Rocker (subculture)
[8] The rocker subculture came about due to factors such as: the end of post-war rationing in the UK, a general rise in prosperity for working class youths, the recent availability of credit and financing for young people, the influence of American popular music and films, the construction of race track-like arterial roads around British cities, the development of transport cafes and a peak in British motorcycle engineering.
[citation needed] During the 1950s,[9] they were known as "ton-up boys" because doing a ton is English slang for driving at a speed of 100 mph (160 km/h) or over.
[8] The mass media started targeting these socially powerless youths and cast them as "folk devils", creating a moral panic[12] through highly exaggerated and ill-founded portrayals.
The most defining machine of the rocker heyday was the Triton, which was a custom motorcycle made of a Norton Featherbed frame and a Triumph Bonneville engine.
The term café racers is now also used to describe motorcycle riders who prefer vintage British, Italian or Japanese motorbikes from the 1950s to late 1970s.
Rockers bought standard factory-made motorcycles and stripped them down, tuning them up and modifying them to appear like racing bikes.
Their bikes were not merely transport, but were used as an object of intimidation and masculinity projecting them uneasily close to death,[14] an element exaggerated by their use of skull and crossbone-type symbolism.
[citation needed] First seen in the United States and then England,[15] the rocker fashion style was born out of necessity and practicality.
Rockers wore heavily decorated leather motorcycle jackets, often adorned with metal studs, patches, pin badges and sometimes an Esso gas man trinket.
Largely due to their clothing styles and dirtiness, the rockers were not widely welcomed by venues such as pubs and dance halls.
Their ritual hatred of Mods and other sub-cultures was based in part on the fact that these people were believed to take drugs and were therefore regarded as sissies.
In the early 1970s, the British rocker and hardcore motorcycle scene fractured and evolved under new influences coming from California: the hippies and the Hells Angels.
