When I lived in San Francisco, in 1976 – 77, I worked for a 3-times-a-week newspaper called the San Francisco Progress (known among staffers as the Regress) in the peninsula bureau. My primary assignment was to cover the City of San Bruno, where the airport is located. But I had the freedom to cover a lot of other things, too – including a Hell’s Angels graveside service and burial for one of their fallen at a cemetery in South San Francisco.

I had wrongly assumed that the Angels’ reputation was exaggerated and that they were probably just a harmless bunch of old guys who liked to ride motorcycles.

As I was walking through the crowd toward the gravesite, I saw one of the Angels stop a TV cameraman, grab his camera, open it, pull out the film, and throw it on the ground. So, not so harmless – scary, actually. I stopped momentarily, but then saw a guy who was a reporter for another paper – he had perfectly styled hair and wore his leather jacket slung casually over his shoulder and probably ironed his jeans. He was running toward the protection of a police car parked nearby. I determined I was not going to flee the scene in like manner. So I stuck around and got the story. And came away unharmed.