Hells Angels are moving into my area for the first time. I have a generally negative view of them, but have some friends who feel otherwise. I would love to hear your experiences related to the Angels specifically, but "1%" clubs as well.
I live in an area where the Pagans have a pretty sizeable presence but no real competition so we don't exactly have turf wars or anything going on. They definitely have their criminal activity going on, but by and large it's out of sight and out of mind unless you go looking for it or are unlucky enough to live next to them or something. In general if you keep your nose out of their business they'll keep out of yours. They can even be pretty reasonable at times, I have a friend lived basically next door to a bar they used to hang out at a lot, and after last call all the bikes leaving at like 2AM made a bunch of racket. His dad pretty much just politely asked their leader if they wouldn't mind leaving the other direction where there weren't really any houses instead of going by the residential areas, and that was pretty much the end of it, never really had a problem with them again, and a few years later they ended up finding a different bar to hang out at.
Don't get me wrong, they're bad dudes, you don't want to get involved with them, but if you don't do anything outrageously stupid you're probably not going to have a problem with them. That said, out of an abundance of caution if you can, it's probably best to just avoid them and the places they frequent altogether.
Pretty much everyone around here knows a few pagans or knows someone who does. Some of them think it's cool, and those people tend to be idiots. Otherwise it's just kind of a fact of life, everywhere has their local troublemakers, ne'er-do-wells, assholes, and criminals, it just happens that some of them around here wear denim vests.
Also for what it's worth, I live in the suburbs, so probably not exactly the epicenter of where the worst of their activities take place.
Yeah, I guess our area used to be like a biker "neutral zone", and we never had really any biker activity. For some reason the Hells Angels are setting up shop suddenly. I can't imagine it's for any good reason.