Chocolate Skateboards’ Anthony Papalardo model. Usually deck designs come and go too fast (I can’t even find online images of the several scooter-related decks that come to mind), but I think I’ve seen this one around for a while, pick one up before it’s gone! (Thanks M5 and Myk)
Month: November 2008
The other Blur
Damon on a Lammy in 1994. Click the images for super-hi-res readable scans. I can kill hours a day at that site. LOVE it.
CWC+2SB=AFU
Tonight I planned to post the Cold Weather Challenge sign-up page and unveil some new stuff for sale at Scootmoto. Tonight I ended up botching a WordPress upgrade, then locked myself out of the 2SB admin page, completely destroyed the site, and took three hours to fix it. I think it’s almost back to normal now, let me know if you see anything weird. For the last two hours I was pretty sure I’d killed the site for good, so just seeing it load is making me very happy. Maybe the Cold Weather Challenge will start tomorrow night. Sorry, Ryan. In the meantime, here’s the Cold Weather Challenge theme song (right click to download).
Drag*snarf*ster!
Italjet once again mocks reality by displaying the Dragster (with a new sticker!) at EICMA. The Italjet.com and ItaljetUSA.com websites remain frozen in time in 2005, their entire corporate reputation resting on the unlikely return of an overrated ten-plus-year-old scooter. Can you imagine a company so hopeless that China won’t even touch it?
Cold Weather, Challenged
Well, the 2008-09 Cold Weather Challenge is officially underway. We came, we saw, we ate kimchi, we froze. It actually snowed a little. Above, a picture of Ron checking out computerized toilets at Super H-Mart. More photos in the 2sb Gallery. Eric posted some photos on Flickr and a video on his site, featuring crazy dancing asian man, which I thought was just a cold-induced hallucination. Thanks for coming, everyone, I’ll have the rules and entry form posted here on 2sb within a couple days, start watching the thermometer and your speedometer. I just made that up.
A modest proposal?
Mike Frankovich at NoHo Scooters is trying an interesting new offer on Craigslist. NoHo will accept accept your broken-down Chinese internet special for $100 off any Genuine, Kymco, or SYM, and include a free helmet. It maybe doesn’t sound like much, but it’s $100-and-a-helmet more than most scooter dealers would give you for your broken dreams.
Scooter stunts bring peace and unity to Iraq
Apparently our troops are risking their lives in Baghdad to pave the way for Baghdadi Starboyzzz. “This could have never happened under Saddam Hussein.” Umm…
(Thanks Brooke, and thanks, America.)
Baotian’s Vespa knockoff
Chinese manufacturer Baotian unveiled a new scooter pretty clearly influenced by modern Vespa design.
Betcha:
- That’s plastic bodywork with a tube frame under it all.
- “Lambretta” (the “Italian” one), Jin Jian, ZNen, FlyScooter, Lance, Milan, and countless others will all be selling this scooter soon.
- Piaggio, unable to stop China from copying their bikes, will instead launch individual legal campaigns against dozens of importers in dozens of countries, costing the company millions, a cost they will pass on to consumers by marking up color-matched half-helmets another $100 each.
Is “Piaggio GT850” the Gilera GP850?
Remember the rumors that Piaggio would display a new 850cc scooter at EICMA? Remember we asked why Piaggio and Aprilia called the V-Twin 839.3 engine an “850” while Gilera called it an “800?” Well, this appears to be the scooter in question, and it’s not Piaggio-branded after all, instead, it’s a nicely revamped Gilera GP800, and they upgraded the displacement to 850cc without changing the engine one bit. At least they’re consistent now.