Jake Sawyer's Story

All 12 chapters + "The Lost Episodes" of the legendary Portland outlaw's life

Jake Sawyer in the spring of 2016. photo/The Fuge

“I know you probably think I’m a raving, self-obsessed lunatic, and I am, sort of, but I’m also deeply in love with my fellow human beings, and that’s my main reason for wanting this book to get written. I’ve never shrunk away from a thing in my whole life, and maybe my story will help someone or other do something they’re afraid of doing. I’m hoping they’ll learn something from the way I’ve lived my life. I’ve always lived my life with great passion and have loved every minute of it, even the bad times. No matter how painful it was, or hopeless things got, I’ve looked life straight in the eye and I’ve gone for the goody every fucking time — and it’s always worked out in the end. I came up smilin’ every time. Life is one grand feast! Let’s have at it!”

So said Jake Sawyer, the legendary Portland outlaw biker and bodybuilder, when he collared newspaper columnist Cliff Gallant downtown one warm day spring day in 2012. What followed was an epic journey, for Cliff and readers of The Bollard, as we published 12 chapters of Jake’s oral autobiography from May of 2016 through the following May, followed a couple years later by some “Lost Episodes.”

“Probably about 80 percent of that was true,” an old-time Portlander recently remarked to me regarding Jake’s tales. I’d say that estimate’s a little low, but yeah, you have to take some of the finer details with a healthy shake of salt (and in the case of Jake’s recollections about Dylan, just pour the whole damn shaker out). But Jake does have receipts, scrapbooks full of photos and newspaper clippings that prove all the relevant facts of his story, like his enrollment at the prestigious Kent’s Hill prep school in Maine, his enlistment in the U.S. Army and paratrooper training, his exploits with the Hell’s Angels in mid-’60s San Francisco and his subsequent incarceration at San Quentin and various other houses of detention, among many, many other adventures.

Compiled in their entirety and combined for the first time, with all the original photographs, “Jake Sawyer’s Story” and “The Lost Episodes” are here for our Bollard Substack subscribers. I hope Jake also inspires you to fearlessly pursue your passions, no matter how painful or hopeless things get, and may you also come up smilin’ every fuckin’ time.