Long Avenue was one of those streets that if you didn’t have business there, you found and alternate route. The street was dirty, neglected, and housed the businesses of ill repute that always seemed to coalesce together in rebellious effort to stay afloat in the wider landscape of polite society. Convenience stores, liquor and cigarette outlets, adult book stores, bars, and greasy food joints lined the cracked and decaying sidewalks. It was the backdrop theater for a cast of losers, thugs, miscreants, and every other kind of low life looking for a starring role in life’s drama for survival on the fringe.<br/><br/>Nestled into the set was one of the remaining original Long Street bungalow houses that had been built back in the 40’s when the neighborhood was a thriving bedroom community adjacent to the industrial area of Stockton, Oregon. Urban sprawl had long since steamrolled the once sleepy domestic haven and in its’ wake left nothing but empty, long silenced factories, plummeting property values, and a vacuum that had soon filled with the untouchables of American society. But the little house remained, worse for wear, along with a handful of others like it and in the house lived Art Madsen, owner of the Madsen Motors Cycle Shop next door and long-standing member of the Roadkill Jokers MC.<br/><br/>Art Madsen, as well as the shop and the MC, had been a fixture on Long Street for as long as anyone could really remember, and the MC had been headquartered there from the day the ‘For Sale’ sign came down. It was small back then, just a handful of returning vets with nowhere else to go except down a bad road. It didn’t take long for the club to grow into something where men who had a lust for living on the edge of society and the law could find a place of belonging and brotherhood. In the decades to follow, drugs, guns, and violence became the creed and canon of the Roadkill Jokers and they were firmly entrenched in all the vices and villainy the dirty industrial city of Stockton had to offer. They operated on a bankroll of cash provided by the services they offered and if you were under their banner of ‘family’, there was nothing you couldn’t quid pro quo with the RJMC.<br/><br/>Dale Kovak, known to outsiders only by his patch name ‘Dirty’ or ‘Dirty Dale’, was standing Sargent at Arms for the MC and was a common site on Long Street. He’d been with the MC for over twenty years and earned his rank by being a cold-hearted, no mercy given, ‘business’ man. He kept the neighborhood in check, knew it’s comings and goings, and was the first to hit the pavement with pistol in hand to squash any conflicts that may arise. Violence and Bloodshed weren’t uncommon and there was no shortage of dark urban legend that followed Dirty Dale.<br/><br/>For over ten years, Dirty Dale walked with a man named Rusty at his side. As a leg man and personal protection, Rusty was always at the right hand of Dirty Dale, but recent rumor, someday to be legend, had it that Rusty fell in the line of duty, taking a bullet for Dirty Dale during an altercation between the RJMC and an unstably allied club just across the street from the Resurrection Tattoo parlor. Rusty bled out and died in honor as Dirty Dale walked away unharmed in body and reputation. People still talked about it; things were still quiet because of it.<br/><br/>Within the week Dirty Dale had a new right-hand man, a little younger and fresher faced than Rusty. He was simply called Grunt and for those who had survived life on Long Street long enough, they remembered that was what Rusty hand been called too in his early days on the job. If the new guy worked out, if he picked up his job responsibilities quickly and keenly enough, and if he lived, he’d end up with his own name too. Until then, the day-to-day grind on Long Street remained unchanged and life moved on, pushed and pulled by the ebb and flow of a tide of dirty deals and outlaw justice.