It's not what you ride...

It's how you ride it. G

Alley Club Mod Radio

Is there anything more British than a mod taking his tidy Lambretta for a romantic punt down the River Cam?

This is DJ Revnix, Sideburn reader and Dirt Quake flag marshal on a leisurely day out. He and his mates from the Alley Mod Club have made a radio show of their favourite music to help you through your day at work (if you're lucky, like me and can listen to what you want and you have similar taste in music, which isn't a given).

Blues, ska, mod revival, two-tone, northern soul and even David Bowie (when he was lead singer of mod band, The Lower Third (by the way, is that the worst name for a band ever?))...

Listen to it at Cambridge 105 Alley Club Mods. G

Cindy on the Wall of Death

Cindy swaps her DKR Manx for a stripped-down Beezer twin to ride the wall of death. I love the signwritten BSA ads around the top of the wall.

We've booked the legendary Ken Fox Wall of Death for Dirt Quake V. They will be performing free shows on Friday night, after the the DTRA and Hooligan dirt track racing, then on Saturday during and after the Dirt Quake racing.

Dirt Quake V tickets are now on sale.
Friday is £5, Saturday is £15. Under 11s are free. 11-15 year-olds

All full price Saturday tickets bought in advance will be entered into a draw to win a custom Mutt Motorcycles street tracker worth over £4500. G

Dirt Quake IV - late entry

What's Dirt Quake, you ask? Oh, please. MP

Bixby Moto

We're proud to announce Andrew from Bixby Moto is writing about the Hell of Wheels Japan race for the next Sideburn (out in early-December). We're pretty sure we're the last magazine to get around to covering this event, but our article is worth the wait.
If you don't know about them, investigate the Bixby Moto YouTube Channel. G

 Andrew. I'm pretty sure he's Canadian.

Drew's fantastic W650 complete with desert paddle tyre. This is the bike he raced in Japan (with different rubber).

Frankenstein Scooters to Dracula’s Castle

This is the bizarre premise for the book: British family rides from Italy to Istanbul (through Transylvania) on holiday on a pair vintage scooters fitted with motorbike engines; writes about it; expects public to buy it. The title is as convoluted. But, because Martin ‘Sticky’ Round is such an entertaining writer (and, perhaps, because I have a long-held soft spot for old scooters), it worked for me.

I used to read Sticky’s stuff before I was a professional journalist and I still enjoy it now. He doesn’t try to re-invent the wheel (like he did with his Honda 250-two-stroke-powered Lambretta or his wife’s 400cc Suzuki-powered Maico) with his writing and it’s a fairly gentle, but engaging tale of man and wife and 11-year-old lad going on a very off-the-beaten track holiday (along with a friend and his 13-year-old daughter on another ancient, standard and – seemingly - woefully under-powered Lambretta). It is inspirational for anyone feeling they’re in a family holiday rut or fancy a bonding exercise with their sprog. And for anyone who thinks their bike isn’t up for touring, because it’s not a BMW GS with aluminium panniers.

The two-wheelers they’re riding might not be familiar or even desirable to readers, but the trials of touring on heavily modified, inappropriate machinery will ring a bell with chopper, street tracker or café racer riders.

The book is independently produced and available in large format paperback or ebook. G

Paperback Edition • ISBN: 978-0-9548216-2-3; • 196 Pages • 92 colour images • UK Price: £9.99 + P&P
Published by: Fingers in Pies Publications • Available from: www.scooterproducts.com

ebook (Amazon): • ISBN: 978-0-9548216-3-0 • Price £2.99 ebook (Smashwords edition - Apple, Nook Kobo etc) • ISBN: 978-0-9548216-4-7 • £2.99

DGR 2014

The Distinguished Gentleman's Ride has exploded. Well, not literally, but there are clearly a load of folk doing it this year. And it all happens this Sunday.

This weekend, there are 255 charity rides (raising money for prostate cancer research) in 57 countries. And Triumph are corporate sponsors of the whole thing.

Baybutt of the Corpses From Hell reminded us he's organised one in Sheffield (UK). You can sponsor him here.

For details on your nearest ride, go to Distinguished Gentleman's Ride. G

Margate Scooter Rally 1989

My very old mate, Col sent me this photo and the message.

I'm really enjoying the mags, I look on the blog most days.... it would be real good to catch up on the phone at some point...
The latest pic of you and Guy Martin is cool, but not as cool as this one of me and you 25 years ago this month on Margate seafront... Quarter of a century ago can you believe???? 

