Stay Signed In
Do you want to access your site more quickly on this computer? Check this box, and your username and password will be remembered for two weeks. Click logout to turn this off.
Stay Safe
Do not check this box if you are using a public computer. You don't want anyone seeing your personal info or messing with your site.
Sat 18 July 2009 20:30 Riga Bar (Westcliff-On-Sea, Essex)
Sun 19 July 2009 14:00 Town Show (Dagenham & Barking)
The Beat & Neville Staple Band with Pauline Black July 18th 2009
Lee Marwick has been in touch, he has a spare ticket for sale to see The Beat plus Neville Staples Band with special guest Pauline Black at the Camden Centre, London on Saturday July 18th 2009. The ticket is £30 which is what Lee paid for it. If you are interested in going you can contact Lee on 07963 684353.
Details of A12 Scooter Club Ride to Southend 19th July
We are a new scooter club called A12 scooter club based in Colchester, Essex. We are arranging a ride out to Southend on 19th July 2009 and wondered if you would like to join us. We are meeting at Colchester McDonalds Tollgate for 10am and ready to leave for 10.30am taking a route through Tiptree, Maldon, South Woodham Ferrers meeting the with the Parkas and other local clubs at 12pm at Battlesbridge before the final ride on into Southend seafront.
Chris Stocks has been in touch with Russell to see if we can help out Macmillian Cancer Support. As part of a fund raiser they need ten scooter riders to transport Macmillian nurses on Saturday 1st August (time tba) from the Orsett Cock to the Treacle Mine roundabout. From there they will be transported by some bikers, the idea is to keep switching modes of transport on route to their final destination. The scooter riders must be full license holders to legally take the pillions. Sounds like fun and you will be doing your bit to help out a very important charity that does a lot of good work. I will be sending out a email to all the members, please could you reply one way or the other or give Russell a call or text on 07733437093.
Justin Harris from the club has been in touch to let other scooterists know about a new local business Essex Performance Centre, a dedicated motorcycle tuning and diagnostic centre with the very latest Dynojet 250i Dynamometer. His PX210 is in there at the moment and he says he is getting a excellent service at a very cheap rate compared to what you would normally expect to pay for dyno services. They are based in Basildon, click on the link to be taken to their website for more information on their services and their full contact details.
Scooterbittz confirmed for club fun day Sunday 9th August
Andrew of Scooterbittz has confirmed he will be bringing his stall to the Parkas club fun day. Scooterbittz offers you the best scooter/mod/northern soul badges you will find, patches, keyrings, postcards plus diecast scooter models of all sizes both Vespa and Lambretta. New items are being added all the time to Scooterbittz website, postage is FREE if your order exceeds £5-00 (excluding model scooters). Andrew is a scooterists himself and is a member of the ......Scooter Club.
Rickys Pit-Stop confirmed for club fun day Sunday 9th August
Once again Rickys-Pitstop will be showing his support for local scooter clubs by bringing his stall to the Parkas fun day as he has done in previous years.
Fund raising for St.Lukes on club fun day Sunday 9th August
Danielle has very kindly volunteered Kenny to have his pony tail shaven off at our fun day on the 9th August. He will doing it for St.Lukes Hospice where Danielle used to work, donations are already being collected plus we will be collecting on the fun day. She is doing a very professional job of collecting the funds, even to the point of encouraging people to fill in a donations form to enable St. Lukes to claim 'Gift Aid' whereby you claim back the tax you would have paid on the amount donated when you first earned it. She is hoping to get somebody from St.Lukes down on the day to be presented with the collection. Please be generous because Kenny has had the pony tail for 25 years so he is a bit attached to it plus it is a good cause.
The events calendar for 2009 has been updated including dates for Parkas events. They are the 18th April start of season Motown & Northern Soul disco with Eddie Paget & Jim Hill DJ'ing (unfortunately the planned short set from new band called Friday Rhodes has had to be cancelled due to the band splitting up), 25th July Wellerman and Mod Life Crisis with Chris Stocks DJ'ing, 9th August fun day and 24th October the end of season do. The ticket price for the 25th July will be £8, it will be 8pm till late to be held at the Crooked Billet, Stanford-Le-Hope. To order tickets call either Alec on 07790758647 or Russell on 07733437093, alternatively you can buy them on a club meeting night.
