scarborough scooter rally BRSA #1 EASTER,2015
Brighton may be thought of as the spiritual home of the original Mods, but for scooterists there’s a town in the north east ofYorkshire that is much more historically important – from a scooter rally point of view at least.
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carborough is a place where many attended their first scooter run after the 1979 Quadrophenia revival, and where many of them found a place in the cells after the exuberance of youth landed them in a bit of bother. In fact, so many young Mods and fledgling scooter boys were arrested in 1980 that the police ran out of handcuffs and legend has it that a well-known local scooterist’s police dog handler dad used plastic tie-wraps as make do handcuffs for the very first time; a practice that is now used in large scale disruptive situations around the world. It seems the British scooter scene is actually responsible for a lot more than we give it credit for… Thankfully, the fight has gone out of most of us now; fisticuffs and plasticuffs aren’t such an important part of a rally. As a result, not only do formerly hostile towns allow us to have rallies there, but they welcome us (and the scooterist pound) with open tills.
72 | scootering | MAY 2015
I was too young to be in Scarborough in 1980, but eight years later I rode my brand new red Vespa T5 to a rally there for the very first time. Who’d have thought that 27 years (long enough for Nelson Mandela to do a prison stint) and numerous Scarborough rallies later I’d still be doing it and feeling as excited as ever on Good Friday? For this Bank Holiday, God decided to replace lovely sunshine with wet, miserable and cold weather for my 120-mile dash to the seaside. Our posse of well-moistened fellow club members and various waifs and strays made good time with nothing more than a minor grass tracking incident for my other half to worry about as we made our way via the foggy and not so scenic route to the seaside. Arriving in good time, we found that the wide pavement around the centrally located Grand Hotel was already overflowing with scooters. The evening turned into a late one around town before we headed down to the Spa for the last hour of VFM’s evening do for a late drink and a catch up with friends.