New York City has documented one-percenter motorcycle club presence dating to 1969, when the Hells Angels established their NYC chapter at 77 East Third Street in the East Village. Several major outlaw motorcycle clubs have documented history across the five boroughs and Long Island, including the Hells Angels, the Pagans MC, the Breed MC and the Ching-a-Lings.
| Field | Documented detail |
|---|---|
| Hells Angels NYC chapter | At 77 East Third Street, Manhattan, from 1969; building sold in 2019 for $7.75 million; club relocated to the Throggs Neck area of the Bronx |
| Pagans MC | Founded 1959 in Prince George’s County, Maryland; documented New York-area activity including the 2002 Nassau County case |
| Breed MC | Founded 1965 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, per published club histories; long-running New York metro presence |
| Ching-a-Lings MC | Founded 1966 in the South Bronx, per published club histories |
| Federal classification | Multiple New York-area clubs described as outlaw motorcycle gangs in Department of Justice reporting |
A note on what this page does and does not do. It is written as history, not as current intelligence. We do not publish current rosters, officers, clubhouse addresses, event schedules or chapter maps for any club, and every figure below carries the year it comes from. For broader cluster context, our motorcycle clubs complete guide is the reference page.
Hells Angels NYC: East Third Street
The Hells Angels’ New York City chapter is one of the most recognized motorcycle club chapters in the world. Published reporting places the club at 77 East Third Street in the East Village from 1969, during a period when the neighborhood was cheap, rough, and full of people with no interest in mainstream respectability.
The building itself has a documented paper trail. The club acquired the six-floor property from its previous owner, and a deed filed with the city in November 1977 records the transfer of the then-dilapidated building for a nominal sum. Members knew the building as the Church of the Angels, which is also the name of the corporation that held it.
The chapter’s best-known early figure is Sandy Alexander, born in 1942, a former US Marine who was already giving interviews as chapter president by February 1970. Reporting on the building’s ownership says Alexander took the deed to the East Third Street property in his own name in 1983, with terms allowing his family to live there rent free and entitling his wife to half the proceeds of any sale. That arrangement triggered an internal dispute and his expulsion from the club. After a 1985 federal raid he served six years in prison on a cocaine charge. He died in 2007. The deed dispute outlasted him and was not fully resolved until 2018.
The 1985 raid is often described online as a racketeering conviction that took the clubhouse. It did not. Federal agents attempted to seize the building on the theory that it was used to conduct drug deals, and a jury ruled against the forfeiture. The chapter kept the address.
What ended the run was real estate, not enforcement. EV Grieve reported the sale contract in February 2019, the last members moved out that March, and public records put the final sale price at $7.75 million. The building was converted into rental apartments. The club relocated to the Throggs Neck area of the Bronx, where its new clubhouse was fired on by unidentified gunmen in early January 2020, with the NYPD reporting at least 14 shell casings recovered.
The East Village context is worth recording because it is genuinely unusual. The chapter spent fifty years in the same neighborhood that produced CBGB, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, and the American punk scene. No other Hells Angels chapter occupied a block with that much creative activity around it.
The Pagans MC: Documented New York-Area History
The Pagans Motorcycle Club was founded in 1959 in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and has documented history across the mid-Atlantic and Northeast, including the New York metropolitan area.
One structural distinction separates the Pagans from the other clubs the Department of Justice groups as the largest outlaw motorcycle organizations. While the Hells Angels, the Outlaws and the Bandidos have operated chapters on multiple continents, published accounts describe the Pagans as a primarily domestic organization concentrated in the mid-Atlantic and Northeast.
The best-documented New York-area event involving the club is the February 2002 incident at the Vanderbilt in Plainview, Nassau County, during a Hells Angels-sponsored motorcycle and tattoo expo known as the Hellraiser Ball. Nassau County investigators said roughly 100 Pagans arrived in a fleet of vans. Four people were shot, one fatally. Pagans member Robert Rutherford, 51, was killed, and the federal complaint recorded additional gunshot and knife injuries. Police and federal agents seized hundreds of weapons at the scene.
The prosecutions that followed were substantial. A federal indictment in the Eastern District of New York charged conspiracy to commit assault, assault, and firearms and explosives counts, and 73 Pagans from as far away as Ohio, Maryland and Pennsylvania were ultimately convicted or pleaded guilty. Nassau County brought separate state charges. Investigators said the confrontation grew out of long-running tension over the Long Island scene after a 1998 investigation produced more than 40 arrests.
We are recording that as a court-documented event, not as a territory map. Any statement about which club has a presence where today would be exactly the operational detail this site does not publish.
The Breed MC: Between Territories
The Breed Motorcycle Club is a one-percenter organization that published club histories date to 1965 in Asbury Park, New Jersey, naming Salvatore DeIulio as founder. Those histories come from enthusiast reference sources rather than court or archival records, so treat the founding details as club history.
The Breed’s significance in the New York scene is historical and geographic. They are one of the older one-percenter clubs in the region, with roots in the same era that produced the East Coast expansion of the larger clubs. Operating in a dense metropolitan area alongside multiple established organizations demands the kind of political awareness that is central to MC culture everywhere and is unavoidable in a city where a wrong turn crosses a boundary before you notice.
Federal law enforcement has included the Breed in multiple investigations over the decades, with arrests reported on drug and weapons charges. Like every one-percenter club in the Northeast, the club has been a target of federal prosecutions built on the theory that the organization functions as a criminal enterprise. Those cases are individual prosecutions, and charges against named people remained allegations until resolved in court.
