Abramovich Alex - Bullies: a friendship

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For Lucy

Thanks to Dorothy Lazard and the staff of the Oakland History Room, and to Betty Marvin and Gail Lombardi at the Oakland Cultural Heritage Survey. Thanks to Sasha Archibald, Stijn Schiffeleers, and Claire Ball at the Oakland Standard. Thanks to Jeff Norman, Kathy Geritz, and Michael Glawogger.

Thanks to Gifford Hartmann and Lawrence Jarach. Thanks to Rick Prelinger, Wade Wright, Max Allstadt, John Russo, Thomas Peele, and Susie Cagle.

Thanks to all of the Rats, ex-Rats, and associates who are named in this book and were unfailingly generous with their time, thoughts, and friendship. Thanks to several Rats not named in this book: Charlie Hewett, Jerry Osborne, and others who know who they are.

Thanks to Tyler Hutton.

Thanks to Trevors familyhis father, Stuartand my own dad. Thanks to Jordan Latham, Lauren Lockwood, and the rest of the women whove learned to live with the Rats.

Thanks to Cecily Reynolds.

Thanks to Jim Saleda and Jason England.

Thanks to Yakpasua Zazaboi and Clem Daniels.

Thanks to Sam Khandaghabadi.

Thanks to Boots Riley, Harvey Stafford, the gang at Moes Books, and Leo Ritz-Barr.

Thanks to Charlie Allen, Scott Olsen, and Vince Passaro.

Thanks to Joshua Clover.

Thanks to John and Nina Zurier, Pamela Wylson-Ryckman, Thomas Ryckman, Trevor Paglen, Anne Walsh, Chris Kubick, Moriah Ulinskas, Dominic Willsdon, Sean Uyehara, Phil and Jules Tippett, and Dan and Erika Clowes.

Thanks to the Knowles/Fischer clanDavid, Jennifer, Eli, and Mirafor the soft landing, good music, great dinners, and excellent company.

Thanks to Cristina Mueller and Olive Beatrix Faust Nosowsky.

Thanks to friends who read the manuscript: Dan Halpern, Aaron Retica, Michael Miller, Sam Lipsyte, Ceridwen Morris, Thomas Jones, Jenny Offill, and Chris Sorrentino. Words cant express my debt to Ethan Nosowsky.

Thanks to John Barr, Christina Lewis-Halpern, and Andrew Gillings.

Thanks to my second dad, Bruce Diones.

Thanks to Jerry Smith and Buzz Buzzelli, who interviewed Gus De Serpa in 1997. Thanks to Chris Thompson, Jonathan Lethem, Robert Gordon, Nat Rich, Naomi Wax, and Bill Shapiro.

Thanks to Ariel Kaminer, Joel Lovell (who put my hospital bills on his personal credit card), and Andrew Hetherington.

Thanks to Gillian Blake, Eleanor Embry, and the rest of the team at Henry Holt.

Thanks to Elyse Cheney, Alex Jacobs, Adam Eaglin, Sam Freilich, Hannah Elnan, and Sarah Rainone at Cheney Literary.

Profound thanks to the Goldstines, especially Danny and Hilary, for their friendship and kindness, and for providing a home away from home.

Thanks, most of all, to Doug Jaffe.

People who are powerless make an open theater of violence.

D ON D E L ILLO

The only pictures I tacked up over my desk, or anywhere else in the house during my first year in Oakland, were old black-and-white photographs of Abdo Allens decommissioned Sherman tank. After a few months, I photocopied three of the photos, folded the copies up, and tucked them into my wallet. That way, if some out-of-town friend were to ask me, How did Oakland get to be so fucked up? I could start with some history, show them some pictures.

The question came up a lot that year, which was also the year of Cairos Tahrir Square and New Yorks Zuccotti Park, and the first time in decades that Oakland, a working-class city on San Francisco Bay, became a fixture in the national news cycle. It was the year of Occupy Oakland, and the Black Muslim Bakery murder trials, the year that Harold Campings Oakland-based Family Radio ministry predicted the end of the world, twice, while Oaklands murder rate (already one of the nations highest) ticked upward, and the year that the New York Times picked Oakland to be the worlds fifth most desirable place to visit (something about upscale cocktail bars, turning once-gritty Oakland into an increasingly appealing place to be after dark), placing it higher on the list than Glasgow, Moscow, and Florence. This was news to the citys residentsthough Oakland did have good bars, and the local cops were so overwhelmed that, if you steered clear of the highway patrol, it was almost impossible to get a DUI there. But two days later, the Times published a follow-up: Shootings Soar in Oakland, the headline read. Children Often the Victims.

How did Oakland get to be so fucked up?

Id fumble around for my wallet.

The first photo Id tucked away there was taken by an AP stringer in the summer of 1960. It showed the tank from behind as it ripped through a house in West Oakland. The second photograph showed the tank from the front, covered in the rubble of a lot it had already cleared. Both photographs looked like they could have belonged in a History Channel documentary about World War II. But the third photograph showed the tank in full profile. You could see the words ABDO S. ALLEN Co. hand-painted across its hull, the dust coming off of its treads, the two-story home that it was about to plow into. The home was an American home. The story this photograph told was an American storyabout urban renewal, industrial decay, brute force, and bullying. But the machine was not a metaphor. In some other cityDetroit, or Baltimore, or even New Yorkyou might have looked at a blasted-out neighborhood and thought, Its as if theyd driven a tank through it. In Oakland, they had used an actual tank.

* * *

If youve spent any time in Oakland, theres a good chance youve heard of the East Bay Rats Motorcycle Club, which has its clubhouse near the corner of Thirtieth Street and San Pablo Avenue in West Oakland.

The EBRMC is not an especially old club; the Rats formed with just a few members in 1994. But they made a quick impression, getting into barroom brawls and backroom gangbangs, and leaving tread marksthe gummy residue of burnouts, spinouts, and other cool motorcycle movesup and down the length of San Pablo Avenue. The Rats installed a boxing ring behind their clubhouse, and hosted fight parties that drew thousands of people. They became known for their Fourth of July fireworks displays, which eclipsed Oaklands own, and for shooting guns, smashing cars, setting motor scooters on fire, and blowing propane tanks up in public. The Rats burned sofas, old pianoswhatever they could get their hands onout on the San Pablo median strip. Once, theyd dragged a full-size fighter jet engine out into the avenue, angled it upward, and used it to incinerate the neighborhood lampposts. And in 2001, the Rats did something that the Bay Areas residents still havent forgiven them for. That summer, a gray whale beached itself on the San Francisco shoreline. It had the shape of whale, flukes, rising backbone, long, tapering head and bird-beak upper jaw resting on the wider yoke of the lower jaw, the journal of the California Academy of Sciences had reported. During the night, someone had climbed on top of it and painted in large yellow letters, East Bay Rats Motorcycle Club.