Probably the U.S.’s most exciting scooter race in years, the Polini Cup is happening tomorrow and Sunday in Tom Dash Speedway in Atwater,CA. This exciting event will feature vintage scooters, modern scooters, mopeds, mini-moto and go-peds and almost slipped past 2sb’s attention until Joshua Griffith from Seattle Mopeds let us know that MopedTV and the 1977 Mopeds Blog will feature live coverage all weekend (with emphasis on Mopeds, of course.) Sounds awesome, sorry to not publish this earlier but aaaaarrrrgggh DSL! and now we’re in Cincinnati for WKRP and I should be drinking right now goodbye. But definitely check it out.
Category: Lifestyle
Yamaha Tri-Max 400
Do they have April Fools’ Day in France?
Half-price Scooters and Microcars
Veloce’s A-Z of Popular Scooters and Microcars is on sale for half-price. It’s pretty expensive regularly, but at that price, it’s a must-have, especially if you’re getting excited about Tatas and Smarts lately. 2sb reviewed it here.
Scooter in the Sticks: Revisiting Risk
Another great life-affirming story from Scooter in the Sticks about a friend who’s getting back in the saddle after a 2007 motorcycle crash that lost him his leg.
Vintage Baubles From Viet Nam
Saigon Scooter Centre sent out an email to announce the availability of some new vintage scooter accessories. Mirrors, crashbars and other useless adornments may not be your style. But at least this is not a post about another Maxi-Scooter or clone scooter trend. Mods of the world rejoice. You can now have a nice chrome Pegasus or naked lady on your Series II Lambretta. I’m really just hoping that if I post enough news from SSC that they’ll send me an SS90 repro dummy tank converted to a real fuel tank, to review.
Worse than Worst
We always hear about low-quality Chinese scooters, and how the Chinese scooter industry has little regard for intellectual property. POCphil sent us this email from Binqi, and we’d actually received the same email recently, but ignored it. Dealers and anyone with a scooter website get emails like this several times a week. This one deserves a good look, though, because it’s the perfect storm of absurdity:
Continue reading “Worse than Worst”
Buddy 1:12
Genuine’s new line of 1:12-scale die-cast Buddies was just unveiled, and those ingrate MB’ers are already finding reasons to nitpick, heh. I saw the samples, and they look great. Not as great as a 1:12 Blur would, mind you, but great. Scooterworks lists them as “backordered” but it’s more like “preordered,” they’re due in very soon. Only a company with a well-organized, enthusiastic community of customers could order a containerload of toys and know damn well they’ll sell like hotcakes. (If Vespa did something like this, they’d be made by Lladro or Limoges, there’d be a huge PR blitz, they’d cost $1200 each, and never end up at dealers anyway… kind of like those Adidas tracksuits).
Mr. Dai’s motorbikes
Proof there might be some decent scooters left in Vietnam: this guy has a nice collection.
Pinasco Revisits The “Swinging 70s and 80s”
Several weeks ago the performance tuning house of Andrea Pinasco announced the addition of a throw-back exhaust for smallframe Vespas. The exhaust is of the ET3 ‘banana’ variety with the addition of some special cosmetic touches. The silencer section of the exhaust is painted with an eye-catching, white, high-temp, enamel paint. Additionally the classic Andrea Pinasco logo is applied and is claimed to be able to withstand the test of time. A perfect addition to your ET3 or 50 Special with full UTAH accessory kit.
2SB/CWC Spring Party, Sat, April 11!
Hi everybody! Here are the details on the Galewood/Cold Weather Challenge ride and Karaoke party this Saturday (4-11)
Dinner at 5pm
Russell’s BBQ
1621 N Thatcher Ave Elmwood Park, IL 60607
I’ll be honest with you here, this is not the BBQ that made Galewood famous, but it’s a neat, old-school place with plenty of space for us, and if you forget about real BBQ, it’s pretty good in the way that Taco Bell is good if you forget about real Mexican food. And they have fried Macaroni and Cheese wedges.
