home from the grocery. I see them in their kitchen every day, sticking forks into decomposing flesh and animal secretions. They chew on Slim Jim’s while they watch the TV news, which is full of Trump’s lies and misery in general. Then there are all the fast food commercials. Everybody worries about terrorism. Maybe twenty or thirty people are killed by terrorists in the United States in any given year. Almost half a million people die from obesity issues in the United States every year.”

   Barron lived overlooking the Metropark Reservation, about a mile-and-a-half south of Lake Erie. He had built a Mongolian-style wigwam for himself. He didn’t have a job, a car, a refrigerator, a wife, or any pets.

   “Don’t even get me started on pet slavery,” he said.

  Betty gave him a sharp look. She and Frank had two house cats, who were Mr. Moto and Sky King. They slept with them on their bed most nights. The cats were rescues. She didn’t think of them as slaves and was sure they didn’t think of themselves as slaves, either.

   “Have we met before?” Frank asked as they stopped at the corner of their side street off Riverside Dr. while Barron went his own way to where he lived on the south side of I-90.

   “I don’t think so. I would know. I have an excellent memory.”

   A college graduate with a master’s degree in philosophy and a hundred thousand dollars in unpaid student debt, Barron was unqualified for nearly any job, even if he had been remotely interested in seeking employment. He didn’t vote, although he enjoyed public sector antics whenever he heard about them. “Suppose I was talking about a grifter, and suppose I was talking about a politician, but I repeat myself,” he said. He disdained pro sports, calling the athletes “millionaires throwing, catching, and kicking some kind of damn ball.”  He didn’t read anything popular or know anything about current trends. He dressed like the 21^st century had never happened.

   He didn’t take any drugs, over or under the counter. “By FDA requirement,” he explained, “each and every pharmaceutical is tested on animals. Insurance, HMO’s, meds, doctors, it’s all a racket so the silk stockings can live the high life.” He was a vegan purist, pursuing his ideals to their logical conclusion. Betty thought of his pursuit as a dead end, but didn’t say so.

   Barron didn’t have a bank account or any credit cards. He had few friends, other than some bicycle-riding neo-hippies and a handful of retirees in the neighborhood for whom he did odd jobs on a cash basis. He only worked for them if they could prove they didn’t have cars and agreed never to talk about their problems, especially their health problems.

   The one time Frank and Betty had visited Barron they had walked, because if he knew they had driven to see him he would have refused to see them. Burning fossil fuels was anathema to him. “That is some queer duck who lives at the top of Hogsback Lane,” Betty said. Hogsback Lane was an entry road down to the river valley and the Metropark Reservation.

   “Can’t we just drive and park a block away?” she asked.

   “No, he’s got a sixth sense about it.”

   Barron lived on an allowance his parents begrudged him. He shopped at a once-a-week farmer’s market. He had recently gotten his yurt connected to his parent’s power supply. Unbeknownst to them, he had gone on-line at the Lakewood Library, read about the work he had in mind, and dug a trench from the back of their house to his yurt. He buried a transmission line in the trench.

   “They got a solar roof last year and got off the fossil fuels, which I will tell you is a blessing,” he said. “It gets dark and cold in this yurt in the middle of winter. I used to heat with firewood from the park. I had to collect it at night, otherwise the park rangers gave me grief. I don’t think they like me.”

   He now heated his big top with a 5,000 BTU infrared quartz heater and LED’s were strung  overhead in a kind of loopy chandelier. He put his vegan candles, made of plant-based wax, away. He cooked on a Cuisinart 2-burner cast iron hot plate. He had long refused to use either electricity or natural gas, on the premise that both are petroleum products, in which are mixed innumerable marine organisms.

   “That’s one of the things I can’t stand about those leaf-eaters at the restaurant, cooking their so-called vegan cuisine with gas made from the bodies of dead fish,” he said. “They’re too busy ringing up the cash register to know or care.”

   Vegetarians drew his ire, too, although he tolerated them. “I can put up with vegetarians if I have to,” he said, which Frank reluctantly admitted to being when Barron quizzed him. Barron gave Frank a mirthless grin. “At least you’re only half lying to yourself.”

   Betty, who described herself as an omnivore, on the side of free range and organic, shot a bright smile at Barron, keeping her eating habits to herself while gnashing her teeth at the same time. Frank knew his wife was savvy enough to know when to bite her tongue.

   As they approached Hogsback Lane they saw a sea of green treetops in the valley below. It was always a welcome sight after a long winter. Barron’s yurt was at the far end of a sprawling backyard on the edge of the valley, where the long downhill of the road intersects with Stinchcomb Hill, named after the founder of the park system. It is a bucolic spot in the middle of the big city. Frank was reluctant to mention that William Stinchcomb had been a pork roast and beef tenderloin man in his day, as well as president of the Cleveland Automobile Club, so he didn’t mention it.

   “Vegans are as bad as my parents, the whole lot of them,” Barron said. “Show me a vegan who isn’t an elitist, or someone who spouts veganism who is not a do-gooder, or making boatloads of money from it, explaining how it’s all one big happy family, yoga and veganism and new-age capitalism and flying to their immersions in the Bahamas, and everywhere else around the planet on their holiday retreats, never mind the carbon footprint, and I’ll show you the sanctimonious side of who’s burning up the planet.”

