You describe an incident that you witnessed between some members of the motorcycle club, the East Bay Rats, and a recycler. You want to tell us about that? Yeah. So the recyclers are kind of a constant presence and when the Rats drink beer, which they do all the time and in fact there's a soda machine that sells dollar beers in the clubhouse, they'll just toss the empties outside and the empties will be gone within 30 seconds or a minute. And that's their form of recycling.
So at the night of one of the fight nights, there was a recycler who kept hovering right around the door. And usually what'll happen at a fight night or an East Bay Rats party is all of the Rats and people belonging to other clubs will ride up to the clubhouse and park their bikes in a neat line down the length of the block. So it makes for quite a visual. And on one night, I saw there was a recycler who kept darting in in between their legs right outside the clubhouse front door to get the cans, basically, to get empty beer cans. And, you know, there are often people hanging around the Rats who want to impress them, who want to be prospects for the club. And someone like that was around that evening. And he got up at one point, got up off the motorcycle he was sitting on, walked over to the recycler and shoved him hard into the line of bikes.
And, you know, I was holding my breath, and for a minute I thought it was going to be OK, but it wasn't OK. Another Rat came up and touching the bike was enough it turned out. Everyone was drunk and a Rat went up and he knocked the man down to the ground. And then a couple of other Rats came out and they knocked the man to the ground. And San Pablo is a wide avenue. It's four lanes with a big median strip. And the man crawled over - the recycler crawled over the median strip and - onto the oncoming traffic lane. And I turned and I saw one of the Rats flip the visor on his helmet down and he was on his motorcycle and he rode it around the median strip. And he rode it up to the recycler who was lying on the ground at this point bleeding. And he rolled his bike back and forth sort of nudging the recycler a few times with the front tire. And then he gunned it and he rode over the recycler's torso, which was very horrible to watch and horrible to think about and horrible also to think that I could've done something to stop it in real time. And I didn't realize that in real time and didn't do anything to stop it, so not a proud moment for me. And the recycler survived, got up and walked away?
You know, I turned around and I thought I was going to throw up when I saw them ride over the recycler's body. And when I turned back around, the recycler was gone. I was expecting him to be lying on the cement with broken bones, but he had scampered away. The next time I saw Trevor, Trevor said, you'd be surprised. Crack heads are surprisingly resilient, and I said I wish I could've done something to stop it, and Trevor said you could've. All it takes is someone saying stop. We're listening to the interview contributor Dave Davies recorded with Alex Abramovich about his new book, "Bullies: A Friendship." We'll hear more of the interview after a break. And we'll remember The Beatles' record producer George Martin, who died yesterday at dimmable filament led bulb . We'll listen back to an interview I recorded with him about helping shape their early sound and about producing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." I'm Terry Gross, and this is .