HOLY SHIT.... blast from the past. I knew I'd seen those guys in the wild before, back when they were still VIPER, circa '98-'00.
I wasn't even thinking about this when the memory popped back up; I was talking to my wife about going to the 90's warehouse parties & clubs, and then it hit me. My friends & I ran into them late-night/early morning at a gas station, probably around Mack & Bellevue or near Jefferson Ave. I think we were killing time before a venue opened, and it was the only place we could find that actually let people inside after dark.
So these guys were wearing matching berets & VIPER t-shirts, fingerless gloves, SWAT-style uniform trousers bloused into cop boots, etc. Back then I thought they were some sort of hood bikers or vigilante crew, and was surprised we didn't get told to gtfo of their AO. But we didn't stick around to find out otherwise, either.
In retrospect, they probably figured we were nutty enough to not worry about or bother with, being who & where we were, doing what we were doing.