The Gulf Coast Outlaws are on a mission to change the negative perceptions that people might have about motorcycle clubs.
They’re starting in their own community.
This holiday season, club members collected more than 1,000 coats during a drive at their Navarre clubhouse and plan to give them away to residents in need. They also raised $2,300 to fund Christmas celebrations for three families who have fallen on hard times.
“I think the ‘Sons of Anarchy’ generation really put a damper on people’s view of the motorcycle club and kind of gave them a falsified perception of things,” said Gulf Coast Outlaws member Preston Perry, who helped spearhead this year’s charitable efforts.
“The Outlaws, as a whole, have always been big at giving out to the community. We are very aware of the people who are suffering and in need. With all of us in the Panhandle coming together and being on the same page, we just figured we got this many bodies, how can we help people out?”
Perry, who is better known by his nickname “Gorilla,” said the club members recognized that community members were in need and wanted to give back.
“Wintertime is a struggle for a lot of people, just like the holidays, and what better way to help people out than putting a coat on their back?” he said.
Outlaw members have a distinctive look, wearing leather jackets depicting the Outlaw MC emblem of a skull with red eyes set against a pair of crossing motorcycle pistons. Perry said they are proud of the fact that they stick out in any crowd of non-bikers.
“We don’t want to fit in with society. We like looking different,” he said. “We like people thinking whatever they are going to think, but at the end of the day, we are giving back and doing things that other people aren’t. So let them think what they want.”
The coats the club collected will be distributed to four organizations across three counties.
The Outlaws are fairly new to the Navarre area, and Perry said their charitable efforts are a way to introduce themselves to the community.
“We are a brand-new chapter here in this area. … The clubhouse has been established but it has just, right now in the past year, has become an Outlaw shared clubhouse with the Southern Saints,” he said.
In total, about 10 to 15 motorcycle club chapters spread across Northwest Florida helped collect the coats, including the Outlaws and their “support clubs,” the Southern Saints, Overlords and Brothers United.
“Everybody reached out to people in their own communities who knew they had stuff,” said Perry, who owns the Gulf Coast Cycle motorcycle shop in Pensacola and manages several bars and establishments between Pensacola and Century. “People obviously went in their own closets and their own pockets and bought brand new stuff. It was really an awesome effort. We didn’t expect it to turn out to be this awesome.”
The effort proved so successful that Perry said the club plans to do it again next year and for years to come.
Merrick Johnson, of the Jacksonville Outlaws, drove six hours to the Panhandle to contribute to the good work his fellow club members were doing in Navarre.
“Every chapter does something for the community to give back, and we really do care about the community and everything. We care about having a strong relationship with it and just giving back,” said Johnson, who goes by the nickname “Slowpoke.” “We make a good enough amount of money off everything so we can give back to the community.”
Like Perry, Johnson said many members of motorcycle clubs are misunderstood.
“We just don’t think that rules that are placed in society are 100% right. We don’t think everything is right about it. So we live by our own thing,” he said. “It doesn’t mean we go out and sell drugs and rape and pillage. It just means we live on a different beat than normal people, and people want to look down on that because it’s not the society standard, but that’s just how we live.”
In other words, don’t judge a book by its cover.
“The concept that people have or what people try to make us out to be is so far off from what it actually is. We are here for biking and brotherhood,” Perry said. “It’s just likeminded individuals all under one roof.”
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