"Start of the Sydney City Scooter Club…

A number of things bought about the SCSC… a sudden concentration of scooterists around the Newtown area… the Surf Side Six Scooter Club sparking interest in a scooter club but then going no where… Brett winning a truck load of beer credits at “The Duke” pool comp, scooterists volunteering to help him drink it on a regular basis every week… then a bunch forming the SCSC.

It was a while ago around 1997 I think (wow 10 year anniversary already), so my memory is fussy, mostly due to the cheap beer at the Duke. We were getting good crowds of scooterists, I wasn’t too fussed about having a “club” (because I knew it was a lot of work), but others were, so I committed myself to the cause. Dave Worsley, Sean “Danger” Burton, James Grygiel, Kara Smith (who designed the patches), Chrissie Flisk, Laura Hahn and I formed a task group to get it off the ground. We had regular meetings at Sean’s house and then took the results to the pub for the rest.

The problem with the status quo was it was a bunch of mates who just happened to be dedicated scooterists and drinkers, but no new people would know about it. The SCSC was intended to formalise the scooter meeting and get more people along. We came up with a calendar, membership cards, patch designs, monthly newsletter, and other general scooter club like things. We even scored a beer discount at “The Duke” along with snags thrown in on the odd night.

As time went by, the driving group lost interest in all the work, I think at one stage I was the only one left, as others went overseas or lost interest. Then others stood up keep it going like Simon Hatfield and Phil Eriksson. The original SCSC format was flawed in that it relied too much on individuals and also opened up those individuals to legal shit (hmmm… a weekly scooter meeting with cheap beer, how could that cause a problem?). So we moved away from the “club” format and used the Yahoo! group and a dash of chaos theory, which must have worked because it is still going today…"