SCOOTERS & MERCHANDISE FOR SALE
For Sale,1966 Lambretta, SX150 Italian POA contact Ian on 0034-664367512 |
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For Sale, 4700 euros,Pink Panther 1964 Lambretta, SX150(HAS A 185 KIT) |
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For Sale, 2000 euros Vespa 160 sprint with 200cc engine mod style, |
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For Sale, 1490 euros White Vespa 150, |
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FOR SALE, Orihuela scooter Club T-Shirt, 20 Euros. Mens & Ladies Sizes Available |
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FOR SALE,Orihuela Scooter Club Polo Top (Members Only) 23 Euros. Mens & Ladies Sizes Available |
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BELOW IS MEMORIES OF A SIXTIES MOD MAKES GREAT READING (CHEERS DEL) |
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Memories of a Sixties Mod…..
They say if you can remember the sixties then you were not there, well I was definitely there “at least I think so!” the following is how I remember it although it is a bit of a blur after a very hectic time both then and since.
I bought my first Lambretta in 1964 followed by a Vespa GS160 and then two more slimstyles followed one after the other in very quick succession, a new basic scooter back then cost about 175 pounds and a new top of the range TV200 (GT) was 199 pounds, our wages were between 3 and 5 pound a week, so a new scooter was as much as a years wages for a teenager, much more affordable today for a similar shop restored classic!, so it was a small deposit down and the rest on the ‘never never’ and in many cases we never did as the insurance companies picked up the tab after we wrote them off, we would leave them on the side of the road and call out the local dealer to collect them as no self respecting Mod would ever be seen getting their hands dirty fixing their scooters, unlike our so called enemy the Rockers or Greasers as they were known. So you would just pick yourself up from where you landed give your scooter a loving pat or a kick depending on whose fault it was! take off your Parka worn to protect your Burtons or Neville Read suit (also on the ‘never never’) remove your French beret worn to protect your Mod hair style as crash hats were not compulsory in 64´ brush yourself down and go back into town to meet up with the rest of the Mods in the local coffee bars and milk parlours or the new popular USA style Wimpy Bars where we hung out drinking frothy coffee and eating burgers one after the other, we had all been raised on War Rations so these were hungry days.
Apart from the Wurlitzer juke box the only other form of in house entertainment was playing the Pin Ball machines at a tanner a go or three goes for a shilling with your name displayed in lights for top score of the week, everybody wanted to be the new “Pinball Wizard”,
A neat line of scooters always graced the outside of the coffee bars all facing out at a slight angle with all the front wheels ceremoniously pointing in the same direction, this was the good old days when you could park almost anywhere you liked before yellow, blue, red and pink lines everywhere and before they closed up the high streets with pedestrian precincts.
This was the good old days when you could cruise on your scooters through the main high streets on a Saturday afternoon and park outside West One Boutique whilst you tried on the latest must have Mod fashions. I can still hear the sound of the scooters echoing off the shop fascias and smell the two stroke additive coming from the scooters in front a smell like no other smell.
After the 1964 Easter Bank Holiday so called riots at Clacton several of our group rode down to Margate from the Medway Towns, North Kent, for the Whitsun Bank Holiday, before we arrived there were more scooters in front and behind us than you could count, groups of scooters appeared from every town and almost every side turning stretching back as far as you could see, it was an awesome sight, one I will never forget especially the noise coming from the self modified exhausts. The locals would most definitely have heard us coming all the way down the Thanet Way, it must have been quite a sight for the day trippers as you had an even louder racket coming from the Rockers who were also arriving in packs on their Bonnies and Nortons. Following the very eventful bank holiday many Mods and Rockers were up in front of the local courts for various offences, it was here the Magistrate told the offending invaders they were “long haired, unkempt, mentally unstable, petty little SAWDUST CAESARS who can only find courage by hunting in packs like rats” After this somewhat Victorian and now historic sermon they dished out fines to most and sent some off to detention centre’s and Borstals up and down the country, mostly guilty of nothing more than running the wrong way and into the arms of the law.
It was much the same in Hastings on the August Bank Holiday of the same year with thousands of Mods and Rockers arriving on their scoots and bikes, amazingly, as there where hardly any private land line phones, no mobile phones or Internet and relying only on the grapevine everybody still knew what was going on and who was going where, this included the police as they sent the Met Riot Squad down from the city, they even arrived by plane into the local airport, they were definitely intimidating in their numbers and were ready for a fight, with Black Mariahs on every street corner. The large police and media presence lit the fuse and it turned into another free for all, the vast majority of Mods and Rockers where just on a ride out to the coast on their bikes getting away from the slums, bomb sites and smog of the city and the true Mods were too worried about their clothes to want to ruin them rioting especially as we were still paying for them, but because of the paparazzi presence and the fact that they wanted another front page story they got one, a story still talked about today with front page headlines in all the national papers reading….
