Category: 2sb News

VVV: Hinds’ “Coffee”


Long time, no Vespa Video Vednesday. Not a Vespa in sight in this video, but it’s goodtimes in a scooter shop! Thanks for the link, Jeff!

Speaking of, zip up your Agip coveralls and meet Vespa Club of Chicago at Scooterworks this Saturday (March 16) at noon, we’re doing a demo on basic spring maintenance for all scooters and scooterists! Be sure to follow Vespa Club of Chicago (wherever you follow things), we’ve got so much going on this spring/summer, and of course, while we’re here, remember that Slaughterhouse 30 is in the works for Labor Day Weekend… more on that soon!

Still here, barely…

Today I accidentally clicked on a folder of bookmarks containing my “daily feed” of scooter blogs, boards, and groups from about twelve years ago, when 2strokebuzz was going strong. Faced with 60 open tabs, I thought it’d be fun to tally how many of those sites were still live. The results:

Half (mostly blogs, including some “official” Vespa blogs) are long gone. A few (mostly European shops and industry sites and groups like Modern Buddy and Modern Vespa) are still going strong. A bunch are frozen in time in the late 2010s (like the beloved scoot.net), or changed topics (usually “my new baby” or “my new motorcycle”) and fizzled out anyway. Only three are like this one… still around, with an occasional update.

What’s it mean? Well, nothing much. I guess the biggest bummer is that blogging is dead. It was fun while it lasted, but it got too commercial and competitive and probably most people (like me) got tired of spending our time doing research and writing content that would immediately be reposted without attribution on fifty other blogs that actually made money.

Did all these people lose interest in scooters? Did they all transition to social media? Is there anything like 2strokebuzz out there today? Many of you tell me you miss 2SB, and I miss it too, but no one reads blogs anymore. Trying to re-establish a foothold in the clickbait/hype/repost/shitty meme world of social media is not something I’m interested in. If you know of any sites or feeds that regularly publish curated, researched, useful, and (dare I dream) low-key scooter information, I’d love to know about them. Maybe I’ll start a new bookmark folder.

And hey, keep in touch! I still see a lot of you, but I haven’t heard from some of you in years. I’m still riding, and I occasionally post ride recaps and other content at VCOA Chicago.

Slaughterhouse 28 registration open

As you probably know if you’re still occasionally visiting/RSSing/subscribing to 2strokebuzz, The annual Slaughterhouse Rally is Chicago’s biggest and best rally and it’s been around for 28 years now! After a couple scaled-back years we’re going back to full throttle this Labor Day weekend, and I wanted to let you know that you’ve only got a few days left to register if you want to get a PERSONALIZED SLAUGHTERHOUSE 28 ILLINOIS LICENSE PLATE!

You gotta register before SUNDAY (June 19) to personalize your plate (3 characters). We might have some random-number plates left after that, but if you want to be sure to get a plate, REGISTER NOW. If you’re an IL resident and submit your scooter info with your registration, you can get it before the rally and USE IT through Labor Day. If you don’t have a legal plate already, or if you’re from out of state, you’ll still get it, but the state won’t release it until after the rally, so we’ll mail it to you.

We’ve got a bunch of other good stuff lined up, too, including maybe the best patch ever. If you haven’t been to Slaughterhouse for a few years, now’s the time, this is going to be one of the biggest and best ever (nearly 100 registrations already and it’s only MID-JUNE!) Did I mention TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS includes the plate, patch, and a weekend of fun? You spent that much on drinks last night. See you there!

Issue 6: 2SB×M5

Today, we honor one of our favorite scooterists and dearest friends, Matt DeVries, on his 50th birthday with 2strokebuzz Issue 6, which finally concludes the subscription he paid for in 1995.
Happy Birthday, Matty!

Shouldn’t We All Be at Bandcamp?

Rarer than a rod-model airbox cover. (I don’t know if that’s even a thing, or how rare it is, but it sounds good.)

Never thought you’d see another issue of 2strokebuzz, did you? Well, I made a very modest kinda-shitty fifth issue back in 2015 to hand out at Bandcamp but I ran out of time to print it and I never got around to sharing it.

