London (Brain)- 2008 is the 50th anniversary year of the kustom bicycle movement, by our reckoning. In order to celebrate this important milestone, we here at BikeRod&Kustom felt it was necessary to fill in the lost pages of our movement's early history. And so, for the first time anywhere, BR&K is pleased to present you with the detailed story of how kustom bicycling first began.

This series of articles will cover the first 20 years of its history. For our first installment we will be covering the years 1958 to 1962, a time when kustom bicycle style was in its infancy. These were the days before factory-produced bikes like the Huffy "Penguin" and Schwinn "Stingray" came onto the scene. Young people had a cool vision of being able to ride their bicycles with kustom style, and they made it happen by taking it to the streets.