When scooter news breaks, we put it under a tarp in the garage.
What a great weekend, thanks to all new and old friends! If I learned one thing this weekend, it’s to never show up for a DJ gig without the theme from “Jaws.” Video and photos are below!
Continue reading “Slaughterhouse 16
(with gallery and video)”
A couple hours left for a Vespa Video Vednesday, so here’s a quickie musical Interlude with scooters: The Spades (featuring Roky Erickson) doing We Sell Soul, featuring a nice slideshow of mod scooters. No one could be less mod than Roky Erickson, but it works. I’m DJing at Slaughterhouse, maybe this song will get me cut off so I can get to the bar faster.
If that’s not awesome enough, here’s a sweet Spacemen 3 cover. You heard they did a reunion show right?
If WYNC’s Jim Colgan report “New York: A Scooter Perspective.” is accurate, NYC scooterists act as entitled and above the law as scooterists in many other cities. I love how many scooterists complain about lack of respect and tickets, while showing no respect for the law, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Still, kudos on a well-done piece that at least makes it clear that lane-splitting and parking on the sidewalk is illegal.
Thanks to Scoot Lemont via Modern Buddy.
2SB visited the World Meet 2010 Microcar and Minicar show in Crystal Lake today. Ever since reviewing the book A-Z of Popular Scooters and Minicars a while back, we’ve been keen on checking out a microcar show, so we’ve been looking forward to this show in our backyard (well, our distant suburbs) for more than a year. We weren’t disappointed, there was a good turnout with some great vehicles. I don’t know much about these beasts, so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves, but to keep it scooter-related, look out for the several Vespa 400s, an Innocenti-made Mini, and an Isle-of-Man-built Peel Trident with its original DKW motor replaced with a Vespa engine. (You can’t see the engine, but the dashboard gives it away!)
Continue reading “World Meet 2010 Micro/Minicar Show”
That’s our proposed tagline for Peroni, but 2sbBrandPartners didn’t get the account, so they end up with this: director Gabriele Muccino’s film Senza Tiempo, an Italian film for an Italian beer company about making Italian films for an Italian beer company. Meta! As required by Italian film law, there’s an obligatory Vespa VBB and Fiat 500. (at 1:40). More background (and a better quality video) at Peroni’s site if you can find it through the age verifications and Flash nonsense (don’t get sidetracked by the “Vespa” link that goes nowhere Vespa-related).
I’m so glad I work only nominally in the advertising industry.
Thanks for the link, Bradley J.!
Balloon Artist Jeremy Telford makes a balloon Vespa. Yes, you just spent two minutes and 36 seconds watching a balloon artist, and you liked it. Do you feel dirty?
Here’s the backstory from Glen G. on Modern Buddy. Thanks for sharing, Glen!
Update: here’s Jeremy’s site. Wow.
We missed this year’s Chicago Mods vs. Rockers rally because we were at PVSC but Jordan Cinco sent some great photos (below). Looks like an even better scooter showing than usual, but that’s no surprise, it’s always a top event and it gets bigger and better every year.
Continue reading “Mods vs. Rockers 2010 (Gallery)”
To tell you the truth, I’ve become a bit disillusioned with rallies. I’ve only been hitting a couple a year, and they’re always pretty great, but modern-scooter city rallies just aren’t the same as the drunken rural camping rallies that got me hooked on scootering. I’d been finding excuses to skip Pittsburgh Vintage Scooter Club’s Band Camp rally in eastern Ohio for ten years, but after a great trip to Niagara last month, I finally decided it was time to see what I was missing.
Continue reading “PVSC Band Camp 2010 (+ gallery)”
If you speak Russian and dig guys wearing Speedos, you’ll love this
Honda PCX video. It’s sort of the “Vespa Gringo” of Russian-Thai-scooter videos, so you know it was Rye that found it for us.
Admit it, you watched *way* longer than you should have, didn’t you. I wanna hang out with those guys.
Yes, that’s dozens of low-speed collisions from Chinese security cameras. Car-on-car. Car-on-scooter. Scooter-on-scooter. Scooter-on bicycyle. All of the above-on-pedestrian, and my favorite, Tuk-tuk-in-reverse-on-multiple-pedestrians.
It’s very tragic, yet a little bit funny (just like Gome) At least everyone seems to be moving pretty slowly and no one is hurt, at least not visibly gored. Try not to picture any of those collisions on American streets with SUVs going twice as fast.
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?
Continue reading “Niagara 2010:
2SB Actually Goes to a Rally”
Try these two great on-screen Rider Perception tests from the Motorcycle Safety Foundation. Then try them again, the obstacles and signs change, and you can adjust the speed.
When you’ve been riding a lot, and you’ve been trained to see obstacles, they start to jump out at you. Critics of MSF (and thankfully, there are few) argue that training does not reduce risk when riding. I agree that it’s important to remember that you’re always at risk, regardless of training. But even simple bits of knowledge like “metal plates and manholes are slippery” give riders an edge, how can anyone argue that it’s not worth learning as much as possible about hazards and two-wheel physics?
Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss is notorious for licensing the bands’ image to anyone who’ll pay for it, so it comes as no surprise that you can now ride a Kiss scooter. The Crossrunner Kiss Celebrity Collectors Edition scooter appears to be just another Chinese Honda Joker knockoff with Kiss graphics. It was noted on Modern Buddy that the paint job is worth more than the scooter, but we’re betting it’s vinyl wrap graphics, the likes of which we’ve seen on several Chinese scooters at Dealer Expo in recent years. It’s also interesting that the photos on the site are a mirror image of each other (note the engine case is visible in both photos), it’s a Photoshop mockup, not a photo of the real bike. (The rotating image at the end of the video appears to be real, the graphics are slightly different.) If this bike features the glass piston, fake ABS brakes, and other shoddy components seen on many Chinese scooters, you might want to order a Kiss casket, too.
If the thought of theft isn’t enough to lock down your scooters in your garage, this will have you drilling eyebolts into your concrete in no time. Via motoblog.it.
Can’t speak to the quality of these Lambretta and Vespa Maintenance/Rebuild DVDs. but it’s about time someone put together something like this. I’ve written them to beg for review copies, maybe we can sell ’em over at Scootmoto eventually. (I notice they offer free shipping worldwide, that’s extremely generous, considering current shipping rates! Hopefully they’ve taken region encoding and NTSC/PAL into account they have, see below)
Via ScootRS.