Hells Angels reach out to neighbours in Hamilton

The Hells Angels really want you to know they’ve found a new home.

It’s already hard to miss the notorious biker club’s new digs at Gage Street North and Beach Road.

The big, decades-old sign that once welcomed patrons to the venerable Gage Tavern now shows off the distinctive death head logo of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.

A gate topped with barbed wire blocks the entrance to the former pub’s parking lot. The alley entrance on Beach Road also boasts a novel no-parking sign that warns off anyone but “angels.”

But if you miss all of those clues, club members are also making a point of meeting the neighbours.

“We’re introducing ourselves . . . . We’re letting people know we’re here,” said club member James “Bubba” Sherwood, in an interview outside the gated property Monday.

“We tried the other approach, by hiding in an industrial area and minding our own business, but they (police) didn’t seem to like that. They took that place away from us.”

“That place” was 269 Lottridge St., a thick-walled bunker of a building that served as the club’s last Steeltown hangout until 2009, when police raided and seized the building as part of a mammoth city-wide operation. The OPP-led operation seized guns, $215,000 worth of street drugs, vehicles, a home and three commercial sites as part of Project Manchester.