the trend in kiwanis

The presses were already rolling and the eight-column headlines said HELL’S ANGELS GANG RAPE. The Masons haven’t had that kind of publicity since the eighteenth century, when Casanova was climbing through windows and giving the brotherhood a bad name. Perhaps the Angels will follow the Freemasons into bourgeois senility, but by then some other group will be making outrage headlines: a Hovercraft gang, or some once-bland fraternal group tooling up even now for what the future might force on them.

What is the trend in Kiwanis? There are rumors in Oakland of a new militancy in that outfit, a radical ferment that could drastically alter the club’s image. In the drift and flux of these times it is easy enough to foresee a Sunday morning ten or twenty years hence when a group of middle-aged men wearing dark blazers with Hell’s Angels crests on the pockets will be pacing their mortgaged living-rooms and muttering sadly at a headline saying: KIWANIS GANG RAPE: FOUR HELD, OTHERS FLEE, RING LEADERS SOUGHT.

From Hell’s Angels by Hunter S. Thompson, published by Random House in 1966.

2 thoughts on “the trend in kiwanis

  1. So I totally don’t get that blog post, but I’m here to comment offtopic as always to say I’m reading your latest book and it’s awesome and I like the way you think because you seem to be a little bit neurotic and a little bit pensive and a little bit happy just to be alive, just like me.

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