Scooterboys:

The Lost Tribe - Martin ‘Sticky’ Round - Carpet Bombing Culture

Part of the Carpet Bombing Culture ‘Two finger salute’, aimed at casting a spotlight on British youth sub-culture which, over time, have become truly worldwide entities. Scooterboys – The Lost Tribe, joins Mods: A Way of Life, and Skins: A Way of Life as the third part of the publisher’s trilogy (so far) of books. Previous two titles were both by Patrick Potter, with Martin ‘Sticky Round’, the author of this, the third. Scooterboys, and scootergirls, were arguably the last of the great British youth cultures of the 20th century. Yet, with few exceptions there is little documentation from outside of the close-knit scene that has been recorded by the mainstream media during the heyday of the Scooterboy era. This is in part due to lazy journalists and newspaper hacks seeing a matt black cutdown chopper scooter and erroneously deciding the rider was a mod. Oh, how we laughed!

The book contains 175 images in colour and black and white, many previously unpublished from personal collections, and many capturing memories of a seriously misspent youth, which was sampled to the full by tens of thousands of similarly minded teens and 20-somethings from just about all points of the United Kingdom. Sticky himself experienced first-hand the vast majority of the Scooterboy years, from within. As well as which, he was fortunate enough to combine work with pleasure, from the infamous Isle of Wight August Bank Holiday weekend of 1986 (which descended into a near riot, resulting in a ban on scooter rallies on the island for a number of years after), until the present. A freelancer to scooter specialist publications, in more recent times he penned several books, all of which were best-sellers, from Frankenstein Scooters to Draculas Castles, plus three versions of A Complete Spanners workshop manual and guide to Lambrettas.

Accompanying the captivating photographs is Sticky’s narrative in his unique style of humorous observation and acerbic wit, tracing the origins of the 80s scooterboys, the DNA, the styles, fashions and, most importantly, the scooters. Scooterboys were a rainbow alliance of elements drawn from many other British sub-cultures, all joined together with a mutual appreciation, even love, of vintage two-stroke (in the main) Italian shopping mopeds. The predominantly Vespa and Lambretta machines were probably never intended to be anything other than cheap transport, yet throughout the 80s and beyond these two-wheeled modes of transport clocked up countless thousands of miles to meet and party with compatriots who shared a similar rebellious outlook. If your formative years were spent as part of the scooterboy youth culture, this is your story, (indeed, you or some of your mates might actually be in one of the images) If you weren’t, Sticky’s latest book provides a taste of what you missed out on. For those of us, and there were many involved with the 80s Scooterboy culture, there is so much contained within these pages to empathise and identify with. For example, the epiphany-like experience of heading off to a national rally as a mod revivalist, partly inspired by the film Quadrophenia, but returning from that rally as a fullyfledged scooterboy. Throughout the 1980s the national scooter rallies were, for me, the time of my life. This book captures the very essence of those retrospectively great times. An absolutely essential buy.