User talk:Dennis Bratland/Hollister riot
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The Hollister Riot refers to the 1947 Independence Day weekend Hollister, California Gypsy Tour Rally,[5] near which were run a road race at Bolado Racetrack, and a hillclimb event that had been a local favorite in the years before World War II.[2][6] The event was sponsored by the American Motorcyclist Association (AMA), and attendees included members of various motorcycle clubs. The disturbance that weekend became infamous at the time, but is celebrated today as a seminal, watershed event in the history of motorcycle clubs and the outlaw subculture, and the general public's image of the biker, both real and imagined.[1]
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Date | July 4, 1947 (1947-07-04) ā July 6, 1947 (1947-07-06) |
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Location | Hollister, California |
Also known as | 1947 Hollister Gypsy Tour[1][2] |
Participants | 2,000 to 4,000 attendees, including about 750 motorcyclists. Members of the American Motorcyclist Association, Boozefighters, Pissed Off Bastards of Bloomington and other motorcycle clubs[2] |
Outcome | Media frenzy, contributing to 50+ years of moral panic over dangerous outlaw motorcyclists.[3][4] Origin of the term one percenter. Fictionalized in film The Wild One, whose style was in turn imitated by real bikers.[1] |
The race in Hollister had been run several times in the past, most recently in 1936,[6] but had been suspended during the war. The 1947 race was the return of the event, popular with the locals.[6]
Drunkenness, fighting, and street stunting during the event were sensationalized by yellow news reports[4][7] of bikers "taking over the town," particularly after a lurid photo, judged today to have been staged by a freelance photographer sent by the San Francisco Chronicle, went nationwide when picked up by Life magazine. This triggered editorials, letters, and a 1951 short fiction story in Harper's Magazine that would be adapted into the 1953 film The Wild One, spawning biker icons, good and bad, that would spread around the world and hold sway for the next half century.[8][9]