Phil Cross

In the early 1960s, a young Navy veteran, motorcyclist, amateur photographer, and rebel named Phil Cross joined a motorcycle club called the Hells Angels. Discovering it to be a bogus chapter, Cross spent the next decade traversing the outer edges of extreme motorcycle clubs before finding the notorious Gypsy Jokers. He started a San Jose chapter of the Jokers and embarked on the most action-packed years of his life; whilst the hippy era blossomed around them, the Jokers posted snipers on their clubhouse roof, as an all-out shooting war developed between them and the real Hells Angels. Cross spent this time in and out of prison (he once broke out to enter a bike show and broke back in again before the alarm was raised), fighting bikers and the police and paying regular visits to the emergency room. Though Phil was tough - he was a certified martial arts instructor - the Angels proved an even tougher foe. This is Cross's own story, complete with his photographs of the time, of the hard road ridden by a true one percenter - from Joker to Angel.