VVV: You Get What You Give

Alright, it’s not Wednesday. But tomorrow is, and it’s the Inauguration of our 46th president, and of all the bands in the world Joe Biden could have requested to close out the event, he asked Gregg Alexander to reform New Radicals and play their 1998 hit “You Only Get What You Give.”

Your first thought, like mine, was probably “why?” They’re a one-hit-wonder, they only released one album and disbanded just before their second single was released. New Radicals was hardly even a “band,” for that matter, it seems to be basically Alexander plus whoever else was around at the moment (often Danielle Brisebois). Then—like me—you remembered how damn good that song was. Any band or songwriter should be thrilled to have one such success. But still… why them, why now, 22 years later?

Turns out the song was a favorite of Beau Biden, and became the Biden family’s rally song through Beau’s cancer treatment and 2015 death. Coincidentally (or not?) Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband and our first Second-Gentleman-elect, used the song as his walk-on music during the campaign.

So it all starts to make sense, and honestly I’m pretty excited about it, largely because the video is a masterpiece and has always been a favorite. As you may have ascertained by now, it features some scooters.

The video features Alexander leading a smiling group of diverse, hip young adults as they overthrow the Staten Island Mall. While the tone of the video is as light-hearted as can be, I’m sure politically-minded people can easily picture Jared Kushner and Ivanka as the yuppies put in dog kennels, and Kayleigh McEnany as the Karen who’s pinned down and forced into barista duty. Trapping a mall cop in a net is the first step in defunding the police, right? I like this world these guys live in. Soft-serve from the tap for everyone!

But—of course—the best part is the scooters zipping around. I remembered hearing at the time that Gene Merideth was somehow involved. Gene was the longtime owner of Scooters Originali (located at the time of the video in New Jersey, but later in Pennsylvania, and now under different ownership in the Pacific Northwest). Gene sold me my second scooter back in 1996 or so. He’s in England now, so I texted him to see what he remembered:

“Richard Agerbeek was the one with the hook up, and he brought John Melville along and got me to bring John Wilson so that we had a few scooters for the shoot,” Gene remembers. “Wilson’s was green, John Melville had the blue and white Li3, and Richard had the gold Vespa.”

Sadly, Gene didn’t get much time in the video, as it took the crew a long time to rig a camera to his purple and white Lambretta’s crashbars. On the plus side, the low angle shots from his Lambretta-cam as it dollies through the panicked crowd look amazing, and prominently feature Gene’s feet.

Wilson, Melville, and Agerbeek get more screen time riding through the mall and menacingly circling the bourgeoisie. Agerbeek gets several closeups, and (to reinforce the point that the New Radicals’ lineup was fluid-at-best) he can be seen playing a green bass behind Alexander in the performance shots. Hopefully they bring him back for the inauguration!

Even without the scooters, the video is a wonderful, happy time capsule. I’m sure glad this song is out there. It all feels surprisingly relevant. We need the positivity. Bucket hats are really big right now. “Health insurance, rip off lying/FDA, big bankers buying,” holds up even if the celebrity disses are a little dated. Hey, Beck, Courtney Love, Hanson, and Marilyn Manson weren’t invited to the Inaguration, so Alexander won that battle.

Joe Biden isn’t as new or radical as I would have preferred, but he and Kamala Harris are a hell of an improvement, here’s hoping the next four years are as progressive, fun, and scooter-filled as this video.


UPDATE: A week later…
Gene found this photo of his TV with the camera rig:
Pretty astute use of grip arms there, it never occurred to me that Florida bars are pretty much MADE for that. Thanks again, Gene, for helping to document this important moment in American motorscooter history!

As far as the actual performance on Inaguration day, I clearly set my expectations too high, ha. I figured it’d be a soundstage video segment and not a live performance, and I was right. New Radicals’ performance itself was perfectly fine (Danielle Briseboise sighting!) but it was just a brief clip buried in hours of other clips of Cub Scouts and dancing retirees. The whole “parade” was appropriately heartwarming, but it didn’t transcend the Covid-era slapped-together video clip-show genre and didn’t feel tethered to the actual inauguration events. But it’s always a joy to hear that song.

Rolling Stone posted a surprisingly in-depth interview with Alexander, and the full version of the video (the broadcast version was edited down a bit) that’s worth a read/watch.

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.

Lambretta Jamboree 2016 Photos

28115849320_32c7174f77_kThe Lambretta Club USA is famously (and justifiably) snobbish about their national rally, only Lambrettas and their attendant Lambrettisti are welcome, so I was flattered to be invited (my scooter of choice be damned) to serve as official photographer of this years’ Lambretta Jamboree in Duluth, Minnesota.

It was an amazingly well-organized and fun event, and hopefully any lapses in the quality of my photography were balanced by the quantity, I took an awful lot of photos, and you can see them all here. Thanks to Matt, Peter, Patrick, and all the other Minnesotans and LCUSA brass for all the work you put into an event I’ll never forget.

1995

SH951995. I just got my first scooter. I’d met Alfredo on Usenet’s alt.scooter, we’d gone for a ride, he’d mentioned a scooter rally coming up in a few weeks, “We should go!” I got my scooter to get around town in style, I wasn’t so sure about diving into the “scene” of weirdo mods and skinheads, but it was worth checking out. All Alf had was a phone number. I called and talked to a girl named Kristen, she took down my address and said she’d mail me more info. A week later, I got a flyer in the mail.
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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!
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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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Chicago Mods vs Rockers 2012 Photos


The 2012 2012 Mods vs. Rockers rally was Father’s Day Weekend, we made it out to the Mayday SC Friday night party at Late Bar, but once again we couldn’t make it to the main event on Saturday, so Jordan sent loads of great photos. Thanks, Jordan!
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Amerivespa 2012

Just a few days stand between us and Amerivespa 2012 in Lake Geneva, WI. I’ve heard they already have 500 registrations, which would make it one of the largest rallies in North America, ever. Online registration is available until the 19th, and it’s a MUST to get your money’s worth. We’ll be sharing a vendor booth with Piston Ported (and something called “Factory Tools” that Matty won’t talk about), please stop by and say ‘hi!’

“What Goes Through A Biker’s Head”

Everyone and his mom is linking to a pretty dumb Jalopnik “story” about a confrontation between a motorcyclist and a car. I hate to even link it again, I generally enjoy Jalopnik, and this story has its funny moments, but it’s totally off the mark and irresponsible as a commentary on safe riding, and I hate to think any of my riding friends actually emphasize with this wound-up, entitled jagbag.
Continue reading ““What Goes Through A Biker’s Head””