Fixie culture in the bigger context... a discussion.

EdwardZ you do like to be Mr Telling People What's What dontcha?

Its about...

So 'Mod' didn't happen in the 60s? That's a new one on me.

Really depends upon the semantics for "mod" and "happen". A marketing and media campaign talking about "mods" clearly did exist in the 1960s but these "mods" I would suggest were more a product of British private TV and the blvd press than anything else. Mods were more or less defined by "RSG" rather than "RSG" reporting on mods... just as in the US TV shows such as "The Monkees", "Bat Man" and, later, "Mod Squad" worked to exploit the effects of mass media to co-opt "youth culture". The "Monkees" is an interesting case in point as the casting and script concept built heavily upon market research. Plots and even the characters were explored and developed in a screening lab ("Preview House" on Sunset Blvd) using kids to rate an evolving pilot in realtime.
But we were, I think, talking about the origin of the London "Mod asethetic" as political fashion and this is clearly Germany in the 1930s through East London in the 1950s. The origin, in turn, of the 1930s "Swing Kid" aesthetic was a German take on precieved British fashion..
Curiously.. thinking of what the most iconic "mod film" of the 1960s.. and I came to think of Antonioni's "Blow Up".. a film more about seeing.....