Darren is rocking with the Feb21's, they just need a bass player now!
Some of you may be aware that club member Darren 'Jimmy' Saunders has been learning to play the drums for some time now. You may also be aware that he was looking to form or join a band as the drummer. Well he is excited to report he has joined the Feb21's, you can check them out by clicking the bands logo to be taken to their myspace band site. They already have some catchy original numbers written by lead singer Gary Kent which you can listen to on their site. They are currently looking to recruit a bass player to complete the line up. Darren is hoping that the Feb21's will be able to play for the Parkas once they are all sorted.
Here is some before and after pics of club member Josie Fields first scooter. After picking up a 1982 Vespa PX125 for the bargain price of £500 she decided the scooter needed a make over. The original blue paint of the scooter frame had been poorly painted over in white and the black paint on the headset and panels had started to chip off. So choosing the old scooterists favourite colour, matt black she sent about repainting the scooter herself! Enlisting the help of her boyfriend Craig Mann they started by rubbing down the scooter. Craig and his brother Carl partly dismantled it ready for Josie to prime and spray the matt black colour on. After the matt black and gold which was used on the wheels, hubs and forks had been applied it was reassembled by the brothers. Some gold tape was used for detailing which picks up nicely the gold on the wheels etc. Josie was kindly given the primer, gold paint and gold tape by Rob Mann after raiding his garage which only left the matt black to buy, a snip at £12! Josie dad Alan Field had already bought some unusual but cool looking mirror finish indicator lenses that were fitted replacing the standard amber lenses. A chequered backrest/rack that she bought cheap off Russell finished the scooter off nicely. The whole project was completed in day and Josie is now rightly very proud of her new look scooter.
It's a wrap - Alan Field's panels in Scootering...NOW FOR SALE!
There is actually a small piece in Scootering magazine this month on Alan Field's new Michael Caine 'Get Carter' themed panel wraps. Again supplied by local business Creative FX, Bromley in Kent, he is very pleased with them. Maybe if you want to get your scooter in Scootering you should give them a call! Alan also got to meet Michael Caine on location of his latest film 'Is Anybody There?' being filmed on the Old Kent Road. He duly signed the panels for him, pausing to correct the wording from one of his line's in 'Get Carter' from 'big bloke' to 'big man'. Well I guess he should know, at least it makes for a interesting story to tell. According to Alan he was a proper gent….as you would expect. Alan has since sold the Lambretta, the panels are for sale, click on the For Sale page for more info!
On Friday 10th April the legendary Purple Hearts along with Mod Life Crisis as support played the Welcome Club, Stanford-Le-Hope, a Dirty Johns event. A few week before I noticed this Purple Hearts themed Vespa PX scooter for sale on ebay. The panels and toolbox had been 'wrapped' by Creative FX from Bromley in Kent. Sean from Creative FX kindly sent in these pics of the new owner who turned up at the gig on the scooter and got to meet the band and had his panels signed by them. Club member Russell from the club even managed to get in on the historic occasion, that's him on the phone coming out of the Welcome Clubs back door in one of the pics!
Sean at Creative FX also explained that they had wrapped band member Jeff Shadbolts guitar with the 'Frustration' image and made the large band backdrop seen at the Welcome Club gig and sent pics of those too. In fact if you look below the letter P of Purple Hearts of the backdrop you will see a picture of Sean aged 16 on his Vespa 50 scooter back in the day when he used to follow the band at the height of their mod revival heyday. He also sent these pics of their latest panel wraps, if you want to see even more of their work drop by their website at www.fxuk.net/ where you will find their contact details if you want to discuss commisioning them to wrap your panels etc.
If you have not already tried spotify.com it is a free internet music service, you choose your own music and build playlists on your computer, I really can't recommend it enough, it is so easy to use. Pretty much every type of music is on there, Northern Soul, The Jam, The Who, new releases, well whatever floats your boat really. If you have decent surround speakers rigged to your computer you have an instant stereo with access to more music than you could possibly ever collect and if you did it would cost you a fortune in cd's or mp3 downloads. There is the very occasional advert or there is a premium service without the adverts that you have to pay for. The only other thing to remember is that this a playback only service, you don't actually save the music files to your computer nor can you burn the music to cd, well what do you want for free!
