The funeral of Mark "Papa" Guardado, the 46-year-old president of the San Francisco chapter shot down after a barroom brawl, brought about 2,000 Hells Angels to Duggan's Serra Mortuary in Daly City, most driving the biggest, baddest, loudest Harleys ever.
They came Monday from chapters all over the country, not to mention Stuttgart, Germany; Alberta, Canada; and Melbourne, Australia.
An overflow crowd of hundreds of members sat or stood in the funeral home parking lot for two hours, creating a spectacle that attracted hundreds of gawkers and police from three cities.
Police were out in force last week, cracking down on what they called an "outlaw biker gang" that passed through Temecula on its way to a weekend gathering in San Diego County.
But if the Mongols Motorcycle Club is any indication, bikers are working on their image. The Mongols' president, 51-year-old Ruben "Doc" Cavazos, has a New York publicist and a new memoir about his life as a Mongol.
Cavazos said Wednesday that police in Riverside and San Diego counties harassed the group without provocation, stopping Mongols on motorcycles and searching their RVs for contraband.
"I think that the motorcycle clubs are truly the last group that you can violate their rights and nobody says anything," Cavazos said. "They stepped all over us this weekend."
The Mongols Motorcycle Club, shortened to "Mongols MC" is a motorcycle gang headquartered in southern California that was originally formed in Montebello, California in the 1970s. Law enforcement officials estimate there are approximately 350 members. In addition to their presence in southern California, the club claims chapters in Nevada, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Oregon, New York, Indiana, Florida, Virginia, Canada, and Mexico. Norwegian mainstream news also reports that the Mongols have spread to Scandinavia, April 2008. The Mongols Motorcycle Club states on their website that they have a chapter in Italy.
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