Drove out to Stockton to visit the Stockton Rural Cemetery. The name alone was pretty intriguing, but I was first drawn to go there to explore because Russ Meyer is buried there. In looking further, I found that a recently deceased Hells Angel was also buried there. On our way to the cemetery, first we unknowingly drove around the cemetery next door - San Joaquin Catholic Cemetery. If you’re not familiar with Stockton, the city made a lot of headlines around when the US economy most recently crashed. About 75 miles inland, Stockton had drawn lots of working class Bay Area residents to purchase a more affordable home than they could get in the metro area. And then in '08, the bottom fell out of their home values. The city went bankrupt (the largest city in U.S. history to do so) and Stockton became the 10th most dangerous city in the country - now the police will practically only come out for an in-progress crime, and crime and gangs took hold more than ever.
In the Catholic cemetery we didn't intend to be in, we found a couple guards hanging in a golf cart - both in their late 20s / early 30s, he had a chill mullet and mustache combo and wore olive green security uniform. His uniform top had an emblem that had a Desert Storm vibe to it - company named Defense Private Security - and he was wearing a gun. She had small dreads under a black beanie and was wearing all black, also with a gun and a flashlight on her belt. We stopped and talked with the guards a couple times to ask where the graves we were looking for might be located (before we realized we were in the wrong cemetery), but they had no idea where any graves were located. They explained to us that people partied in this cemetery, sometimes bands would play, families would bring food and grill in the grassy area without graves in the middle of the two main roads going through the cemetery ... they said it got pretty fun. They seemed kinda disappointed that they had to prevent those things, but it sounded like it happened at all hours. And then they said there was consistently violence happening within the cemetery - thus their armaments. They were a mellow pair, however, and we entertained them by telling them about Russ Meyer's titty movies. We confirmed they were both a fan of tits, and left them googling on their phone as we drove away.
Once we got to Stockton Rural Cemetery (the right cemetery), we felt a bit of a Narnia effect, like we entered into another land. Tree cover provided by palm trees gave the aura of the tropics, and the quirky signage, cool old headstones, and proximity of railroad tracks quickly settled us after the possible mayhem of the graveyard to the right. Despite driving 90 minutes to get out there, I came uncharacteristically unprepared for this lurk, and had no plot locations for any of the three graves I was looking for. We were driving all over the cemetery looking for the grave of a Hells Angel Nomad named Boo Boo. We watched this creatively edited video of his funeral, and using context clues of other a distinctive headstone we saw in the video, we figured out around where Boo Boo was buried. We got to his tombstone just before the cemetery was scheduled to close their gates for the day, and upon finding Boo Boo's grave, we found a cache of half dozen Hells Angels Nomad graves.
Boo Boo's real name was George Lopez Jr and he was killed on the freeway in San Leandro by an East Bay Paratransit driver named Eddie Hall in a case of road rage on October 22, 2011. As we saw earlier in the Cemlurk blog, Fall of 2011 was a rough time for Bay Area Hells Angels, and I remember in the news, the first assumption was that many assumed that Lopez's death was connected to the other recent Hells Angels deaths. But after some investigation, it was clear that this case had nothing to do with the other deaths, but was just some sort of breakdown by a paratransit driver, who dragged Lopez and his bike for a mile. Hall hit another Angel part of the pack Lopez was riding in (on their way to a Saturday night party at the Oakland Hells Angels clubhouse), and you can watch a video of those Angels talking about the incident. George "Boo Boo" Lopez, Jr, of Stockton, a Hells Angel belonging to Nomad California chapter, was buried in Stockton Rural Cemetery on November 11.