- NAME
- Rattlers Motorcycle Club, Riverside Chapter No. 2
- TYPE OF ORGANIZATION
- Outlaw Motorcycle Club
- LOCATION
- Riverside, CA
- FORMER MEMBERS OF NOTE
- Junior Simpson (Former charter member; deceased)
- Wayne Conrad (Former member; deceased)
- CURRENT* MEMBERS OF NOTE
- Tillman Grant (President)
- Sunny Sunderland (Sergeant-At-Arms)
- Austin Conrad
- Frosty Fosberg
- Travis Bishop
- Tony Battaglia
- Harry Sutcliffe
- *Current as of the beginning of the events in Blood Brothers
- ABOUT
- The Riverside Chapter of the Rattlers MC was chartered in August, 1962, eight months after the founding of the club itself, and it’s first chapter, Barstow Chapter (Rattlers MC). This of course made Riverside chapter No. 2, a fact which has irritated members of that soono-to-be larger (and more powerful) chapter ever since.
- In truth, only three of the five founding members of the Rattlers MC were actually from Barstow. Two others were from elsewhere in Southern California, including Junior Simpson, a young construction worker from Riverside. He and the other four founding members had been working on the massive highway construction projects that would soon transform Barstow’s two main highways into Interstate freeways (Routes 66 and 91 would become Insterstates 40 and 15). Out of the hundreds of workers manning the shovels, graders and earth-movers, five of them shared a passion for motorcycles and fast living. Their mutual interest would soon take the form of the Rattlers MC.
- But Junior didn’t last long in Barstow. His activities has brought him to the attention of the local cops too many times, plus he longed for a return to the faster life of the bigger city. And he had ambition to start his own company rather than work for the man for the rest of his life. But he loved what he had helped create in Barstow with the Rattlers, so upon returning to Riverside he looked up a couple of his old motorcycle riding buddies and chartered a new chapter of the club. Meetings were held in the back yards or garages of whichever member’s ride needed to be worked on while the other members stood around drinking beer and telling lies.
- Within five years of returning to Riverside, Junior had made good on his ambition to start his own company, when he founded Simpson Construction in 1967, on a large rented lot in the north section of town. From the beginning of his company, Junior vowed that his beloved Rattlers MC would always have a home there, a promise that has survived to this day and through several generations of Junior’s heirs. The company was successful enough that Junior soon bought the property it sat on. And the company would eventually grow and morph into Simpson's Ready-Mix. But throughout the years and through all these changes, one thing remained constant: the small concrete-block building at the back of the lot was the enduring home of the Rattlers MC, Riverside Chapter.
- From the pages of Blood Brothers:
-
You’ve probably heard of us if you’re from Southern California. Or anywhere in the western states, for that matter. The Rattlers MC has been on the front page of your local fish-wrap a time or two. Or in your social media news feed, such as things are these days. Frosty and I belonged to the Riverside chapter. Riv wasn’t the “mother chapter” of the Rattlers—that distinction belonged to Barstow, of all places.
But Riverside was the biggest. Some might say the strongest. Others the meanest. Much of that rep was owed to Tillman, our chapter president. More on him later. But it wasn’t a stretch to say that Riv was the dominant force in the club, whose 23 chapters sprawled across most of the western United States.
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