Respects paid to Mark "Papa" Guardado, 46, who was killed Sept. 2 outside a Mission District bar in San Francisco. At the time, he was president of the Frisco Hells Angels and was considered by many members as royalty of the outlaw biker gang.
Hell's Angels history is known for their on going criminal activity of drug dealing, prostitution, gun running and money laundering along with more and more legitimate business enterprises. The FBI reports that the Angels are believed to now be working with the Mexican drug cartels and their gangs. But their focus was on Mark "Papa" Guardado and the local police reported the Angels were Angels this day of mourning.
The vigil began Sunday evening; mourners packed the main room at Duggan's and several smaller rooms, where they watched on closed circuit television. Big bear type men in black leather openly wept as one of them sang Willie Nelson's "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground," accompanying himself on saxophone. An astonishingly long funeral procession sped through San Francisco. The massive group of mourners led what police say may have been the largest motorcycle procession ever in the San Francisco Bay area from Daly City to the Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, creating a deafening uproar of engines and a spectacle that stopped traffic in its tracks on both sides of Interstate 280.Hells Angel’s chapters from Alaska to Maine, from Rhode Island to Hawaii, and from overseas including- Norway, Germany, England, Australia, Italy and others. And not just Hells Angels showed up. Duggan's parking lot hosted a collection of motorcycle clubs rarely seen outside events in Hollister or Sturgis, S.D., - the Mecca and Medina of biker culture. Top Hatters and Henchmen, Vampires and Devil Dolls, representatives of large groups and small, they all slapped leather-clad shoulders and shared tears and tales of Papa Guadardo, or just exchanged stories from the road.
“We don't get along with the press,” said one member, guarding the parking lot. “And if you stick a camera in someone's face, you're asking for trouble.” Police estimated mourners numbered over 2000 with at least 1000 bikers accompanying the hearse carrying the remains of murdered Frisco Hells Angel president. Papa's final ride was a Viking type funeral, his body road to his final resting place by a storm of thunder and flashes of chrome as the Angel’s colors flu proudly in the whispering breeze of an otherwise beautiful day.
San Francisco police said he was shot to death, by Christopher Ablett, 37, of Modesto, a member of the hated rival Mongols Motorcycle gang, whose bad blood with the Hells Angels goes back a long way. Ablett is still