Do you still have the hat with flames on it..?? I've just resubscribed. I'm only missing the first two issues for the full set keep up the top work fella, 
all the best, 
Col

I'm the one with the long hair. Col is wearing my Life's A Beach beret. I was very much into all the grebo bands - Gaye Bykers On Acid (below), Crazyhead, Wonder Stuff - at that time.
I never looked much like a scooterboy and I was a couple of years away from buying a CBR600.


There's a lot of instagram chatter (too dumb to be hating) about men, scooters and wind in vaginas - well, I started out on scooters, and I own a Lambretta that I'm as attached to as the day I got it over 20-odd years ago. The years I spent riding around Britain and Europe, trips further than most people tour on their 1000cc bikes, made me what I am.

My old mate, Col from Scarborough (in the photo above) and I used to meet up in Leeds at some ungodly hour on a Friday morning (he would have already been on the road for 1.5 hours), then ride to a rundown seaside town as much as 300 miles away. After camping on wasteground for two nights, we'd turn around and crawl home at 58mph after two nights on the lash. We'd do it eight or more times a year. Col still goes now, having never stopped.

A proportion of the 3-5000 scooterboys who went on rallies in the 1980s were thugs, split 60/40 right-wing, left-wing. The Calverton Hornets would fight the London nazi skins if they came across them. The Cardiff Cougars SC were made up of the city's football hooligans. There was another whole club of cro-magnon-looking scooterboys who all had their heads shaved into short mohawks like the 2000AD character Rogue Trooper (who gave their scooter club its name). I'd like to see some of the instagram warriors tell these lads they only rode Vespas because they liked wind in their lady parts.

Where the top photo was taken is/was a pub that got smoke bombed that night, while we were drinking in it, but I never find out exactly why. 1980s scooter rallies weren't Wheels and Waves, that for damn sure.

Anyway, thanks for the trip down memory lane, Col. G

Do You Comb Your Fringe?

Tomorrow night (Thursday 31st Oct), BBC Four is repeating its documentary Full Throttle: The Glory Days of British Motorbikes. (the above on-line viewing link might not work outside the UK?). The usual faff about Mods versus Rockers but an interesting piece on Lawrence of Arabia, and some coiffure tips on Vespa seat covers. BP

Retrospective Scooters Book

This brand new book takes its name from a back street North London classic Vespa specialist. It's the work of photographer Paul Hart who shot the shop, its vintage Vespas and also the scooters the photographer himself bought from Retrospective over a six-year period. 

Paul explains the book was shot all on film, not digital, which always makes much more difference to the photographer (and other photographers) than the reader. Instagram's instant effects have dulled us to the joys of cross-processing. Nevertheless it's a lovely coffee table book for anyone with a soft spot for Piaggio's wasp. 

The 120-page book is a chunky large format softback and is limited to 130 copies. It'll sell out, guaranteeing its cult status. 

It was designed by David Hardy of (Team S Equipe and Enjoy the Ride) and the short passages are in English, Italian and German. I've been picking it up and putting it down all day. I've found it pretty inspirational (even though I'm a Lambretta man). 

Go to Vespamore to buy yours. G

Inappropriate

Richard Baybutt's entry for Inappropriate Road Bike for Dirt Quake II has definitely passed pre-selection. G

Fine Young Cannibals

Black, White, Mod, Rocker, we don't give a flying fuk. If you've got the moves, you've got the moves. BP

Sideburn's 48hrs in Milan Pt.2

So, after an afternoon looking around the huge EICMA Show (see 48hrs, part 1), Dave and I got the train to Officine Mermaid. They are a bike builders, importers, service centre and a clothes and accessory shop in Milan. When Sideburn did it's first ever foreign trip we went to Milan for a small one-night event called Milan Showdown. We met a lot of great people and began a love affair with the North Italian scene. The Mermaid crew really looked after us. It was them who invited Dave and I out for this trip.

The street that Mermaid is based on, Via Thaon di Revel, is slowly being turned into a 'moto quarter', with a few bike-related boutiques set up on the narrow street. Mermaid have also taken over a cafe that is decorated with motorcycles and various petrolalia.

Mermaid put us up in this incredible 1960s film set of an apartment.

Pinball coffee table.

RIDERS PARTY

That night we made the short walk back to Thaon di Revel for the Riders magazine party. It was sponsored by Pirelli, so there were various rubber things around, like tyres hanging from the ceiling, a welly boot nailed to the wall, rubber hammock, trampoline. People, mainly women, kept wanting to 'interact' with the rubber but when they did a security guard would come up and stop the fun. Oh, and there was free beer all night. These two facts might be related.

Conrad, one of the Anvil Motorcycle crew and me (double-fisting free drinks. Northern scum).

