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On a bright summer morning, Cesar Flores is the only one dressed in black at a family-owned bakery in Hollister. Sunlight streams through the window behind him, bouncing off the back of his leather vest, where a skull in a top hat spreads its wings. Stitched onto the left side of his vest, just below his heart, are the names of his fallen brothers—bikers like him, gone in the last few years.
Flores works his way through a plate of bacon, eggs and toast when he’s hailed by a couple of familiar faces.
“There you are!” they say. “Oh, you’re having breakfast, huh?”
Two men walk over and introduce themselves to a reporter as Little Jeff and Sideshow, both members of the Top Hatters, the motorcycle club Flores and Little Jeff founded 20 years ago. Flores asks if they are hungry.
“I’m still full of my Chinese food,” says Little Jeff. “Ate in Los Banos last night at China Gardens.”
“That place is good,” says Flores, chewing.
Sideshow, the only biker not in black, wears a white shirt and khaki shorts. He carries a perfectly preserved copy of Life magazine from 1947 sealed in a Ziploc bag. He hands it to the reporter and says he owns more than 150 copies. It is the magazine that gave birth to the biker legend.
By the 1940s, Hollister was already an established motorcyclist hub, but it was the Gypsy Tour of July 1947 organized by the American Motorcyclist Association that turned the town into legend. More than 4,000 bikers came, and while most attendees were peaceful, a handful got drunk, raced through the streets and caused minor disturbances.
The San Francisco Chronicle sent a photographer to cover the story, and he captured what would become an iconic image outside Johnny’s Bar & Grill: a man in a cap, holding two beer bottles, slouched on a motorcycle and surrounded by empty bottles. Though likely staged, the photo caused a sensation and, weeks later, Life published it with a caption that read: “He and his friends terrorize a town.”
Six years later, The Wild One opened in theaters. Marlon Brando played the leader of a motorcycle gang who turns a quiet town upside down, cementing to this day the image of the outlaw biker in American culture.
Nearly 50 years after that rally, Flores and Little Jeff, along with 15 other bikers, decided the town needed a club again. They called themselves the Hollister Bikers, until one of them suggested reviving an old name.
The original Top Hatters formed in the 1940s, when bikers wore top hats. The founders, Flores recalls, were still around.
“We decided we wanted to have a patch,” he says. “And one of the guys in the club at the time knew about the Top Hatters. So we met with the old ‘viejitos’ and got the permission to use the name.”
The club officially relaunched in 1995, and Sideshow joined a year later. On a visit from Sacramento, he walked into the Whiskey Creek Saloon, said he rode a bike and wanted to join. He moved to Hollister and became part of the brotherhood.
Since then, they’ve ridden across the country several times. Once, they set out to visit all nine towns named Hollister—from Florida to Missouri to Oklahoma. They’ve ridden to Mexico countless times. And about 14 or 15 times, they made it to Sturgis, South Dakota, home of the largest biker rally in the U.S. It was there that Flores earned his road name, “Hollywood,” after a fellow rider recognized him from a brief role he played in an episode of “Nash Bridges.”
“That’s my road name,” Flores says. “Everybody gets one.”
“And he’s Little Jeff,” Sideshow adds, “because when he joined, he was just Jeff—until another guy came into the club. We called him Big Jeff, so we changed his name from Jeff to Little Jeff.”
Off the road, Flores has long been focused on helping others. He turned the Top Hatters into a registered nonprofit dedicated to community service. Every year, they organize a canned food drive and remain among the largest donors to the local food pantry. He was also president of the San Benito Arts Council, one of the first members of El Teatro Campesino when it relocated to San Juan Bautista, and served on city council for four years and was mayor for two.
Today, none of them ride. Time has forced Flores and Little Jeff out. “It’s inevitable,” Flores says.
Sideshow has a knee injury that makes it hard to keep his bike stable.
“You wish you could still ride,” he says. “But you realize that it’s not practical anymore. Your stability, reflexes and all that stuff are not what they were in your 50s. You know, as you get old —I’ll be 74, he’s 87 and he’s going to be 83—to hold up a motorcycle, you’ve got to have stability. And with age, you lose your muscles.”
What do they miss most about riding?
“The freedom,” Slideshow says. “You don’t worry about anything except where you’ll be the next day. You just ride and ride, and just enjoy the beauty of America. It’s the freedom of not worrying about anything except, you know, the wind blowing your hair and seeing the beauty of America.”
After nearly 30 years in Hollister, Sideshow is moving to Florida with his family. California, he says, has turned unaffordable. This year’s Independence Day Rally, the first Hollister has hosted in eight years, will be the trio’s last one living in the same town.
Flores and Little Jeff will hand out cards at the stops of the July 5 poker run, organized by the Top Hatters.
Asked if he plans to be there, Sideshow says, “Yes. But you won’t recognize me. I’ll be in my dirty old leathers.”
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