“The Second Battle of Hastings” and “Riot Police fly to seaside town” with similar exaggerated footage accompanying the previous headlines at Margate depicting the “The Sawdust Caesars” it all ended up pretty much the same as before with Mods and Rockers alike brawling in every street and on the beach, nobody got shot and nobody got seriously hurt just a few bloody noses a few broken deck chairs and a few disgruntled holiday makers. The result was several unfortunates guilty or not and deservedly or not appearing in front of the local magistrates after the weekend mostly charged with public order offences like disturbing the peace and criminal damage resulting in more fines and more being sent off to boot camp, I don’t remember anyone getting charged with causing a so called riot or anyone getting an ASBO nor any of the day trippers suing the local tourist board for compensation on legal aid!!
This was 1964 in what was then Great Britain and never before had peace time society seen so many liberated teenagers in one place under their own steam, the powers to be definitely did not know how to handle the situation which was later to be known as the invasion of the beaches.
For most of us having slept under the pier all weekend with only our parkas to keep us warm and for some their Modettes we went back to our very bleak council estates and in many cases bleak and broken homes and dead end jobs. After work and at weekends we met up in the chic Espresso Coffee Bars reminiscing of the great escapes to the coast on our scooters of 64 and 65. For some exchanging stories of detention centre’s and Borstal and others asking “what happened to their scooters!” because in most cases your parents were your guarantor on the HP agreement but after you got behind in your payments that did not mean they would or could keep up the repayments especially if you were away doing press ups or playing crab football somewhere miles up North, this was before the completion of the M1 motorway so it was not only goodbye to your treasured scooter and treasured liberty but also goodbye to your mates as well as most institutions were miles from home and sometimes out of reach of the early unreliable Lambretta´s and Vespa´s and especially without today’s back up vans!.
Friday nights we went up the West End mixing with the older Mods (Faces) doing all the best clubs around Soho that played R&B, Tamla Motown, Blue Beat and Ska, mostly La Discotheque at 17 Wardour Street and the Scene Club. Other popular venues included the Flamingo, Tiles and the Marquee Club for live groups such as the Small Faces who were adopted by the sixties Mods and later to become Rod Stewart and the Faces and the then relatively unheard of band called The Who whilst ignoring other up and coming groups like the Rolling Stones who were at the time considered more of a Rockers band and were adopted by the Hells Angels.
On Sunday morning we all met in the Greek Street basement café in Soho (also a popular hangout for the other type of TV´s) recovering from the long weekend and for some Mods the after effects of their mothers ´mothers little helpers´ slimming tablets. Pep pills were all the rage in the sixties to help keep you awake whilst dancing all night, class A drugs like heroin and crack cocaine were most definitely not cool with Mods and virtually unheard of. We then went down Petticoat Lane in the East End for our straight down Levis, full length leathers, suede coats and bomber jackets, Carnaby Street was by now already moving on and about to set the next psychedelic trend that was coming out of San Francisco, a trend that would last only as long as Flower Power!
The oblivious weekend was followed by the oblivious journey home back to suburbia either on our scooters that we had parked up in a neat line on the pavement somewhere on Leicester Square on the Friday night or on the rattler `5.15 milk train Monday morning´ arriving back just in time for work.
By the mid to late sixties the Mod movement was all but over down south with most Mods going their separate ways, Lambrettas and Vespa´s made way for Mini’s, Anglia’s and Mk1 Cortina´s and you either swapped your Parka and desert boots for a pair of Doctor Martins and braces, had a skin head haircut and by doing so made yourself unemployable as there where signs everywhere stating ´NO SKIN HEADS´ even on the building sites, this was long before political correctness and OTT discrimination laws and the wicked witches so called human rights laws, or you simply grew your hair long put a flower in it and was into peace and love, rallied in Hyde Park to stop the war in Vietnam and smoked some sort of grass grown in some country you had never heard of and could not even pronounce, refused to go to work and just hung out with the rest of the following or like many others in the sixties simply succumbed to a shot gun wedding and exchanged the much loved scooter for four wheels in the form of a pram.
Then late seventies early eighties came along Paul Weller and the Jam and along with the film Quadrophenia reliving the Brighton Bank Holiday riots with a splash of Clacton, Margate and Hastings thrown in and immortalizing Jimmy (Phil Daniels) on his Lammie with music from the by now famous The Who they were both adopted by the new age scooters boys as their patron saints so to speak and that was it the scooter scene and the Lambretta and Vespa were reborn and are still very much alive today throughout the world after over forty glorious years and look set for another forty. I suspect the good old Lammies and Vespa´s will still be going strong in forty years but not alas the good old sixties Mods we will all be history, history perhaps but never forgotten, but possibly remembered only for being the infamous Sawdust Caesars of 1964.
As for me I am still riding down on the south coast albeit on the Costa’s on a “been there done that” UK 63´ TV 200 and I sometimes wonder if it too could tell a story or two .…………………if only!. Ride Safe… Del
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