Now it’s 2020, a weird, scary, and depressing year. We’re all realizing that there are a lot of simple pleasures that we take for granted, but Bandcamp isn’t one of them. I’m certain we all drive home on Sunday realizing how special and important it is, with the promise of the next one keeping us going, as we count down the months and days until we see our friends again.

So here it is. This issue isn’t any great shakes, it’s only a few pages, some of it seems inappropriate even five years later, Milena’s pronouns are wrong, some of the inside jokes are already forgotten, and (thankfully!) I met “that guy” the next year. But hopefully it fills a little part of the big hole we’re all feeling this weekend.

This year sucks, but please use the downtime to do something creative and/or productive, and to be thankful for what you’ve got. If you’re reading this, you probably have a motorscooter and good friends, and that’s a lot to be thankful for. If you’ve got more than that, please use a chunk of your resources to make the world better.

Let me get you started… this isn’t the most pressing issue out there right now, but it’s the most relevant to this post: If you’re missing Bandcamp as much as I am, please donate a few bucks to the Toronto Band Fathers to keep that stupid magical football field and barn waiting for us next year.

2sb Quarantine Jukebox

I need a “winter project” to keep me sane through the long Chicago winters. Last year, it was my first Lambretta after 25 years of Vespas. This year, in January, I resolved to finally get our 1962 Seeburg LPC-1 jukebox running again. A month or so ago, with a lot of help and a level of obsession approaching my scooter projects, it came back to life, and we’ve really been enjoying blasting our scratchy old 7″s through the house at the press of two buttons.

On the last day of school before the COVID-19 quarantine here in Chicago, my son Calvin brought home an origami piano that his friend Kingston taught him to make, and I thought “That shape looks familiar!” During our first weekend of quarantine, I made a prototype, then a fancy papercraft model of our jukebox based on Kingston’s piano, and here’s a PDF file so you can print it and assemble it yourself! Hopefully this project entertains you for a brief period while you’re housebound.

If you’d like some background music while you assemble it, check out our Jukebox Playlist on Spotify:

Someday we really hope you can come by and see the real thing in person, it’s a beauty. If you enjoyed building this, maybe you’ll want to check out the 2strokebuzz Action Toy we made way back in 2001!

Yinzerdome Photos

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Is this still on? Thought you guys might like to see my PVSC 2017 Beyond Yinzerdome photos. As always it was an amazing, meticulously-planned rally without a dull moment, and this year the weather turned out to be pretty great. Saw a ton of old friends, didn’t even get a chance to talk to all of them, and made some new ones. Pudge snagged the last pierogi, but I drowned my sorrow in bourbon and pepperoni rolls. Thanks SO much PVSC, you’ve been setting the standard by which all other rallies are judged, for YEARS now.

State of the Buzz Address

Hey, 2SB readers! Bryan here…

As you know, 2strokeBuzz has been pretty dead for a while now, I got kinda disillusioned with scootering a few years ago and even with the addition of Matt and Brooke, we’ve only been posting sporadically. Ironically, in the meantime (with a lot of help from friends and mechanics) I’ve got two running vintage bikes and I’ve been riding more than ever. Turns out, for all I’ve spoken up on behalf of modern scooters and modern scooterists, I’ve realized over time that my true love is vintage scooters, and I miss talking about and riding vintage scooters just as much as I don’t miss arguing with clueless importers and feeling compelled to write about uninspiring new scooters.

So the point is, 2strokeBuzz is not dead, but we are taking it easy in our old age. The first issue of the ‘zine came out nearly TWENTY years ago, so you can be sure we’re going to celebrate that milestone in January 2016. In the meantime, I’m thinking about what we are, and where we want to be. This blog is maybe no longer the right format, not everyone’s on Facebook, I still don’t really ‘get’ Twitter, but I want to keep making 2SB happen. The focus will definitely be reverting to vintage scooters and silly fun, minus the pressure of keeping up with modern scooter/breaking industry news kinda stuff that was bringing me down. If you have suggestions or would like to contribute something, please let me know.

Your reward for reading so far into this blather? We’re going to PVSC next weekend and we’re going to have our first new print issue for sale there (only $2!). It’s going to be super-lame by the standards of the old days, but it’s our first step in getting things going again. If you’re coming to PVSC, track us down! We’re only printing 40 copies, it’ll include a special bonus item, and it’ll ONLY be available at the PVSC rally, so if nothing else, you can sell it on eBay and maybe make your two bucks back.

