  We use a sample of ~6000 galaxies detected by the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA
(ALFALFA) 21cm survey, to measure the clustering properties of HI-selected
galaxies. We find no convincing evidence for a dependence of clustering on the
galactic atomic hydrogen (HI) mass, over the range M_HI ~ 10^{8.5} - 10^{10.5}
M_sun. We show that previously reported results of weaker clustering for low-HI
mass galaxies are probably due to finite-volume effects. In addition, we
compare the clustering of ALFALFA galaxies with optically selected samples
drawn from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We find that HI-selected
galaxies cluster more weakly than even relatively optically faint galaxies,
when no color selection is applied. Conversely, when SDSS galaxies are split
based on their color, we find that the correlation function of blue optical
galaxies is practically indistinguishable from that of HI-selected galaxies. At
the same time, SDSS galaxies with red colors are found to cluster significantly
more than HI-selected galaxies, a fact that is evident in both the projected as
well as the full two-dimensional correlation function. A cross-correlation
analysis further reveals that gas-rich galaxies "avoid" being located within ~3
Mpc of optical galaxies with red colors. Next, we consider the clustering
properties of halo samples selected from the Bolshoi LambdaCDM simulation. A
comparison with the clustering of ALFALFA galaxies suggests that galactic HI
mass is not tightly related to host halo mass, and that a sizable fraction of
subhalos do not host HI galaxies. Lastly, we find that we can recover fairly
well the correlation function of HI galaxies by just excluding halos with low
spin parameter. This finding lends support to the hypothesis that halo spin
plays a key role in determining the gas content of galaxies.
