by Colin » Thu Oct 02, 2008 10:53 am
1964-67 Now you're talking Scoots. Although living in Yeovil at the time,
Bristol was the Holy Grail of entertainment and Scootering outside of London for our bunch of immaculately turned out gang.
Thursday nights straight after work we headed for Bristol to the
Corn Exchange where Thursdays was the Rhytham, Blues & Soul night,just about anybody famous did a gig there. We saw Clapton, The Ram Jam Band,John Lee Hooker,The Faces. Saturday nights was either 10 pin bowling,followed by egg and chips and a coffee at Aust Services or if there was enough of us not to get yer head kicked in we would head for the Bamboo Club.
On my day off ,my mate John on his GS 150 and me on my Li would do the rounds of the Scooter shops,these included Grays in Stokes Croft,who always had bikes for sale parked outside on the pavement. The place I recall for Vespa Spares was the Old Douglas plant in Kingswood,still going in 63, but if you rode a Lambretta, God lived at Trident, a shop which I recall was so clean and cool you were almost afraid to enter. No respecting Lambretta rider ever dared out without a front or rear chrome
carrier, Trident had the lot in stock £5 bought you Zannucci which were the best you could buy,also in stock for £3.50 were twinpipe Teapot exhausts,Jimmies were the same price, and Ancilloti orange sport boxes slighty more.Trident also kept GT side panels in chrome at £25 a pair new,and the impossible to find spray paint in sidepanel colours. The best selling Li 150 was around £157 and the GT 200 was a massive £220 with custom purple side panels.
Top club in Bristol at the time were The Avon Valley Scooter Club, and amongst the events they held was a Rally which was Sundays
on the old Whitchurch Airfield,admission was 5 shillings in 1966 and the events included an egg and spoon race,whereby the passanger held an egg in a spoon and at the drop of a flag every bike raced to the finish 100yards away.
Sundays was always a rideout day, only two destinations really, the Sea front Weston or the South Coast on Bank Holiday.
Back then Scoots were every living breath.
SX 150.