Go! Go! Shark Tank

The women behind Go Go Gear will be appearing Friday night (March 23, 2012) on ABC’s Shark Tank. ScooterGirls, Inc. out in L.A. make safe AND fashionable (at the same time!) women’s (and men’s) riding gear and we can’t imagine the investors on the show won’t jump at the chance to get involved in their plans for world domination.

I generally run screaming from “reality TV,” but Shark Tank is a fun, well-done show, and I’ve been hooked on it since friend-of-a-friend Steve Gadlin talked Mark Cuban into investing $25,000 towards his internet-based cat-drawing business. Things are looking great for Steve, and we hope Arlene and her cohorts can score an equally attractive deal. The 2SB HQ Tivo is set and fingers are crossed, ladies!

Our Larry Crowne winner!

After a couple weeks of incessant Lance Corona posts, I’m going to wrap this contest up and announce a winner, chosen at random from the 50-or-so entries we had in the comment thread and via email. And the winner is (shake shake):

ChloePuff!

Congrats, Chloe. Modern Buddy readers will recognize that name, she went out on a limb and cited Quadrophenia as her favorite scooter movie. Chloe, please email illnoise(at)2strokebuzz(dot)com with your mailing address so we can have the nice folks at Universal Pictures send your $25 gas card, t-shirt, and notebook.

Lots of great entries, thanks everyone! I learned about a couple movies I hadn’t heard of that I’ll need to check out, and also a few favorites I’ll have to watch again. If I had picked my favorite (rather than at random,) I’d have chosen Ambassador, who cited the Untouchables’ scene in Repo Man. (one of my favorite films, and especially relevant because Repo Man’s Sy Richardson briefly appeared in Larry Crowne!) Ambassador, drop us a line, we’ve got a 2strokebuzz shirt for you.

Larry Crowne Electric Scooter, Photo.

As you may have noticed around scooter blogs, it’s Larry Crowne mania. You may recall the 2SB post about the Lambretta outfitted by Route 66 Scooters with an electronic conversion kit from Soundspeed Scooters. The person behind that kit is also behind the Fido electric scooter concept also reported on earlier. Now we have photographic evidence of the machine in action. The photo shows the clearly un-two stroke drive train. For some continuity, they even throw in a kick start lever! While I haven’t seen the film yet, I’ll likely check it out while it’s in first run. In the mean time, can anyone chime in with a description of how this scooter plays a role in the film? Is it really passed off as a stink wheel with a sound effect? Or is it embraced for the Lithium Ion powered machine that it is?

(photo from Zimbio)

Larry Crowne Opens Today

Larry Crowne opens today nationwide. Read our review here and enter our Larry Crowne t-shirt, $25 gas card, and notebook giveaway, which ends tomorrow (Saturday).

If those stakes aren’t high enough for you, Fandango’s Larry Crowne Sweepstakes offers a 150cc Genuine Buddy St. Tropez as the grand prize.

Genuine Scooter Co. has a marketing relationship with the studio, but PiaggioUSA’s marketing department couldn’t resist getting in on the action. Piaggio’s marketing department emailed a letter to dealers bragging about the appearance of Piaggio and Vespa scooters in the film, and praising Vespa Dallas’s group ride to a screening, with a link to a local news video.

Larry Crowne, Scooterist


The motorscooter has appeared in countless films, whether as a star player or as a background prop, and many an internet thread or 2am campfire conversation has been dedicated to cataloging the history of scooters in movies. Only a handful of films, and even fewer major-release commercial ones, have given as much attention to our favorite mode of transportation as the new Tom Hanks film Larry Crowne. Seeing that the marketing team made an effort to target the movie to scooterists, through a marketing partnership with Genuine Scooters and outreach to scooter clubs and websites (including this one) around America, hopefully it’s worth reviewing Larry Crowne from the perspective of a longtime scooterist.
Continue readingLarry Crowne, Scooterist”

“Has This Ever Happened to You?”

Eric catches video of NoHo Scooters’ Mike Frankovich helping Tom Hanks start his Riva at the L.A. Larry Crowne premiere last night. Despite what the uptight publicist in the foreground is thinking, this fragment of cinéma vérité will almost surely be Larry Crowne’s most memorable contribution to scootering legend, and will endear Tom Hanks to all scooterists forever. And I’m not being snarky for once.

Tonight is the Chicago premiere, see you there! The movie opens Friday nationwide, our Larry Crowne contest runs through Saturday.

Get To Know “Larry Crowne”

If you haven’t heard the name “Larry Crowne” thrown around yet, you will soon. The Tom Hanks film comes out released July 1 (how many times will we see “…scoots into theaters?”) and features motorscooters more prominently than just about any film since Quadrophenia. I know 2strokebuzz readers consider themselves pretty “avant garde” and this is a big-budget mainstream film, but I’m willing to bet a good number of hipster scoooterists will make an exception to their “Julia Roberts rule” for this one.
Continue reading “Get To Know “Larry Crowne””

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.

Hill Street P200E

Vespa product placement from the early 80s: a P200E guest stars on Hill Street Blues.

You may not remember a time when scooter sightings in the media were rare, but back in 2sb’s ‘zine days (the mid-90s), a vintage scooter appearing in a commercial would set Usenet ablaze with excitement. This appearance (from 1983) would have come at a time when Vespa was active in the U.S. but struggling against falling gas prices, and Honda’s just-unveiled more modern 4-stroke scooters. Within a year, with help from Lou Reed, Devo, Grace Jones, and Adam Ant, Honda would dominate the market. With the added complications of new emissions laws in California, Piaggio abandoned the market a couple years later, not returning until 1999.

Was this appearance a deliberate marketing move, or a writer’s whim? Hard to say, but at this point, it’s likely Piaggio was seeking out any mass-media attention they could get, and law enforcement would have been an attractive market, indeed many police agencies did use Vespas for parking enforcement at the time, (and is that an Ape in the background?) On the other hand, the scooter is not particularly glorified, the officer riding it is humiliated on several occasions. This was the first part of a three-part series, if you can sit through them all, let me know if the scooter appears again in parts II or III.

Mods Surely To Find New Pride From Film, Brighton Rock

Mark from Minneapolis passed on to us this trailer for the film Brighton Rock and it’s pretty Mod-tastic with more mirrors than a…place with a lot of mirrors. It shows off a pack of Vespa and Lambretta scooters looking for trouble. Was the Tokyo Film Festival a do-not-miss for the jet-set international Modernist? A quick search turns up the basis for the film. The cast includes the hard-working Helen Mirren. But will it be better than Quadrophenia?