   Since Barron didn’t have a doorbell they had been glad to find him out of doors, although Betty was less happy about it than Frank. She had been hoping to find him away. Barron was laying out rows of seeds and tubers outside his yurt. They joined him, sitting down on canvas field chairs. He had opened the flap over the roof hole of the yurt. Betty poked her head inside it, remarking how pleasant and breezy it was inside his house.

   “Inside your tent, I mean,” she said.

   “It’s a yurt,” he said.

   It was round and fronted by a half-circle of large white stones, like what children do at summer camps in front of their tents.

   “Whatever,” Betty said under her breath.

   Frank was nonplussed to see a new Apple laptop on a small reading table.

   “I keep up, especially now that I have power,” Barron said. “It’s not like I’m a caveman.”

   Frank noticed a rolled up yoga mat, a strap, and two blocks in the shade of a sweet gum tree.

   “Where do you practice yoga?” 

   “Here in the backyard, every day, and sometimes at the studio on Lake Road in Rocky River. The owner and I trade cleaning the studio for classes.”

   “That’s probably where I’ve seen you before,” Frank said.

   “Maybe,” Barron said, not bothering trying to remember.

   “I thought you were down on yoga, you know, burning all that carbon.”

   “I’m down on the phonies who practice it, not the practice itself,” Barron said.

   He led them to his new garden. He had dug up most of his mother’s backyard, uprooting her wild roses and rhododendrons and was planting rows of root crops, including beets, onions, and potatoes. He was especially proud of his celery.

   “I cover my celery with paper, boards, and loose soil. They will have a nutty flavor when I dig them up at the end of the year. I don’t eat anything from factory farms. They make you a chattel to the supermarket.”

   Neither Frank nor Betty knew what to say. As they got ready to leave Barron scooped handfuls of birdseed from a large barrel into a brown paper bag and handed the bag to Frank. He was still unsure about Betty. She seemed to always be giving him the stink eye.

   “You should take every chance to feed the birds and other animals you see outside your house,” he said. “Give them good food, organic food, not processed. It will make such a difference in their lives.”

   On the driveway of his parent’s ranch-style house at the top of Hogsback Lane, looking across the valley towards the Hilliard Bridge, Barron tapped the brim of his dog-earred Chief Wahoo baseball cap in farewell.

   “Be a real vegan,” he said. “That’s the best thing any of us can do.”

   Frank and Betty walked the long way around before circling back to home, first crossing the Hilliard Bridge to Rocky River, from where they would make for Lakewood. The nine hundred foot long concrete bridge wasn’t the first one at that spot. The first one was known as the “Swinging Bridge.” It was a rope bridge with wooden planks that was used by school children and pedestrians to cross the river back then. It hung thirty feet above the water and swayed in strong winds. Sometimes a child fell into the river and had to be saved from fate.

   Betty was unusually quiet. She was usually a talkative woman. Frank gave her an inquisitive glance. As they came upon the Erie Island Coffee Co. on Detroit Road., where there was outdoor seating, she suggested they stop for refreshments, since Barron hadn’t offered them any.

   “Man, oh man, I know chocolate brownies have eggs in them,” Betty said, “and cappuccino has milk in it, and I know Barron would have a cow, but right now I think I need to sit down and enjoy myself for a few minutes, not thinking about that lone ranger.”

   They agreed that the vegans they knew were ethical and compassionate, their lives complementing their health, humanitarian, and environmental concerns. They could not agree on whether Barron Cannon was a determined idealist, a mad ideologue, or simply lived in an alternate universe. Or maybe he was just his own incarnation of the cranky old guy on the porch.

   They sat at a small metal table outside the entrance door. They had cappuccino, scones with gobs of butter, and chocolate brownies. They people-watched and admired a 1950s Chevy Bel Air when it cruised past. The V8 engine rumbled. They watched the sun slip in and out of the springtime clouds and walked the rest of the way home in the late afternoon in good spirits.

Ed Staskus posts monthly on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com, Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com, Atlantic Canada http://www.redroadpei.com, and Lithuanian Journal http://www.lithuanianjournal.com. 

“Bomb City” by Ed Staskus

“A Rust Belt police procedural when Cleveland was a mean street.” Sam Winchell, Beyond Fiction

Available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F1LM1WF9/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2MYAQAOZIC2U9&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hTm7BGbiQbSe5ZapFwYPPfcwOpTe-Vdg6VLE4aGyTyk.Z0R-VNBWWEcvKcNaO9LdCOUnNIOOXgvYkRS_FXiXuHk&dib_tag=se&keywords=bomb+city+ed+status&qid=1742136726&sprefix=bomb+city+ed+staskus%2Caps%2C84&sr=8-1

Cleveland, Ohio 1975. The John Scalish Crime Family and Danny Greene’s Irish Mob are at war. Car bombs are the weapon of choice. Two police detectives are assigned to find the bomb makers. Nothing goes according to plan.

A Crying of Lot 49 Publication