Inside the world of the modern Mod

SCOOTER Lifestyle!, a new book by freelance journalist Ian ‘Iggy’ Grainger, aims to lift the lid on the life of the modern Mod.

Grainger, a self-confessed ‘scooterist’ has spent the past 25 years riding scooters and attending rallies and his book is an attempt to explain scooter lifestyle to the rest of car-driving Britain.

It’s published by Veloce at £19.99 and contains over 200 colour photos of scooters, rallies, people, places and custom scooters; it charts the history of the scooter scene over the past 25 years and focuses on the modern scene where up to 10,000 scooter riders converge on the Isle of Wight every August bank holiday.

Grainger says: “Most people wrongly assume that every scooter owner is a Mod and their scooter will be embellished with a myriad of lights and mirrors, its Parka-wearing owner will only listen to a combination of R&B and northern soul and he’ll be at war with any ‘Greasers’ he happens to come across.

“In truth, the average modern rally-going scooter rider is more likely to spend his money on tuning his (or her) scooter in a bid to beat his mates to the next scooter rally than he is to cover it in glittering chrome. He’ll often wear modern protective riding gear and over the course of a year he’ll cover more miles on his low-powered 200cc scooter than most sports bike riders cover during a lifetime!

“I’ve been heavily involved in the scene since the mid 1980s and wanted to share some of my experiences and help to dispel a few myths. I wanted to create a ‘coffee table’ book that would appeal to anybody, not just scooter riders and enthusiasts.”

The 128-page book was published this month and is available from bookshops or from scooterlifestyle.com.

If you’ve ever owned a scooter, had an interest in youth culture (even though the majority of scooterists are approaching middle age!) or you just wonder what other people get up to on their weekends away, this book is a perfect way to satisfy your curiosity, be careful though because you might just find yourself scouring the internet auction sites for a scooter after you’ve read it, because Scooter Lifestyle can be addictive.