What Motorcycle Club Is The Bikeriders Based On?

"The Bikeriders" is nothing less than a love letter to the culture around motorcycle clubs. This 2024 film follows The Vandals motorcycle club and its eclectic and irreverent, members who are out to have fun and ride their motorcycles. It focuses on a budding relationship between Austin Butlers James Dean-esque Benny and Jodie Comer's Kathy as Benny tries to balance his relationship with his love of being a member of The Vandals. Simultaneously, the movie features The Vandals' founder and leader, Johnny, played by the illustrious Tom Hardy, who wants nothing more than for Benny to take over the reins to keep the club from devolving into a cesspool of violence.

Audiences will be entertained by bar brawls, house parties, road trips, hospital visits, a balanced sense of humor, and, most of all, motorcycles. History buffs interested in American culture might be further entertained with knowledge that the film, much like Charlie Sheen's "Beyond the Law," is based on a true story. This 2024 movie took cues from Danny Lyon's 1968 picture book with the same title. Within its pages, the book collects photographs and interviews from real members of the very real Chicago Outlaws motorcycle club. Unlike the book's creator, director Jeff Nichols didn't have to link up and follow around the Outlaws to make his movie.

Which works out for the director because times have changed since Lyon snapped his photos of Johnny, Benny, and others in the Chicago Outlaws MC.

Unlike many other motorcycle clubs (MCs) — many of which spawned after the conclusion of World War II — the Chicago Outlaws were established in 1935, making it over a decade older than the biggest motorcycle club in California. Although, at the time they were known as the McCook Outlaws since the club was founded in McCook, Illinois, a small town outside of Chicago. As membership to the club increased, its mother chapter relocated to the Windy City in 1950 and changed its name to the Chicago Outlaws. At the same time, the club reimagined the logo worn on members' vests (otherwise known as a kutte) from a winged motorcycle to a skull.

Four years later, the logo would end up landing on its current design with a pair of crossing pistons resting underneath the skull. The club's popularity continued growing in the following years to the point that they opened up chapters in neighboring states, including Wisconsin and Kentucky. Today the club has thousands of members with chapters in 19 states and multiple countries, including Japan, Spain, Austria, and Serbia.

If the film or book are any indication, members crossed the line between legal and illegal on more than one occasion, but they were far from being one of the big four outlaw MCs in the US that they are now. Today, the US Justice Department labels the Outlaws as an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang (OMG), meaning that they, "are highly structured criminal organizations whose members engage in criminal activities such as violent crime, weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking."

The job of a Hollywood filmmaker is to entertain, so it's only natural to embellish certain events that are based on a true story in an attempt to draw crowds. While many of the names in the film are unchanged and Nichols used actual audio Lyon recorded to create his narrative, not every event portrayed was factual. There's a scene in the film where the founder, Johnny (Tom Hardy), burns down a bar in retaliation. Nichols and Lyon both made it clear to Rolling Stone that this never happened, with Nichols saying, "Which is true, they never burned down a bar." Lyon went on to add, "They did do it later, probably. But they didn't do it when I was there."

Moreover, the club that Danny rode around with in the '60s was nothing like the Outlaws of modern times. Not that there weren't clubs just as radical as some of the news headlines surrounding OMGs today. Hunter S. Thompson documented the Hells Angels around the same time Lyon rode with the Outlaws, and Thompson witnessed some traumatic events, being the victim of some of that club's violence. In modern times, the Outlaws have rivalries with other clubs, some that lead to extreme violence. The club goes as far to have the acronym "ADIOS"  — standing for "Angels Die In Outlaw States."

It's a small detail, but the Danny in the film is nothing like the Danny Lyon in reality. Lyon, in fact, wasn't a fan of his fictional alter ego portrayed by Mike Faist. In real life, Lyon became a genuine member of the Chicago Outlaws in 1965 – despite Hunter S. Thompson's protests –  in order to ride around with the guys and interview them. He was an activist of sorts who imbedded himself with his subjects. It was a form of journalism, referred to as New Journalism, initiated by Tom Wolfe, which was similar to Gonzo Journalism popularized by Hunter S. Thompson.

The photographer became friends with many of the bikers he documented in his book, which is hard not to do after joining the club for several years. Before documenting the Chicago Outlaws for his book, Lyon photographed civil rights protests, sit-ins, the aftermath of bombings, and even got arrested and landed himself in a jail cell across from Martin Luther King Jr. Following his time with the Outlaws, Lyon spent 14 months in the Texas prison system documenting institutional inhumanity. His career found him photographing coal miners in China, street children around Colombia, and undocumented workers in America.

The rebels and outcasts resonate with Lyon. He has gone on record, saying, "I like rebels and think they are intrinsic to the survival of our democracy," according to the Chicago Reader. At 82-years-old now, he has led a prolific life that's impacted people worldwide.

As stated, the Outlaws today are nothing like the Chicago Outlaws from the '60s, and their real-life counterparts are even further from how Nichols portrayed them in "The Bikeriders" movie. The club grew, and with each new member, and each new chapter, its antics escalated and pushed it further beyond the law. Members from the Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Daytona Beach chapters were defendants in a lengthy trial in '95 after being indicted 56 times with allegations that included arson, robbery, extortion, kidnapping, and murder. Tensions were so high during the four-and-a-half-month trial that there were as many as 16 US Marshals in the courtroom at all times.

The club's international president, Harry "Taco” Bowman, was arrested four years later and sat trial in 2001. A guilty verdict for racketeering, conspiracy to commit murder, and a slew of other crimes related to guns and drugs earned him a life sentence in prison. As recently as November, 2024, five suspects involved in a shootout in Portland, Maine, that resulted in one death are members of the Outlaws. While audiences can be entertained by Tom Hardy and Austin Butler playing hardened criminals, it's important to remember that the real-life bikeriders aren't anywhere near as entertaining.