Hostile Takeover II

Choosing the (few) rallies I can attend these days tends to be a matter of finding a free weekend, and checking what’s going on. Sadly I missed Cincinnati and Niagara this year, and I know I can’t go to PVSC or Amerivespa, so when the opportunity to go to Hostile Takeover presented itself, I jumped at the chance. Rarely would I be so excited about visiting Des Moines, IA, but when I think of the fun I’ve had in rural Ontario and Ohio, Moline, IL, and even Vegas (I’m not a fan), I knew Des Moines had a lot of potential.
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Ace’s Bomber Jacket

Inspired by a newbie thread about patches on Modern Buddy, I finally tracked down the source of a particularly awesome JPEG I came across a few weeks ago. Turns out the JPEG was just the tip of the iceberg of Ace’s Jacket Cosplay Breakdown. Anyone stuck home watching Dr. Who on PBS in the late 80s, I bet you’re with me on this one. I wanted a scooter in 1986, but I wanted a Honda, thanks to Adam Ant and Lou Reed. I didn’t know anything about scooter culture back then, but man, did I want a bomber jacket with a bunch of random patches.

2sb Visits Paris, 2011

I visited Paris in 2006, and wrote about my experiences and shared some photos. I was lucky enough to go back last month (April, 2011) and it seemed that things have changed enough to make a new story and photo gallery worthwhile.
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I’m Scooterist, Moto&Go, and the Copa del Rey

Just as we left for Paris, Dawson from Hell’s Fairies came back from Barcelona and told us about a great scooter t-shirts shop there, I´m Scooterist. Then a couple days later, Moto&Go in Madrid emailed to offer their rental services. If you do ever rent a scooter in Madrid, look out for Real’s bus, it’s a menace. Coming soon: Barça will crush Real in the Champions’ League, and I’ll eventually post a bazillion scooter photos from Paris.

We’re not “2strokebuzz” on eBay

A couple 2SB fans noticed a GS150 Airbox auction on eBay from seller in Sacramento, CA named “2strokebuzz”. I’ve got nothing against this guy, and he has good feedback and he’s been using the name on eBay since 2001. He doesn’t seem to be pretending to be related to the site or anything, but I emailed him anyway, asking politely if he’d consider changing his name, or adding a disclaimer that he’s not related to us.

He claims he’s “spent the last 20 years riding and restoring scooters,” and is “active in the vintage club scene.” So it’s possible it’s just a coincidence, though it seems weird we’d never heard of each other until now, in the smallish world of vintage scootering. Anyway, I’m not gonna hassle the guy, it’s not that big a deal, neither of us uses eBay much anyway, but I just figured since he didn’t seem interested in clearing things up, it was up to me to make it publicly clear that he’s not me, and vice versa.

Niagara 2010:
2SB Actually Goes to a Rally

If you’re looking for an Amerivespa wrapup, you’re in the wrong place, buddy. I’m still sobering up from Niagara two weeks ago. So it’s about time for a review and some photos, eh?
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Niagara 2010 preview

I rush-processed my passport and conned Ron into driving 20 hours for this? I better see some of you jerks there. I’ll be in my tent with my duty-free Molson Canadian limited-edition Don Cherry oilcans and my box of Tim Horton’s apple fritters, trying to pick up the Blackhawks on my phone.

Schwinn, the Bicycle

This weekend I stopped by my favorite local bicycle shop and it got me thinking. So let me spew some Andy Rooney nonsense on you:

• Schwinn (bicycle) dealers have had it hard since Schwinn’s 1990s 2001-era (see comments) decision to sell inferior bikes under the Schwinn name in big-box stores. You can argue all day that even top-end Schwinns are made in Asia now, and/or nothing compared to their former glory, but the general issue is that there is a marked difference between what’s sold at Schwinn dealerships, and what’s sold at Wal-Mart. Schwinn corporate maybe has a lot to answer for, but their dealers always seem totally right-on to me. They love the brand, they love cycling, and they know their stuff. Incidentally, that’s everything a good scooter shop should be.

