Hells Angels Make Good Neighbors in Ventura : Bikers: Some say members of the motorcycle club on Fix Way are thoughtful and helpful. The Angels keep a low profile.

There they are, roaring through the neighborhood, hanging out in their clubhouse on Fix Way in Ventura, leather-clad, tattooed, full-bearded, hog-mounted, the dreaded words “Hells Angels” defiantly arched across their broad backs.

But the city isn’t trembling. The cops aren’t braced for trouble. And the neighbors actually have nice things to say about the bikers.

“They are good people,” said P. Hamlet, a middle-aged woman who lives up the block. “They’ll do anything for you.”

Hamlet has never actually met a Hells Angel, although they’ve been neighbors for 15 years. But her view is shared by others.

“They don’t bother us except when they have a party every once in a while,” said Alice Steward, manager of a mobile home park behind the clubhouse.

A New Year’s Eve party lasted until about 3 a.m., she said. But for the most part, “they don’t come across the wall.”

The manager of an auto repair shop next to the clubhouse agreed. “They’re cool. I’ve had no problems with them.”

The police describe the group as low-profile and say they haven’t had a run-in with the bikers in years.

“Christie’s strongest rule is to keep a low profile in town and don’t cause any problems,” a police sergeant said, referring to George Christie Jr., the chapter leader. “We don’t devote any more attention to them than anyone else on the avenue. There has never been any need for it.”

Christie is a soft-spoken, articulate man who attended two years of college and married his high school sweetheart when he was 20. He has two teen-age children and owns his own business, a martial-arts studio.

His profile did jump briefly three years ago when he was tried on a charge of soliciting the murder of a government informant, an ex-Angel whose death was faked by federal authorities.

Although federal prosecutors produced two taped conversations in which Christie and another government informant purportedly settled on the murder plan, Christie claimed that he was framed.

A federal court jury acquitted him, and several jurors said later that they liked him and found him to be an upstanding character. To show his gratitude, Christie and three dozen fellow bikers held a back-yard barbecue for the jury on the lawn outside the clubhouse.

The Angels’ home on Fix Way is a white single-story building with heavy metal screens on the windows and doors. A video camera allows members inside to watch the front. Located in a working-class neighborhood near downtown Ventura, it shares the block with several auto repair shops, a bakery and a cabinet factory.

The clubhouse contains a living room with a TV and stereo, a recreation room with video games, and a pool table and a motorcycle repair shop, equipped with state-of-the-art tools.

Since his trial, Christie has cultivated something of a respectable reputation for the group.

“We don’t want to create problems for any of our neighbors and we don’t want them to create problems for us,” he said.

Russ Smith, executive director of the Ventura Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the Angels earned his respect when Christie raised $3,000 from bikers and ran in the 1984 Olympic Torch Relay. The money raised by the bikers was eventually directed to the Special Olympics in Pottstown, Pa.

“I really thought that was a hell of a deal,” Smith said.

Christie said he is one of two married members of the group. He would not say how many members are in the Ventura chapter, only that their ages range from 21 to 50. (Law enforcement officials believe that the number may be as low as five.)

Christie said that for years, the Hells Angels have been persecuted because of a grossly inaccurate stereotype.

“You mention Hells Angels and people say ‘Oh my God,’ ” he said. “And then you ask them ‘How many Hells Angels have you met?’ and they say ‘None.’ ”

Warm feelings about the Hells Angels are not shared by federal law enforcement officials, who are deeply suspicious of what goes on behind the clubhouse doors.

“Just because they have a low profile doesn’t mean that has changed them,” said Bill Modesitt, who heads the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s regional office in Santa Barbara.

“They can be businessmen. They are shrewd people and they know how to work the system.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Justice in Sacramento said the Hells Angels has established its reputation as a powerful organization, which she compared to the Mafia of the 1920s.

“They don’t need to beat anybody up,” she said. “They can just look at someone and they know they are the Hells Angels.”

A 1980 study by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said four motorcycle gangs--the Hells Angels, the Outlaws, the Bandidos and the Pagans--are reported to control as much as 50% of the country’s illegal methamphetamine market.

In California the Angels were described by a state commission in 1979 as dominating clandestine laboratories making methamphetamine in Northern California and being “heavily involved in this illegal market in Southern California.”

Christie said Ventura Angels do not engage in criminal activities. Of the suspicions of federal officials, he said: “These are allegations that have been drifting around for years, and they have yet to prove that the club sells narcotics.”

There are 13 Hells Angels chapters in the state, 30 nationwide and 72 worldwide, according to the Justice Department.

Representatives of each state group meet monthly. National and international representatives meet annually, according to the government.

“You tell me,” the Justice Department spokeswoman said, “are they organized?”

Times staff photographer Alan Hagman contributed to this story.