The Ching-a-Lings: The Bronx, 1966
The Ching-a-Lings Motorcycle Club holds a distinct place in New York City’s motorcycle history. Published club histories place the founding in the South Bronx in 1966 and describe an origin as a Puerto Rican street gang that later patched over the New Rochelle Motorcycle Club and became a formal MC with Black and Latino membership. That chronology comes from enthusiast reference sources rather than archival documents.
What is not in question is the environment. The club formed and operated in the South Bronx through the 1970s, the decade of arson, abandonment and economic collapse that produced the phrase about the Bronx burning. The club’s history is inseparable from the neighborhood’s.
The broader point matters more than any single club. Black and Latino motorcycle clubs in New York, Chicago, Detroit and other major cities built their own traditions in parallel with, and sometimes intersecting, the wider outlaw MC world. That history has been consistently underwritten, and the Ching-a-Lings are part of its foundation.
Upstate: A Different State Entirely
Leave the city limits heading north and New York becomes unrecognizable to anyone whose experience of the state stops at the Bronx border. The Hudson Valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the Finger Lakes offer riding with nothing in common with grinding through Midtown traffic.
The Taconic State Parkway through Dutchess and Columbia Counties is one of the great motorcycle roads in the Northeast: smooth pavement, sweeping curves, and a tree canopy that turns gold and red every October. Route 28 follows the Esopus Creek through the Catskills. The Adirondacks hold hundreds of miles of two-lane road through wilderness that feels like Montana rather than four hours from Times Square.
Major clubs have historically maintained upstate chapters, operating in rural and small-town settings shaped by local relationships rather than the media scrutiny that comes with a Manhattan address. We do not publish where those chapters are.
The Modern Urban Scene
New York’s motorcycle culture in the 2020s extends well beyond the traditional MC world.
The sport bike and dirt bike scene, particularly in upper Manhattan, the Bronx and Brooklyn, has developed an identity entirely separate from the cruiser-and-Harley world. Riders on sport bikes, ATVs and dirt bikes take to the streets in organized and semi-organized rides that draw hundreds of participants, with their own codes, their own social media presence, and their own relationship with law enforcement.
The NYPD maintains motorcycle enforcement operations aimed at both worlds, including seizures of motorcycles and ATVs, arrests, and aviation units tracking riding groups across the boroughs. The enforcement approach differs from how federal agencies pursue outlaw MC cases, but the adversarial relationship is a constant.
For riders looking for community without the intensity of the one-percenter world, New York offers an enormous range: brand-specific clubs, adventure riding groups, vintage enthusiasts, and casual crews. Whether they are riding Harleys with history going back to the Shovelhead era or modern sport bikes, the common thread is the road.
Geography as Destiny
New York’s motorcycle club history cannot be separated from its geography. Density creates dynamics that do not exist in states where a day’s ride covers three counties. In Arizona or Texas, distance does part of the work of keeping organizations apart. In New York, ten miles separates neighborhoods that function like different countries.
That density means encounters between organizations are more frequent and more visible than in sprawling western cities. The protocols around respect and the right to wear certain patches are consistent across motorcycle club culture, but the margin for error is thinner when everyone operates in close proximity. The 2002 Nassau County case is the clearest documented example of what that looks like when it fails.
Long Island adds another dimension. Its suburban and semi-rural character produces a different riding environment from the boroughs: more space, more highway, and a culture that blends urban edge with suburban distance.
The lasting effect shows up in the riders. New York produces people who are comfortable in traffic conditions that would make riders from most other regions hesitate. If you can ride a motorcycle through Manhattan at rush hour, the rest of the country is easy.
We make gear for people who ride like it means something. Our t-shirts and hoodies are built for riders who know what they represent, whether they are threading through city traffic or carving upstate back roads. And our patches and merch carry the symbols of a culture that was here before the money arrived.
Disclaimer
We are not an MC and we do not pretend to be. We are a brand built by riders who respect the culture and the history. This article is based on public records, court reporting, news coverage and published club histories, and it labels which is which. We do not endorse or glorify criminal activity, and we do not publish current operational detail about any club.
Sources
- EV Grieve - After 50 years on the block, the Hells Angels appear to be selling their 3rd Street clubhouse - the February 2019 contract records for 77 East Third Street
- EV Grieve - This is what the Hells Angels building sold for - the $7.75 million recorded sale price
- Gothamist - Hells Angels’ Brand New Clubhouse Shot Up By Unknown Gunmen - the January 2020 shooting at the Bronx clubhouse and the NYPD shell-casing count
- EV Grieve - Hells Angels in legal fight for rights to their East 3rd Street clubhouse - the 1983 deed transfer to Sandy Alexander and the dispute that followed
- Deseret News - Hells Angel is accused of killing Pagan - contemporaneous reporting on the February 2002 Hellraiser Ball incident in Plainview
- TribLive - 12 local Pagans indicted in melee - the Eastern District of New York indictment and the counts charged
- One Percenter Bikers - Ching-A-Ling Nomads MC - enthusiast reference for the Ching-a-Lings founding account
- One Percenter Bikers - Breed MC - enthusiast reference for the Breed MC founding account
- Barger, Ralph “Sonny,” with Keith and Kent Zimmerman. Hell’s Angel: The Life and Times of Sonny Barger and the Hell’s Angels Motorcycle Club. William Morrow, 2000.
- Barker, Thomas. Biker Gangs and Transnational Organized Crime. Routledge, 2nd edition, 2014.