• So, it says a lot (and it’s probably a good thing) that very few Schwinn bicycle dealers sell Schwinn scooters. Maybe the scooters weren’t even offered to the bicycle dealerships, but it seems more likely that a Schwinn bicycle dealer is uniquely positioned to realize that Schwinn will slap their name on anything, AND that even in hard times, it’s best not to sell something you can’t support 100%. The two products have little in common, it’d be like a car dealership deciding to offer steam-powered tractors. They’re both vehicles, but the parts supply, technology, customers, and expertise do not overlap. At all.
• Schwinn’s making some tentative steps into e-bikes. They’re playing it pretty conservative, but that’s probably smart. It’s interesting that some bicycle dealers have jumped on the e-bike (UM, E-Go, etc) bandwagon, and others avoid them like the plague. I’m really curious how that market develops.
• Bicycles are, like scooters, a great example of “You get what you pay for.” Sure, certain brand names will artificially jack up a price, but when it comes down to nuts and bolts, you can see the differences in quality. Scooters or bicycles, the cheapest asian models are assembled and sold by unskilled retailers without any support or personal contact. They’re made of components that are often second-quality, and sometimes dangerous. They feature outdated technology, or superficial imitations of current technology.
• Short term savings matter little when you can’t source a replacement part or constant niggling problems keep it off the road. A good bike or scooter costs more, but comes with long-term support, a personal relationship, and quality. Parts and accessories will be available for years. Vina bought a 40-year-old Austrian three-speed at a garage sale for $10. I have a 15-year-old Schwinn cruiser, our local bike shop can get us any replacement part we need. But every time we’re in there, someone wheels in a three-month-old Wal-Mart bike with a cracked weld or some goofy mechanism that can’t be repaired or replaced. Sound like any scooter shops you’ve been in lately?
• The cries of elitism come into play in both markets, too. But looking at the bicycle world is a good way to distance yourself and see that in an underegulated market (oh, the laws are there, but not the enforcement!) you end up with bottom-of-the-barrel deathtraps competing with top-end luxury models, and you start to understand why insiders are frustrated with all the junk out there. Cheap bikes rob sales from knowledgeable dealers, threaten consumer safety, and turn potential fans away from the hobby before they even get started.
• On the other end of the spectrum, spend any time in a respectable bike shop, and you’ll see folks strut in with a credit card and buy a $4000 racing bike because “I was thinking about trying a triathalon” This, too, happens in scooter shops, and usually ends with Mr. “I don’t need a helmet, I’ve been riding dirt bikes since I was a kid” dropping his new Vespa 300 before he makes it out of the parking lot. And in both markets, there’s always the “audiophile-quality” “better” parts available for upgrades. Again, common sense prevails, but few people have it. I like to think that when you buy a well-designed product, the engineers that designed it knew what they were doing, and if you find yourself needing to upgrade, you shoulda bought a better one in the first place.
• Last note: You always see people asking “What’s a good scooter can I get for $500.” For $500 you’re just getting into the juicy part of the bicycle market. Who would want to be on the road on a motor vehicle that costs less than a bicycle? A lot of top-quality custom bicycles cost more than scooters! And you could use the exercise!

2strokebuzz Zines: Past and Future?

A handful of you may remember that 2strokebuzz started life as a ‘zine. It would probably help if I kept the old issues linked up. There.*

I’ve been thinking for a while, with the advent of print-on-demand sites like MagCloud and Hulu that it’d be so much easier to print/distribute a zine these days. I focused most of my magazine energy into American Scooterist for the last several years, but that required months of work per issue and as great as it is, it doesn’t have that 2SB vibe. I’d thought about ’2SB Greatest Hits’ compilations, or compiling the old issues, but I’d rather try something new, and something fast and collaborative and less open-ended.

Today I heard about the 48 Hour Magazine Project, and that’s inspired me to try something similar. I’ll look into it and figure out some details, but if you’re interested in helping out, drop us an email or comment!

*Someday hopefully someone will find a USB SyQuest drive so I can finish issue 4… and send Nikki a copy of the great long-lost cover photo.

Baby sidecar!

With the recent spate of scooter babies out there (Cheers Archer, Calvin, Lillian and a Bastianelli and a Spurck to be named later) and a multitude of alleged “new Lambrettas” on the market, let’s bring back the Lambretta baby-stroller sidecar. Awesome. I don’t check Scooterswag nearly enough. Be sure your child is facing backwards, you know, in case the airbag goes off.