Ride leaves 6:30pm sharp
We’ll do a quick ride (about 15 miles total) and see all the wonders of the greater Galewood area:
The Des Plaines River (Will it flood!?)
Forest preserves (“Balls Deep!”)
Elmwood Park’ (“Italinate” architecture!)
River Grove! (Home of Triton College!)
Kiddieland (and the “Scooters” sign!)
Maywood Park (Harness Racing!)
More Forest Preserves (Nature!-ish!)
Forest Park (Irish Pubs & Yarn stores!)
Oak Park (The Evanston of the West!)
Lake Street (The Gap! Starbucks!)
Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio
A bunch of Hemingway shit
Bonus! An 80-car-long freight train *will* hold up the ride at some point.
Then it’s on to Galewood for a lap around the best neighborhood in Chicago, ending at
BERRYOKE!
The Kat Klub
6920 W. North Avenue
at 8:00
Jason and Mary emcee the best Karaoke around, with a great variety of songs.
We’re talking New Wave, Punk, Mod, British Invasion, and even some indie rock, plus all the usual karaoke cheese.
No cover! Cheap drinks! Friends! Fun! Malört! Peeptinis!
Then! a late-night ride (four blocks) to River Forest Grill for the “AK-47.”
Then! Ride! Straight to your place of worship and sleep next to your scooter in the parking lot, because it’s EASTER!
Ride Map:
Smallpressapalooza
2SB pal and publisher of the Bumpstart zine, Karen Giezyng, will read tonight at Powell’s Books Smallpressapalooza in Portland, OR. The event starts at 5pm, she’s scheduled to read at 7:15pm. Issue 2 of Bumpstart will hopefully go on sale tonight at Scootmoto, if my internet at home is fixed (it’s been out for a week, sorry about the lack of posts and followup on the TGB story). Issue 1 is back in stock, too, both are great.
UPDATE Bumpstart #2 is now available at Scootmoto!
ScootRS’ new Lambretta front brake
ScootRS’ long-promised Lambretta inline front disc brake is now available. I love to open their RSS feed and try to identify “Today’s Featured Item” without looking at the caption.
117mph Lambretta up for auction
Stuart Owen is putting his famous record-setting 117mph 1970 250cc Lambretta up for auction. Reserve is £7,500. More info at 100mph Lambretta Club.
Scooter (back in) the Sticks
Last spring I posted that Steve Williams of Scooter in the Sticks had decided to stop publishing his blog. Back then I pulled the site from my RSS feed and hadn’t checked it for months. Today I was surprised to find Steve’s retirement was apparently short-lived, and he’s been posting regularly to the site for months. It’s embarassing how long it took me to notice, but I’m happy to see him back, and happy we have lots of his new posts to read through.
“Swimsuit Issue” is just a Sonic Youth song
Most of us stopped “reading” Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue in about 6th grade, when we finally tracked down some real porn. But there will always be 6th-graders, so SI keeps publishing it, and comically pretending it’s a guide for women shopping for swimwear. Their portfolio now includes athletes’ wives, tennis stars, cheerleaders, bodypainted nudes, Danica Patrick (you’re killing us, Danica) and the usual fashion models, but, strangely still no men (don’t men need swimsuit shopping advice?). It’s always beautifully-shot, and always edging just close enough to pornography to create a stir and sell magazines. To anyone with a connection to the Internet, the Swimsuit Issue (and even the Swimsuit Issue website) seems as anachronistic as the Sears catalog lingerie section, but as a public service, Michael dutifully searched through the sprawling site to find these photos of Daniella Sarahyba blocking our view of a vintage Vespa 50 Special in Naples, Italy. As fans of imperfection, charm, and natural beauty, we find the scooter much more appealing than the model. Is there something wrong with us if our eyes are immediately drawn to that aftermarket fenderlight, rather than Daniella’s headlights?