I’m setting aside 9 of the 40 copies to give away online to the first three commenters on this post here on the site (remember your login? me neither!), on our Facebook page, and on Twitter (if I remember to check Twitter). Remember to comment on this post, not just anywhere. If you win and you’re at PVSC I’ll give it to you there, otherwise I’ll track you down and mail it. Thanks for supporting 2strokebuzz for ALL. THESE. YEARS.

Karm Developed Your Film!

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Here’s a fun story and mystery from our pal Karm Parker, a Torontonian who moved to Columbus, OH about a year ago: Karm, like many of us rally-going scooterists, visits a lot of thrift stores and lately he had the idea to steal the film from any cheap cameras he finds. He carries around a few batteries to (hopefully) safely rewind it, and sends it off to Dwane’s Photo to have prints made. In his very first batch, two came back ‘black’ (exposed to light at some point). One roll was too damaged to print. But the last roll had 10 pictures… of scooters!
Continue reading “Karm Developed Your Film!”

2strokebuzz Liebt Motorliebe

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It’s been more than a year since our last (non-CWC) post, and i’m sick of dumb April Fools’ pranks, so here’s something real, and awesome: Motorliebe, aka Lars, Dani, Blumi, and Mariuz, rode across the U.S.A. last summer on Vespa P200s, and I know a lot of 2SB readers had the pleasure of meeting them along the way, especially at PVSC Band Camp. They were self-sufficient, organized, and ridiculously fun to be around, and I think we were all a bit bummed out to see them go back to Germany. Meeting them was a highlight of my summer and reminded me why I love scootering, and it certainly made a certain Thomas Müller goal a little easier to swallow.

Be sure to check out their great video!

Anyway, point being (when did 2sb ever get to the point quickly?) Motorliebe’s photo book about their trip is coming out soon, and was previewed in a great photo gallery and interview with Dani in German newsmagazine Der Spiegel. It seems to be available for preorder from the publisher and amazon.de but I’m a lame monoglot and can’t figure out shipping. I’ve asked the guys if it will be available in the U.S., I’ll let you know when I hear back.

2014/15 Cold Weather Challenge

CWC09Welcome to the 2014-15 Cold Weather Challenge brought to you by Piston Ported, Factory Tools, Blockhead Printing, and 2Strokebuzz! You’ll be competing for fame and glory and maybe a small prize from our sponsors.

Like last year we wont post the temperature or ride length until after the contest has closed!
The rules are as follows.
1. Contest runs December 1st, 2014 through February 28th, 2015
2. Vintage manual shift scooters and 2 stroke manual shift scooters (ie. Stella) only.
3. No sidecars.
4. Ride must be at least 10 miles long. Please chart your route on google maps or a gps and send the link.
5. Coldest Temperature wins – no cheating! We have the interwebs to check now.
6. Please submit at least one photo, preferably in front of a temperature sign but realize that’s not always possible.
7. In case of a tie the furthest distance wins.
8. Open to the residents of USA and Canada only.
9. Please email Matty (matty @ 2strokebuzz.com) with your results in the following format
Name:
City:
Date:
Scooter:
Distance: (include google maps link or gps route)
Temperature: (via http://www.noaa.gov)
Notes
-Even if you’re in Hawaii, Florida or Texas why not enter just to win your state! There will be a random drawing from all entries so you could still walk away with prize!
-Be safe, we know this is a dumb contest but don’t be a dummy and ride when it’s not safe.
-Please keep this post comment free all comments will be deleted.

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Epic Scooter Story Proposed By Kickstarter Project

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Canadian Gordon Bowman is proposing to publish a book detailing his fathers romantic mid-century journey across the Americas. The Kickstarter page details the project and levels of financial participation. The manuscript is complete and a publisher is sought; with this being the goal of the project. Head over and take a peak at some of the cool photos. The masked bandit photo is what caught my eye. Just about the coolest scooter snapshot I’ve seen in a while.

(Note: Facebook hasn’t killed 2SB yet, but you can also check out the facebook page on the Scooter Diaries effort)