More Calvin Photos/CWC Berryoke kickoff

Heather Parker came over last night to shoot some photos of Pudge. She’s so good.

Actual scooter content is resuming soon, promise! If you didn’t notice the ad on the site, we’re kicking off the Cold Weather Challenge next Saturday (11/14) with a ride and Berryoke party at the Kat Klub, be there!

The Calvin Bedell Story

The other day, I made a bunch of excuses why 2strokebuzz has been pretty bereft of life lately, but this one tops them all:
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2sb not dead

No, we haven’t posted in a couple weeks, sorry. There’s been some big news, too, and we’ll catch up soon.

In the past month or so:
Slaughterhouse
House guests every weekend since before Slaughterhouse
Old friends/tenants bought a house and moved out
We painted and recarpeted our apartment
New friends/tenants moved in
Milena started kindergarten
Work (the job that pays me) has been nuts
Hockey season started
Playstation Fifa10 demo was released

So with all that, and a baby due in a couple weeks, it’s not been good news for 2strokebuzz, but it’s been a fun/busy/productive couple weeks in other ways. I’ve been helping with homework, getting involved in the PTA, sanding, painting, lifting boxes, and I still squeezed in a little time to ride the SYM 150cc “Classic” (Wolf) at Slaughterhouse and my virtual Fire lost to Chelsea, Barça, Bayern Munich, and Juventus a few times. So it’s all good, we’re glad you’re still paying attention, and any day now, Brooke will post something to shame me back into business, both here and at Scootmoto, where we’ve got several new products we haven’t even listed yet. And I’ve done a little groundwork on a new mostly-non-scooter related but hopefully-great web project. Thanks for your patience and support! We’ll be back.

Slaughterhouse XV

Slaughterhouse XV is this weekend in Chicago, a fact so obvious to me that I didn’t bother posting it until now, which is sort of irresponsible of me, sorry. Who’d have known back when we joked about never making it to “Slaughterhouse 5″ that the rally would endure and grow for 15 years. It’s changed hands a few times, but it’s always fantastic, and there’s always something for everyone. This year shuffles up the usual schedule a bit with Roller Derby on Saturday night and a bigger-than-ever party on Thursday, and still features a few great rides, one of the best gymkhanas around, and more. If you’re into the whole social networking thing, there’s a ning site.
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Spree to the beach

Artist Jay Nelson rigged up a custom Honda Spree with a surfboard-bearing roof, a retractable awning, and a wooden storage bin. (An early sketch shows he originally intended it to be a Vespa.)

Funny how stuff like this spreads around… The scooter was exhibited last Fall at Nelson’s “The Autonomous Zone” exhibit at TripleBase gallery in San Francisco. Apparently a current exhibition of Nelson’s work at Gottino, a restaurant in NYC, brought the scooter to the attention of a Portugese-language green design blog, and the image ended up on Notcot, where it was spotted at random by John Park at Makezine. In this case, 2SB reader Sharon spotted it there and sent it our way (Thanks, Sharon! This rant has nothing to do with you), but I’ll probably see the Makezine story later tonight when I’m scanning Google News Alerts, and it’ll be on every scooter blog and newsgroup in America by tomorrow, credited to Makezine. I just point this out because it’s interesting how blogs come across stories then other blogs link to the blog they saw it on rather than the original blog, and what could have been a big bonanza in hits for the person that originated the story ends up bogging down their server with anonymous hot-linked image hits. It’s the internet, whattaya gonna do, but I thought it’d be fun to track down the reason that a year-old art exhibition was suddenly getting a spike in attention. It’d be fun to do a website that pulls stories off Boing Boing and Metafilter and Slashdot and Digg and tracks them back to their original genesis, which is usually by someone that put a lot of effort into the story, and was forgotten in the process of re-writing, simplifying, linking, and forwarding.

Not that I don’t do the same thing, all day every day (though I generally don’t help myself to photos when I don’t know where they came from). I’ve been sort of reluctant to post this sort of sixth-hand story lately, but I guess that’s what what bloggers are supposed to do. Hopefully my occasional hard work on original content makes up for it. Sorry about the weird tangent there, but these things interest me.

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