I rarely do the 'stand awkwardly next to famous person' but it was Noriyuki Haga! I was present at his first ever test in the UK. A colleague found out about it and at the time I worked about 20 miles away, so I went up and got straight in. It was me, Nori and Scott Russell and their team at Castle Combe, back in the Yamaha YZF750 days, early 1996, I think. Scott Russell's girlfriend didn't like Nori because 'he's always making weird sex noises'. I like Nori, but I wish Scott Russell had been at this party. That would've got it swinging.

Plenty of cool bikes fill the street on Riders Party night.

 This is what some Italian motorcycle builders look like. Fantastico!

RIDERS MAGAZINE

The next day I went to see Rolling Stone magazine, that I work for, then over to Riders magazine's new office. Riders is a monthly motorcycle magazine that is way, way, way out there. It's like a fuel-injected Vogue. Above is editor Roberto Ungaro, a ball of suave energy who can ride anything with two wheels like a demon. On his shelf is the Davida Dirt Quake helmet he won for triumphing in the Inappropriate Road Bike class.

This is Paolo Sormani, who seems to write at least half of every issue of Riders. He's an anglophile, Northern Soul aficionado and a gentleman.

THE LAST NIGHT

The whole idea of going out was for me and Dave to play some records in Mermaid's cafe (that I can't remember the name of, but it's opposite their bike shop. You can't miss it) on the Friday night .

Euro dirt track legend, Jacapo Monti turned up Dave Aldana's official Transatlantic Trophy jacket that he bought in the auction at Sideburn's David Aldana night, back in 2011. So did Raffaele P of the Streetracker blog, regular Sideburn contributor who shot the cover of Sideburn 11.

 Dimitri of Super Company brought his tuned up Salt Shaker Cub and was razzing around on it.

Just down the street from where Dave and I were having record player problems, Deus Ex Machina had a launch at a site that will be called Blocco 3. Deus are moving into Milan from January, with all the ingredients that have worked in Aus, Bali and, more recently, California. The difference is, I think, that this store will be run like a franchise, not organised by the Deus brain trust themselves. It will be interesting to see what the Italians add to the Deus mix, if anything.

It was great to see a chop parked up with these lids strapped to the sissy bar.

Arrivederci Italian people, see you in Verona in January. G

Ace Face

Quote of the day, 'I don't ride Vespas, I'm a Lambretta man.'
Well done, Wiggo. G

Vive Le Gentleman

Bradley Wiggins. He only went and gone and done it. And his racing saddle has a picture of him (nearly) surfing a Lambretta! G

Wheels and Waves, Biarritz, pt. 2

So, we didn't know what to expect from Wheels and Waves in Biarritz. There are a lot of shows to go to in Europe and we can't do all of them, but lots of good people had said they were going to this, so we joined them. It was amazing. 

Thursday night was a party in a Biarritz Beach House, Friday was the art and bike show, Saturday was ride out and gig/meal and some surfing (not that we partook), Sunday was beach race and recovery. 

Unfortunately, we didn't know about the beach race, so we had to hightail it back to England for other commitments. Still we had a blast. 

I loved hanging out with Dice Matt, Lenny Bubble Visor and Laurent Bagnard, among many others, on Friday. They even had a great DJ and I got to play a few records with Matt. Here are my Saturday snaps. G

Mrs El Solitario and her new BMW.

Chilling out in summer dresses.

Admirer. We took Sideburn's FT500 and Royal Enfield and they went down well.

The Impossible Team. The Southsiders and El Solitario have got together to build bikes to take to Bonneville this year. The bikes look great. Follow the link to find out more.

Space Scooter

Sportster Racester. Big ol' carb.

El Solitario's incredible Balau BMW. I'd followed the build and wasn't sure of it, but in the flesh, and on the road, it's a great looking machine.

Spanish photographer Kristina Fender borrowed El Solitario's BMW

Dimitri Coste preparing his photo expo

Neat Norton. Loved the black Ruby and black visor.

Mrs Bell Moto 3

Jonathan from Death Traps MC had shipped his Shovelhead from California and was touring around Europe. He could ride this hand-shift hog like he was ringing a bell.

Photographer Sam Christmas on James's bike.

Relaxing by the lake (and the Dice van)

This chap, sorry forgot your name, came from Belgium with his other-half and new baby, his honda on the back of the car. He proved if you want to do something, you can do it.

Celine with a Sideburn bag. Get yours at the webshop.

Roses and rods. The location of Friday's art, car and bike show and auction was a Chateau/hotel/pornstar palace. Nice place to hang out from 9am till 11pm. We took a dip in the pool to the disgust of the paying hotel guests, and drank gin we'd bought at the Channel Tunnel.

 Sonic Seb. Great to see him again.

Dimitri's finished expo. I love how the girl on the top left is squinting at the real sun.